Federal prosecutors say this was no ordinary protest. They describe a carefully planned operation designed to storm a St. Paul church, halt a Sunday service, and intimidate congregants as they tried to worship. With nine people now charged under the FACE Act and for conspiring to deprive civil rights, the government is sending a clear warning: political rage stops at the church door, or it becomes a federal case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the defendants insist this is an assault on the First Amendment. Don Lemon and journalist Georgia Fort say they were there to document a demonstration against the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown, not to lead a riot. Defense attorneys argue the government is criminalizing protest and newsgathering, stretching a law meant to stop violence into a weapon against dissent. A jury may now have to decide where protest ends\u2014and persecution begins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Federal prosecutors say this was no ordinary protest. They describe a carefully planned operation designed to storm a St. Paul church, halt a Sunday service, and intimidate congregants as they tried to worship. With nine people now charged under the FACE Act and for conspiring to deprive civil rights, the government is sending a clear …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":11436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnews55.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}