Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday the arrest of two more people who were named in a federal indictment in connection to a protest at a Minnesota church.
In a Monday social media post, Bondi said Ian Davis Austin and Jerome Deangelo Richardson had been arrested. Both were among the nine people, including journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, named in an indictment that a federal grand jury returned last week.
Lemon, a former CNN anchor, was arrested Friday in connection with his coverage of the Jan. 18 protest at The Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The protest was aimed at the church’s pastor, who according to demonstrators works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security called the protest a coordinated attack on the church.
Last week’s indictment charges all defendants with conspiracy against the rights of religious freedom at a place of worship and injuring, intimidating and interfering with the exercise of the right of religious freedom at a place of worship.
“If you riot in a place of worship, we WILL find you,” Bondi said in her social media post.
Last week, a federal magistrate released Lemon and other defendants who’d been arrested, rejecting a criminal complaint against them. The judge found the administration lacked probable cause for the arrests under a federal statute that a top Justice Department official conceded had never been used previously in the context of a protest at a church.
Upon his release, Lemon vowed to continue covering the news, as he said he was doing at the church protest.
His attorney Abbe Lowell said upon Lemon’s arrest that it was an “unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration.”
The arrest of Lemon, a well-known journalist, has added to outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota and the recent killings of two U.S. citizens by federal officers.
