Trump Admin Targets Press and Activists in Minnesota, Indicts ‘The Righteous 39’
Politically motivated charges aimed at the Minnesota justice movement during the height of anti-ICE protests targets a wide range of community leaders and members of the press with felony charges.
Saint Paul, MN – The Trump administration has leveraged two federal civil rights felonies against five members of the press, at least six U.S. veterans, a civil rights attorney, two co-founders of Black Lives Matter Minnesota, a school board member and 28 other community-oriented individuals in connection with a Jan. 18 protest against ICE Field Director David Easterwood’s role as a pastor in a St. Paul church.*
Over the span of roughly six weeks, FBI and Homeland Security Investigations agents arrested 39 people across seven states in connection with the protest at the Southern Baptist Cities Church, a denomination rooted in the pro-slavery foundations of America.
All 39 have been indicted on the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, “18 U.S.C. § 248(a)(2), (b), §2(a), injure, intimidate, and interfere with exercise of right of religious freedom at place of worship” and the Ku Klux Klan Act, or the Enforcement Act of 1871, “18 U.S.C. § 241 conspiracy against right of freedom at place of worship.”
Both charges are very familiar to the president. Trump himself was indicted on the KKK Act for his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election – one of 91 felonies he faced before they were all dropped following his re-election.
As for the FACE Act, three days after taking office, the Trump admin pardoned 23 people convicted under the FACE Act as his Department of Justice (DOJ) noted in an official memorandum that the act had been politically “weaponiz[ed]” against pro-life protesters.
Defense attorneys for what some are calling “the righteous 39,” now claim the Trump admin is targeting its political opponents with this indictment.
“The indictment of Mr. Lemon and Ms. Fort seems designed to punish the Administration’s political enemies and chill journalists everywhere.”
Journalist’s Georgia Fort and Don Lemon’s defense attorneys
Trump’s Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth – a Christian nationalist who grew up in Forest Lake, just 20 minutes from Cities Church in St. Paul – attends Christ Church DC, which was founded by Joe Rigney, a far-right Christian writer. In an opinion piece published by right-wing Christian magazine WORLD a day after the protest, Rigney invoked Biblical scriptures, demanded prosecutions and called on the government to “be a terror to evil conduct, and that they bear the sword righteously and purposefully, carrying out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
Attorney General Pamela Bondi and DOJ Civil Rights Division Chief and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who became the prosecuting attorney, immediately went to social media and right-wing talk shows to rail against the protest and announce the administration would be bringing charges.
Dhillon’s office recently filed a civil lawsuit invoking the FACE Act against pro-Palestinian entities and individuals – one of whom was attacked by pro-Israelis – for protesting the sale of stolen Palestinian land outside a New Jersey synagogue.
The government’s case against the church protest was initially so weak that a judge rejected it, not once but repeatedly, leading to prosecutors taking the extraordinary step of bypassing the courts entirely and going directly to a grand jury to get what they couldn’t get from a judge.
The case has been prosecuted by the D.C. Civil Rights office with multiple waves of warrants, and grand jury indictments.
On Jan. 20, the DOJ presented eight arrest warrants to Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko. Micko denied warrants for press members Georgia Fort, Don Lemon, and Jerome Richardson and only found probable cause on three of eight warrants presented to him; St. Paul School Board Member Chauntyll Allen, civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong and U.S. veteran William Kelly.
On each of their warrants, Micko had physically crossed off one of the FACE Act charges with the words “NO PROBABLE CAUSE” written in the margin.
After Micko declined to sign off on five other arrest warrants, the Justice Department requested an emergency review from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The same day as the first three were arrested, Trump called Don Lemon a “loser” and said the protesters were “agitators, anarchists” and were “professional paid people, they’re like actors.”
The prosecution claimed the church protest case was a “national-security emergency” — arguing that if it couldn’t immediately arrest the remaining five defendants, “copycats” would invade churches that weekend. The appeals court rejected the request. A three-judge panel from the Eighth Circuit denied the department’s request.
With every judicial avenue exhausted, the DOJ went to a grand jury of greater Minnesotans and secured an initial indictment against 9 defendants in late January and another in late February, rolling them into a superseding indictment against the 39 individuals.
