Video News Clips: In Their Own Words

Don Lemon May Be Charged Under Ku Klux Klan Act For Church Invasion

Screenshot/YouTube/Don Lemon

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said on Monday that Ku Klux Klan Act charges may be on the table for former CNN host Don Lemon and protesters who crashed a church in Minnesota.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating whether the Sunday anti-deportation protest Lemon recorded in Minneapolis violated multiple civil rights laws by disrupting a church service, Dhillon said in a Monday interview with podcaster Benny Johnson. Lemon later claimed all he did was “commit an act of journalism” by covering the incident inside the building, but his apparent foreknowledge of the protester’s plot may implicate him in criminal activity as well, Dhillon said.

BREAKING: DOJ Announces Intention to Charge Don Lemon under the Ku Klux Klan Act.

The KKK Act makes it illegal to threaten, hurt, or intimidate people to prevent them from exercising their God-given rights.

HARMEET DHILLON: “The Klan Act is one of the most important federal… pic.twitter.com/GWnXAMtWc9

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 19, 2026

“Some of these folks who did this have self-identified. Don Lemon himself said he knew exactly what was going to happen inside that facility, he went into the facility, and then he began, quote-unquote, ‘committing journalism,’ and as if that’s sort of a shield from being … an embedded part of a criminal conspiracy,” Dhillon said.

Dhillon said laws that may have been broken include the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which prohibits the obstruction of houses of worship, and the 1987 Ku Klux Klan Act criminalizing conspiring against a person’s civil rights.

Lemon’s media team did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

The commentator’s livestream of the Sunday protest showed him discussing with his team beforehand whether he should enter the church or not.

“If they see me, they’re going to know,” Lemon said while waiting in a vehicle.

“I’m just trying to figure out what’s the best thing ’cause we just found out about this this morning,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out … if it’s best for me to go inside so I can tell what happened.”

Lemon alluded to the protesting group’s confrontational tactics in the stream before arriving at the church, declining to reveal details so as not to spoil the surprise.

The group “has been doing this since George Floyd, Dante Wright and others where they surprise people, catch them off guard and hold them to account,” he told his audience. “And so that’s what we’re doing here. And then … after that, after we do this operation, you’ll see it live. And these … operations are surprise operations. Again, can’t tell you where they’re going and where we’re gathered right now.”

Lemon’s crew filmed him entering the church while wearing a microphone. The audio captured a church leader speaking to his congregation just before protesters began chanting, accusing a pastor of collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Congregants were seen exiting the church once the demonstration started.

“So, activists are in the church, and they are protesting, surrounded the church on the inside,” Lemon said, narrating on his microphone. He and his camera crew later conducted interviews inside the church as it asked everyone to leave, his footage shows.

“What I said was going to happen happened,” Lemon said on the livestream after leaving the protest. “We could not tell you, you know, what it was.”