Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison (D.) defended the group of anti-ICE agitators who stormed a St. Paul church on Sunday, telling former CNN host Don Lemon—who accompanied the agitators and boasted of conducting "reconnaissance" ahead of the stunt—that critics of the incident were "getting tender about a church service."
Ellison appeared on Lemon's YouTube show on Monday to discuss the protest, in which Lemon accompanied Minneapolis attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, St. Paul school board member Chauntyll Allen, and other activists on "Operation Pull Up," the Washington Free Beacon reported. The group disrupted services at Cities Church in St. Paul based on the belief that a pastor there works for ICE, shouting "ICE Out" and other slogans.
The incident sparked a federal civil rights investigation and calls to arrest Lemon for his role in the ordeal. A defiant Lemon mocked the churchgoers on Monday, saying they had a sense of "entitlement" that stems from "a white supremacy." He also insisted he was at the protest as a journalist and not an activist, and that disrupting a church service is protected by the First Amendment.
Ellison agreed.
"I think that protest is fundamental to American society. You know, it's freedom of expression. People have a right to lift up their voices and make their peace. And none of us are immune from the voice of the public," Ellison told Lemon.
"They're getting tender about a church service now," added Ellison, who is Muslim.
Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023 for mistreating female colleagues, livestreamed the operation from start to finish.
"We just got into Minneapolis a little bit ago and did some reconnaissance on the ground, speaking to an organization there that's gearing up for resistance and protest," Lemon said at the start of his broadcast. Lemon interviewed Armstrong prior to the operation, kissing her on the cheek and thanking her for inviting him.
"These are resistance protesters that are planning an operation that we're going to follow them on," Lemon said. "I can't tell you exactly what they're doing." Lemon described it as an operation "where they surprise people, catch them off guard, and hold them to account."
Lemon praised the operation during his live feed from inside the church.
"That's what I believe when I say everyone has to be willing to sacrifice something," he said. "You have to make people uncomfortable in these times. You have to be willing to go into places and disrupt and make people uncomfortable."
Lemon's live feed could provide useful evidence for federal authorities, who said Monday the protest is being investigated as a potential violation of the FACE Act, which makes it a crime to threaten or intimidate people at houses of worship or patients at abortion clinics.
"I'm looking at a young man in the corner. He's frightened. He's crying. He's scared," Lemon narrated from inside the church.
But Ellison insisted Monday that the FACE Act does not apply to the church operation, saying it usually applies to anti-abortion protests outside abortion clinics.
"The FACE Act is designed to protect the rights of people seeking their reproductive rights to be protected and so that people for a religious reason cannot just use religion to break into women's reproductive health centers," Ellison told Lemon.
But Ellison's own record contradicts that claim. As Minnesota attorney general, he submitted a brief in a 2020 federal lawsuit that accused a Minneapolis woman of violating the First Amendment rights of parishioners at Dar Al-Farooq, a mosque outside Minneapolis, by filming them without their permission.
In 2015, as a House member, Ellison urged Obama civil rights chief Vanita Gupta to investigate whether a group of protesters in Phoenix violated the FACE Act by holding firearms during protests outside a Phoenix mosque.
"These demonstrators argue that they are exercising their First Amendment rights. What they fail to understand is that First Amendment rights are not absolute; they are limited to protect the safety and rights of others," wrote Ellison.
