Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon doesn’t care if people who obstruct worship services call themselves journalists. They’re still going to face the full penalty of the law.
“I don’t care if they’re a journalist or not. I’ve personally represented numerous journalists, and I’ve been a journalist,” Dhillon told The Daily Signal in an interview. “I highly respect the press and the First Amendment.”
“What I don’t respect is somebody violating somebody else’s First Amendment rights in their sanctuary, which is protected by federal law as well as the First Amendment, and that’s what happened in this case.”
Don Lemon, a former CNN anchor who is now an independent journalist, has claimed that he covered the Jan. 18 invasion of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, as a journalist, and therefore is protected by the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of the press.
Between 20 and 40 agitators interrupted a Sunday service at Cities Church in order to protest a pastor they said was a member of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Don Lemon is just another person who obstructed worshipers, harassed them, intimidated them, and violated the sanctity of their sacred space,” Dhillon said. “He’s just one of many, and so he’s being treated the same. I don’t think he gets special treatment because he is cloaking himself in the garb of journalism.”
Journalists should not break the law in pursuit of a story, Dhillon said.
“I can’t imagine anybody who goes to church or temple or mosque regularly thinking that this is okay, because it’s just not,” she said. “So I would advise them to follow the law. If you’d like to cover something that happened inside the house of God, wait a respectful distance outside. Don’t put your mic in the face that people make them slip on ice and run for their lives.”
Lemon met with organizers and activists before the church disruption. According to the DOJ’s indictment, Lemon was allegedly blocking the door of the facility, preventing congregants from exiting.
Under Dhillon, the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ is currently investigating several attacks on houses of worship, including synagogues. Dhillon has obtained several convictions in such cases in the last year.
“There was a recent shooting fatal attack on a Catholic church in Minnesota just last year, and so you have to be very sensitive to sensibilities of people in this current time and era, and also know what the law is,” Dhillon said.
Trespassing, breaking windows, and committing other crimes in the name of reporting is a “big no-no,” Dhillon said.
“I would advise them, similarly, under the same law, the [Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances] Act, don’t take your camera and video recording equipment into an abortion operating room and start filming over there,” she said. “It’s not appropriate, and it’s illegal. So read the law and understand the law.”
In the Cities Church attack, agitators blocked stairs so “parents were unable to get to their children” at Sunday School, according to the indictment of some of the agitators.
Congregants “were terrorized, our children were weeping, college students and young women were sobbing, it was impactful, and it will take time to work through,” according to the indictment.
So far, nine people have been arrested for their involvement in the attack.
“There were many additional people involved in the ones that we arrested, so we’re looking to find all of them,” Dhillon said.
Tyler O’Neil contributed to this report.
