A top Department of Justice official said on Monday she had put independent journalist Don Lemon “on notice” after he filmed a crowd of protesters interrupting a Sunday church service in Minnesota.
“A house of worship is not a public forum for your protest! It is a space protected from exactly such acts by federal criminal and civil laws! Nor does the First Amendment protect your pseudo journalism of disrupting a prayer service,” Harmeet Dhillon, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, posted to X. “You are on notice!”
Lemon, a veteran news anchor who was fired from CNN in 2023 after several on-air controversies, traveled to Minneapolis over the weekend, where he filmed a nearly seven-hour episode of his YouTube show documenting the city’s ongoing protests against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.