On January 30, 2026, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced federal agents arrested four people including journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for covering an immigration protest at a Minnesota church on January 18. Bondi directed the arrests despite a federal magistrate judge previously declining to approve them citing “lack of evidence,” and the chief federal appeals court judge rejecting the prosecutor's appeal.
Fort livestreamed her arrest on Facebook Live saying agents were at her door with a warrant and, “I don't feel I have my first amendment right as a member of the press.” The arrests represent a dramatic escalation of Trump's attacks on the press and his “enemy of the people” rhetoric becoming government action.
Update (October 12, 2026): a suppression motion filed August 31 by defendant Jerome Richardson, Don Lemon's producer, says the government obtained at least three warrants to track a phone it believed was his “for the purpose of locating and arresting him,” including two warrants, one from Minnesota on January 30 and one from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on January 31, to use a cell-site simulator, a device that mimics a cell tower. WIRED reported that agents also applied for such warrants targeting Georgia Fort and another defendant, and that the records do not show whether the applications were approved or whether a simulator was deployed. The affidavits claimed video showed Fort, Lemon, Richardson and others “chanting with agitators”; prosecutors have since conceded Lemon and Fort did not chant, and Fort's lawyers say the government acknowledged the false claim appeared in at least 15 warrant affidavits, WIRED reported.