The Justice Department has put Don Lemon on notice. The disgraced former CNN anchor could face serious federal charges for his role in storming a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he joined a far-left mob hunting for a pro-ICE pastor while live-streaming the chaos.
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson that federal prosecutors are exploring multiple avenues to bring charges against those involved in the church invasion. “We will pursue charges in this case. I see various crimes that have occurred,” Dhillon said. “Exactly what they are, I’m not gonna flag, but the FACE Act has been mentioned as one of the predicates there.”
As PJ Media’s Stephen Green previously noted, the FACE Act, or Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, typically applies to abortion clinic protests. However, thanks to Joe Biden, a new precedent has been set. Dhillon pointed out how the Biden Justice Department weaponized this law against pro-life Americans, and now the Trump administration plans to use every tool at its disposal against the left-wing extremists who terrorized churchgoers.
And one of those tools may be the Ku Klux Klan Act.
According to Dhillon, the Trump administration could use the same aggressive tactics the Biden DOJ deployed against peaceful pro-life protesters. “In other cases, the Biden DOJ used the Klan Act conspiracy charges tacked onto the FACE Act in the case of protests outside abortion clinics to bring much longer sentences,” she explained. “So there are a number of tools available to us.”
The investigation goes beyond just what happened inside the church.
Federal prosecutors are now examining who bankrolled the operation and whether organizers used interstate communications to plan the attack.
“Who funded this? What other crimes may have occurred? Was there a use of the wires or the mails in preparing for this event?” Dhillon asked. “Did anyone cross state lines to do this? All of those are potential predicates for additional federal charges.”
The mention of the Ku Klux Klan Act stunned Johnson, who noted the 1871 law was designed to protect African Americans’ voting rights from KKK violence. Dhillon walked him through how Biden’s Justice Department twisted this Reconstruction-era civil rights statute to prosecute grandmothers praying outside abortion clinics.
“The Klan Act is one of the most important federal civil rights statutes, and it goes back to the time when President Lincoln emancipated the slaves, and yet the southern states, Dixiecrats mainly, were refusing to give them equal rights,” Dhillon said. The law makes it illegal to conspire to deprive citizens of their protected civil rights.
Here’s where it gets interesting.
The Biden administration turned this anti-KKK law into a weapon against Christians. “What the Biden administration did is if three grandmas got together to pray outside an abortion clinic for the souls of the people inside, and including unborn children, they would say, ‘Oh, that’s not just a violation of the Klan Act, that’s a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of women going in there to get abortions, and so we’re going to add additional charges and punish that more and make it from a misdemeanor under the FACE Act to a felony under the Klan Act,'” Dhillon explained.
Now Lemon and his fellow travelers might face the same treatment. Dhillon made clear Lemon can’t hide behind claims of journalism. “Don Lemon himself has come out and said he knew exactly what was going to happen inside that facility,” she said. “He went into the facility, and then he began, quote unquote, ‘committing journalism,’ and as if that’s sort of a shield from being a part, an embedded part of a criminal conspiracy. It isn’t.”
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“We’re getting our ducks in a row. We’re putting the facts together, and this is a very serious matter,” Dhillon warned. “Come next Sunday, nobody should think in the United States that they’re gonna be able to get away with this. Everyone in the protest community needs to know that the fullest force of the federal government is going to come down and prevent this from happening and put people away for a long, long time.”
DOJ Confirms Don Lemon Has ZERO ‘Journalism’ Protections Against FACE Act Violations, Lemon Was FULLY Aware Of Violations and May Face KKK Act Conspiracy Charges pic.twitter.com/NtILXYO7UR
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 19, 2026
Don Lemon thought he could play journalist while participating in an attack on Christians exercising their First Amendment rights. He’s about to learn that actions have consequences.
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