You've been doing this for the whole time, right?
Just to get rid of it and then get rid of it. No, not at all. This is my safe space. You're all right, right? Yes, exactly.
“This is the story of the story of the story that I just understood.”
The story of the story of the job or the home. The story of the story. I don't feel like it. The story is already read. Save.
With this story. I am just shocked at something that I've been doing for the last 30 years. Was deemed as something that we should not do. Former CNN anchor, Don Lemon, finds himself back in the news again after a member of the church that he and several protesters stormed, filed her own lawsuit against them, alleging the event
caused emotional distress. Lemon is already up against federal face act charges from the DOJ. In this episode, we talked to Kristen Wagner, CEO, President and Chief Council for Alliance Defending Freedom about the different legal avenues at play in the lemon case. I'm daily wire executive editor John Vickley with Georgia Hound, and this is a legal
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That is ETHOS.com/wire, ethos.com/wire, application times and rates may vary. Starting us now to discuss church protests, the face act, and the bigger picture issues behind it all is the Lions Defending Freedom President and CEO, Kristen Wagner. Kristen, thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me.
So for those who haven't been tracking these cases as closely as maybe we have, can you
“quickly catch us up and explain what has happened recently?”
Sure, well, in the wake of high political tensions involving illegal immigration and ice, and right after the death of Renee Good, there were a number of protests that took place in Minnesota, and one of them included in a church, essentially what happened was the Minnesota Black Lives Matter group began to plan a protest and to disrupt a church service by storming the church during the service in St. Paul and cities church, which was interrupted
one of their pastors actually is bivocational and has a job also working for the local field office at ice, which is why they selected that church. Right. He asked to think about it that probably made it even more note where they was who joined that storming of the church, and that was done lemon, the former CNN anchor.
He helped it appears with the videos, both before, during and after by not only recording what they were doing, but as he said in his own words, doing reconnaissance related to the planning of that storming of the church and disruption. Yeah, maybe an admission that he would want to take back on camera at this point. I would sure think so.
If I was his lawyer, I would tell him he definitely did it the wrong way. One of the things that he claimed with the pastor as an example on video was that he had
a first amendment right to be there.
That is certainly not true. And again, the statements about him doing reconnaissance essentially helping to plan that storming of the church service as well as then being in there and engaging it appears according
To some allegations even in physical obstruction of some of the congregants b...
to ingress an egress.
“So is there evidence that these protesters actually got between children and their parents?”
The Department of Justice under the Trump administration has filed about 39 different indictments and in those indictments, it does indicate that children were unable to get access to their parents that they were afraid for their safety and rightly so, and that those parents were not able to go retrieve those children. There are many videos of this online on what happened and I think it would scare any parent
that might have had, for example, a child in a Sunday school classroom or a nursery when this was coming in with the chanting, with the yelling, and again, with even done lemons actions on video where he is interrogating the pastor who's simply saying to him, "Look where about the love of Jesus," and he just keeps repeating that and saying, "I need to go help my people."
I think most of us journalists haven't interrupted a religious gathering and shoved a microphone in a pastor's face.
Does the first amendment actually apply in the scenario and why is the federal government
now and bolt? Well, aside from what actually happened to the church, what is also deeply concerning is that a former CNN anchor could botch the first amendment so badly, just because you have a microphone in your hand doesn't mean that you have special, first amendment free speech rights and that's certainly true in this instance.
The first amendment applies against the government, so if you are standing on a public sidewalk as an example, you would have the right to engage in free speech, but journalists don't get a free pass to enter private property and speak to and go wherever they want. In fact, that's called trespass under the law. As a result, the local officials, as well as the state officials in Minnesota, should have
pursued this on a criminal level and they did not, and so the federal government through the Department of Justice has had 39 indictments now under two federal statutes. One is called the face act, and the other is called conspiracy against rights. So a lot of the focus nationally has been on the face act component of this case.
Let's back up a little bit first.
What is the face act and why was it passed? The face act stands for the freedom of access to clinic entrances act. It was passed in 1994, President Clinton signed it. The whole point of that act was to target pro-life advocates and to ensure that they can't stand close to abortion facilities.
These who were involved in the pro-life movement know that, for example, sidewalk counselors play a vital role in being able to peacefully kindly help women who want to have conversations before they have abortions. So this act was designed to intimidate those pro-life advocates. But in order to get back by partisan support, they actually had to include protections
for houses of worship under that act, as well as religious pro-life pregnancy centers.
“And so that's why the face act is implicated here.”
An example of that, though, has to do with how it has been applied in previous administrations and I think that's one reason why it's also so controversial here. All right. So this act really did begin in order to curb the rights of the pro-life side. But now it's boomeranged back on people trying to use it to disrupt a church service.
