DOJ Considers Charges Against MN Church Protesters AND Former CNN Anchor
Amy & T.J.
iHeartPodcasts
4.4 • 3.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
The assistant attorney general for civil rights says the DOJ will pursue criminal charges against the group of people who stormed a church where they believed its pastor worked for an ICE field office. Ex CNN anchor Don Lemon was with the group and live-streamed before, during and after the protesters stormed the church. Amy and T.J. discuss their thoughts on what took place and whether “committing journalism” as Lemon put it, is a justification for covering the protest.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:15.0 | Hey there, folks. |
| 0:15.9 | It is Tuesday, January 20th, and what is going on in Minnesota. You probably saw this trending all day yesterday. |
| 0:24.8 | Protesters interrupted a Sunday church service. A former CNN anchor is in tow and now the Department of |
| 0:33.1 | Justice has launched a criminal investigation with that. Welcome to this episode of Amy and T.J. Robs. |
| 0:40.0 | How did we get here? This was a mess of an ugly scene that was a mess and uncomfortable for a lot of reasons. |
| 0:48.6 | But I didn't see this one coming. Yeah, the story grew and grew and grew, and now it's exploded with threats and promises of criminal charges against the protesters for going into that church. |
| 1:01.1 | And Don Lemon, that ex-CN anchor you were just referencing, has been specifically referenced by DOJ officials. |
| 1:08.7 | And his video, his journalism is at the center of it all. |
| 1:12.5 | His journalism, you can't see us, but journalism was in quotations as we say that, because that's a |
| 1:18.7 | big part of the question. But let's go to what the core of the matter is, ropes. We've seen |
| 1:23.9 | protests, we've seen demonstrations. They have been peaceful in a lot of places. We have seen, and excuse me, overwhelmingly, they have been peaceful, but we have seen confrontations. Even things that get heated don't sometimes rise to the level of violence. This was not violence here. However, Robs, this is a pretty incredible heated escalation of what we've been seeing on the streets. |
| 1:46.0 | Look, there's a lot of stuff. |
| 1:47.1 | Folks will tolerate you disrupting for whatever reasons you have. |
| 1:51.0 | You're going to bust up a church service? |
| 1:52.8 | Yeah, this was honestly, I hate to say this, but this is the only way I can describe it. |
| 1:57.4 | This was a new low. |
| 1:59.2 | And look, protesting peacefully is an important part of being |
| 2:04.3 | an American and having a free society. That is absolutely everyone's right to stand up for injustice |
| 2:10.7 | in a peaceful way. But to disrupt a church service and to see the video and to see the, |
| 2:20.1 | there was a, I hate to say it's, but a righteousness about the protesters, see what we're doing, we're going up and we're standing up for justice. |
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