In the indictment, a majority of the defendants are charged for sharing the protest flyer on Facebook and attending the protest. Journalist Georgia Fort is charged for interviewing the pastor and a protest organizer.
The initial arrests, coming at the height of the popular movement against ICE in Minnesota and after two people were shot by federal agents in a week, show how far federal prosecutors are willing to go to stifle dissent, target who they deem as their political opponents, and attempt to silence independent media.
Using surveillance and GPS tracking on phones, federal agents then targeted the protesters and journalists with early morning raids in several phases, some turning violent with masked agents using battering rams to break through front doors with guns drawn and federal agents ramming vehicles to make arrests.
The Arrests
At 3 a.m. on January 22 at the Aloft Hotel, just blocks from the Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis, one wave of the federal arrests began. FBI agents had booked a room on the same floor as two of the three people initially arrested, Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Allen.
The women, who were with family and other co-organizers of the protest, were unaware that FBI agents were tracking their every move. According to court records, federal agents had stalked the women and the hotel for hours. When the hotel room door opened, they moved on the wrong person, tackled and injured Allen’s wife, placing her under arrest, and bringing her 20 minutes south to the Whipple Federal Building.
“I am several inches taller than my friend,” said Armstrong. “They thought she was me, and they were attempting to manhandle her.”
Armstrong’s attorney Jordan Kushner had been trying to arrange a peaceful surrender all morning and thought he brokered a deal with DOJ attorney Daniel Rosen.
“I gave him my proposal,” said Kushner, “we can take her down to the federal courthouse … she can go to the marshal’s office and turn herself in. We don’t have to have any incidents, no circus, no nothing. He agreed.”
Then Rosen called back.
“He calls me back and says, ‘Oh, no, we can’t do it that way. We have to arrest her at the hotel,'” Kushner said.
Not long after arresting Armstrong in the hotel hallway, several White House social media accounts uploaded A.I.-edited photos depicting Armstrong crying while in handcuffs.
Rosen and the DOJ did not respond to detailed questions sent by Unicorn Riot.
William Kelly, a U.S. veteran and outspoken activist who came to Minnesota to protest ICE, also attended the Jan. 18 protest. Kelly was arrested hours after Armstrong. He updated his address when he appeared in court. That apparently wasn’t enough.
“The morning after I was released, I woke up to a phone call at about 6:15 a.m. while also hearing whistles outside my residence that I was currently staying at,” said Kelly. “They barged into my neighbor’s house, even though I had been in court the day before and gave them my address, they barge into my neighbor’s house with guns drawn, just as they came to me.”
Ian Austin, another U.S. veteran, had an encounter with federal agents nearly a week before the Cities Church protest. Austin’s arrest outside the Whipple Federal Detention Center on Jan. 16 was captured on camera by CNN’s Julia Vargas Jones, showing Customs and Border Patrol agents pushing protesters back onto the sidewalk before tackling and arresting him.
Austin was shackled, taken inside Whipple, and later released, without his cell phone.
“They arrested me the first time and took me into the Whipple and they took my phone,” said Austin. While DHS agents were interviewing him, he said they deceived him into unlocking his phone via biometric face lock. “They tricked me,” said Austin. “I was talking to one guy, and then he’s like, ‘Hey.’ And I looked over and he was just holding the phone up.”
Max Adamson, another veteran present at the Whipple and one of the 39 defendants, witnessed Austin’s second arrest, which came after an interview with Mother Jones went viral. “They arrested him and threw him in the van and drove off,” said Adamson. Austin was subsequently charged in connection with the January 18 Cities Church protests and taken to Sherburne County Jail.
“They are targeting me because I had 2.5 million streams yesterday,” Austin said. Both Austin and Kelly are content creators that went live from inside the church and spoke about the protest to their large social media following in the days after.
Feds Target Members of the Press
Georgia Fort, independent media mogul and three-time Emmy-award-winning journalist, also went live from the church protest but not as a participant, as a member of the press.
Fort, a wife and mother of three, left corporate news nearly a decade ago and has since founded various media platforms over the last several years, including BLCK Press, Center for Broadcast Journalism, and Power 104.7 FM, amassing a large following. She co-hosted The Mothers Podcast with UR and has published groundbreaking TV news show Here’s the Truth With Georgia Fort and the Building Black Wealth video series.