How does it apply specifically in this case? Well, the language of the act is very important. It basically says that both in houses of worship and in instances that are involving reproductive centers who are addressing it, whether it be pro-life pregnancy centers or abortion facilities that individuals violate the law and face both criminal and civil
sanctions if they use force or the threat of force or they physically obstruct an entrance or exit of one of these places, either of a church or of a pro-life pregnancy center. If you do that, you violate the law and you're actually subject to prison time under this act.
“So the allegations here, and I think the video, confirms that it's likely that a number”
of people did violate the face act by disrupting the church service and also obstructing and even using potentially threats of force to intimidate others in exercising their first amendment rights under the free exercise of religion clause. So this is a potentially positive implementation of this law from the conservative perspective. Why have so many conservatives called for the repeal of this act anyway?
Your organization, for example, has called for its repeal numerous times, correct? Absolutely.
Where a couple of reasons why, but the first and most important is it's not applied even
handedly. It was designed to target pro-life activists.
It has been weaponized against pro-life activists.
The primary example we can look at is what happened after the dobs decision was leaked. We saw hundreds of pregnancy resource centers as well as churches that were not only vandalized, but fire bombed. There were death threats painted across their buildings and the Biden administration essentially did nothing under this act.
They did not prosecute all, but maybe two cases that went and they weren't even evolving houses of worship and they sought minimal sentences. We can contrast that with how the Biden administration treated those who were peacefully outside of abortion clinics, wanting to minister to women. One of those was Mark Hauk, as an example, Mark was standing with his son and a plant-parent
had volunteer came up to him and timidating him and Mark shoved that volunteer out of his son's face. He faced prison time for that as a result. He was going to turn himself in because he knew the charges were filed and instead the Biden administration's FBI sent about two dozen FBI agents to swarm his house.
A second example, a young woman named Eva actually was about 80 years old at the time in
a wheelchair, sitting outside of an abortion clinic peacefully singing and worshiping, and she was facing 11 years of prison time. Some of these individuals, about two dozen cases, received again, incentencing up to like 57 months in prison.
“It's honestly hard to believe the Biden administration pursued those cases.”
On the other side, can the same accusations of political targeting be turned against the Trump administration here could critics of Trump not say the face act has been used to target Donliman and others in a similar way? It's important that the act be applied neutrally, and it's not only important for constitutional reasons for rule of law, but no one should be facing violence or threats of violence
in exercising their constitutional rights. But we can easily contrast these two situations to know that it is being applied in an appropriate way.
First of all, the Trump administration has actually already used this in a different house
of worship involving a Jewish synagogue. In addition to that, though, we also know that in terms of the even-handed nature of it, contrasting peaceful protesters or even peaceful individuals who are praising and worshiping outside of an abortion facility to those who are literally mobbing a church service causing the church service to be canceled.
Those are very different things, and the Trump administration is rightly prosecuting under these laws. So the big question now, do you think Limon will actually be found in violation of the face act?
“Well, I think that the case is going to be decided likely by a jury, and as it is, the jury”
will apply the facts to the law, and so we will see how those facts play out. I don't think that the first amendment will play a role in it. Again, journalists don't get free passes to invade the privacy rights or the private property rights or the free exercise rights of others. So it simply shouldn't be an issue.
I think there are two criteria that the jury will be looking at.
The first is when Don Limon says that he was doing reconnaissance before the event occurred,
and he was filming at it, and he was engaged with them after. That certainly starts to look like a conspiracy to deny rights of the church members. A second thing that I think the jury will also be looking at in the case has to do with what did he do while he was there? Were there any threats of force?
Did he physically obstruct people from getting in and out or from getting to their children as we talked about? If the answers, yes, to either one of those questions, my hope would be that justice would be served. Now we've focused on Don Limon here because this is a high profile case, but there's
lots of cases like this.
“What are you guys seeing in terms of cases that you're representing right now?”
We see an increasing amount of targeting and weaponizing laws against religious organizations including religious pro-life pregnancy centers. In fact, we have four cases pending at the U.S. Supreme Court right now. One of those actually is involving a religious pro-life pregnancy center where the New Jersey Attorney General has targeted them and has suggested that they need to turn over names of
their donors and other private information even when there's been no allegation of wrong doing. But we also have the Church and Ministry Alliance, which is helping organizations on a daily basis responding to increase that they're getting from the government. So I think the best advice in the takeaway here is people need to be smart, they need
to be proactive, they need to know what their rights are and organizations like ADF as well as others can certainly help do that so that we can exercise our constitutional rights. We've also seen how quickly religious liberties can be curbed like we saw during the COVID lockdowns and in this lemon case, you can see how easy it is for agitators to get in there and disrupt worship services.
So important cases here, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. That was Kristen Wagner, CEO, President and Chief Council with Alliance Defending Freedom. This has been a legal wire edition of Morning Wire.
