The extraordinary arrests of the journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort last week are a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on the press and pose a clear threat to first amendment freedoms.
Mere weeks after federal law enforcement executed a search warrant targeting a Washington Post reporter, the justice department is now pursuing criminal charges against two independent journalists for reporting from the scene of a protest in Minnesota citing – ironically – federal laws intended to protect the exercise of constitutional rights. These indictments are an affront to the first amendment of the US constitution.
On 18 January, protesters entered the Cities church in St Paul, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official is a pastor, and interrupted a service with chants of “ICE out.” By all indications, Lemon, a former CNN host, and Fort, a local journalist, entered the church to cover the demonstration against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.
Being at the scene of a breaking news event to report as it unfolds is the job of journalists, and is activity protected by the first amendment, which expressly protects “freedom ... of the press”. But according to the federal indictment unsealed on Friday, the justice department is accusing Lemon and Fort of conspiring to deprive others of their constitutional rights – a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison, a fine, or both – and with allegedly obstructing the free exercise of religion in a place of worship. These charges are an attempt to criminalize journalism.
It is unprecedented for the justice department to invoke these laws to punish journalistic activity, and there is no basis for doing so that would be consistent with the first amendment. Indeed, before the indictment, a federal magistrate judge in Minnesota had refused to sign an arrest warrant for Lemon. In a letter to a federal appeals court regarding the magistrate judge’s decision, chief judge Patrick Schiltz of the federal district court in Minneapolis, a George W Bush-appointee, noted that Lemon was a journalist and that “[t]here was no evidence” that he “engaged in any criminal behavior or conspired to do so”.
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