Former CNN host Don Lemon and local Minneapolis reporter Georgia Fort were arrested on Thursday night.
Several legal analysts confirmed that Lemon has been charged with a violation of the FACE Act and with interfering with "the right to religious worship.... conspiracy to deprive rights" after he reported on a protest inside a Minnesota church.
The Atlantic's legal reporter, Quinta Jurecic, cited the report on the Justice Department's desperate effort to go after Lemon.
"Among the prosecutions of protesters, perhaps the strangest story involves a desperate quest by DOJ to bring criminal charges against the former CNN news personality Don Lemon. On January 18, Lemon documented a demonstration at a Southern Baptist church in St. Paul by a group of activists, who accused a church pastor of also serving as the acting director of the local ICE field office. Just days later, federal law enforcement arrested three of the lead protesters," the report said.
By Monday, The Atlantic said that it appeared that the DOJ dropped the case, but there was a concern that Lemon wasn't in the clear.
“We’re going to pursue this to the ends of the earth,” promised the DOJ's Civil Rights Division leader Harmeet Dhillon.
Former Minnesota U.S. Attorney Doug Kelley told CNN that he saw the complaint in which the judge wrote across it "no probable cause."
"I'm sure Abbe Lowe will have fun with that," Kelley said about Lemon's attorney.
"I'm not surprised because I know how relentlessly Trump goes after his enemies and how much Pam Bondi will follow that. I figured that they probably went to the grand jury and submitted an indictment to them because I don't think they want to go to another magistrate judge to file another criminal complaint," he explained.
"As Joey Jackson said, the law is breaking down here in Minnesota," Kelly noted.
Jackson told CNN's John Berman, "We are in such different and bizarre times. This is heartbreaking to see what's happening here. In the event someone is going to be arrested, there should be some scintilla of law that supports and sponsors the arrest or gives probable cause. Understand what happened here, John. Understand the dynamic of going to a judge and asking the judge to evaluate, to determine whether there's criminality. A judge saying no. You go to an appeals court and the court of appeals denying that, but you're still moving forward. Where are we right now?"
He said that, talking about it from a legal perspective, the First Amendment is foundational to democracy, and it means holding people in power accountable.
"Not about [using] power, trying to intimidate and otherwise coerce journalists from not doing their job. At the end of the day, this case is going to end up with a — yes prediction right now — the same way the James Comey case ended up. Nowhere. The same way that the Letitia James case ended up. Nowhere. And so, look, if you want to say that somebody physically coerced someone in a church not to engage in that practice, of course there's protections for that. But that's not this."
MS NOW's Lisa Rubin told "Morning Joe" that when she looks at the federal docket in Minnesota, "there are still a lot of sealed indictments."
There is no information, she said, including names or what the grand jury has or has not decided in the case, she noted.