Documenting events in the community daily after federal agents fatally shot Renee Good, Fort live streamed the church protest to her platforms in collaboration with SPEAK MPLS and published an edited video from the protest that has drawn over 9 million views.
Around 6 a.m. twelve days after the protest, federal agents appeared at Fort’s home and arrested her in front of her family.
Aside from the recent immigration operation, this wasn’t Fort’s first time dealing with federal agents. Fort’s been at the forefront of documenting law enforcement abuse over the last year.
Last June outside Fort’s downtown St. Paul office, federal agents arrested poet Isa Lopez moments after she finished an interview with Fort about being brutalized by law enforcement during a contentious federal operation in south Minneapolis on June 3, 2025. Lopez was repeatedly assaulted by law enforcement, choked, thrown to the ground and had a gun pointed at her face. She was charged with assault on federal officers and has yet to have a trial. Fort was first to spotlight her story.
Late last year, after St. Paul Police sent a journalist to the hospital and injured several others while protecting federal agents during an immigration-related arrest, Fort provided documented video proof of violations to the constitutional rights of press and protesters and publicly demanded accountability from the City Council.
Weeks later, Fort hosted a closed media briefing and private viewing of a video she received from the moments after Renee Good was killed by federal agent Jonathan Ross. Due to the graphic nature of the content, Fort has chosen not to publish the video but said the video “provides merit to the concerns raised by the public about the handling of evidence at the crime scene.”
Outside the federal courthouse on Feb. 17 after a court hearing, Fort said she’s being muzzled by the government and asked the world to “help protect the press.” “I care about my community,” she said, “and I want to make sure our stories are told with integrity and care.”
“They’re trying to muzzle me. To make me unable to report on one of the most historic cases, not just in our state, but in our country.”
Georgia Fort
The night before Fort was arrested, former CNN anchor Don Lemon was arrested in Los Angeles. Jerome Richardson, a college student, artist and activist who was working as Lemon’s field producer during the protest later turned himself in in Philadelphia where he attends college. Lemon’s videographer Michael Beute was also indicted.
Another member of the press, independent videographer Brixton Hughes, had his door broken down in the early morning of Feb. 28.
“These arrests and court actions are political theater with legal elements,” Hughes told UR. “The intent is to terrorize the activists in Minnesota and protect the ICE pastor, David Easterwood.”
The defense attorneys for Fort and Lemon collaboratively filed a joint motion to disclose the grand jury proceedings “to ensure the government did not mislead or mis-instruct” the grand jury in their descriptions of members of the press.
Independent Journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon Arrested by Feds Along With Three More Activists
It was 5 a.m. the same day Hughes had his door broken down when Drew Edwards, a school teacher and business owner, woke up to commotion outside his north Minneapolis home. Peeking through the blinds, he saw an agent holding a gun, directing him to open the door.
“The brother kicked the door open and broke down the door,” said Edwards. Agents wouldn’t let him dress and pulled a Taser on him.
“The brother started to grope me and grab me, and I had no drawers on,” said Edwards.
Edwards spoke outside the courthouse on Feb. 27 after being released from federal custody with dozens of others.
The next round of court hearings for 10 of the 39 defendants is March 19, 2026, with some at 9 a.m. and others at 2 p.m., all in courtroom 6B in the Warren Burger Federal Courthouse in Saint Paul.
Others have arraignments on March 24 at 4 p.m. and a handful of defendants who were arrested or turned themselves in out-of-state have their hearings set for March 25 at 4 p.m.
In a ruling today, March 18, Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko granted the government’s motion to label the case “complex” and gave more time for the government — until April 10 — to get their case prepared.
As of March 18, the case listed as criminal docket case # 0:26-cr-00025-LMP-DLM, has racked up 390 court documents and Judge Micko is the listed judge for the March court dates that are set.
Read the full indictment below:
Correction [3.20.26]: We changed the amount of press indicted from four to five and added a sentence about Don Lemon’s videographer also being indicted.
*Update [4.13.26]: We changed the amount of veterans indicted from three to “at least six” after more people were revealed to have served in the US military.
Follow us on X (aka Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, Mastodon, Threads, BlueSky and Patreon.
Please consider a tax-deductible donation to help sustain our horizontally-organized, non-profit media organization:
