RCFP sues DOJ, ICE for records related to arrests of independent journalists Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, and Shane Bollman

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is suing the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for access to records that could help shed light on the federal government’s arrests of three independent journalists following their coverage of a Minnesota protest earlier this year.

In a lawsuit filed on May 29, Reporters Committee attorneys argue that ICE, along with DOJ and several of its components, violated the Freedom of Information Act by unlawfully withholding a wide range of documents related to the arrests of independent journalists Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, and Shane Bollman. All three were charged with violating federal law after they reported on a January immigration enforcement protest inside a Minnesota church. 

The requested records could help the public better understand whether government officials followed federal law and internal Justice Department guidelines that govern the use of search warrants and other investigative tools against journalists, largely barring their use with few exceptions. 

The lawsuit is the Reporters Committee’s latest effort to bring transparency to recent cases in which the federal government appears to have ignored important legal protections for journalists’ records and unpublished work. It comes on the heels of the Reporters Committee’s fight to unseal search warrant documents related to the January FBI raid on the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson, and its separate FOIA lawsuit seeking records related to how the Justice Department wielded its investigative powers in that case. 

“This was a shocking overcharge by the Trump administration,” said Reporters Committee attorney Adam A. Marshall. “This lawsuit seeks records that will provide the public with insight into the government’s initial failed efforts to charge three independent journalists, as well as records pertaining to their eventual arrests and the searches of their electronic devices. The public has a right to know whether, in so doing, the government complied with its obligations under both federal law and Justice Department regulations that are intended to protect journalists from these kinds of actions.”

The Reporters Committee’s lawsuit concerns FOIA requests submitted in March that asked the Justice Department and ICE for records reflecting the attorney general’s authorization to seek warrants for the arrests of Lemon, Fort, and Bollman, applications for search warrants for their electronic devices, as well as emails and other communications that mention them by name. 

To date, the agencies — including the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and Offices of the Attorney General, Deputy Attorney General, Public Affairs, and Information Policy — have not produced any of the requested records. The Reporters Committee’s lawsuit alleges that the Justice Department and ICE violated FOIA by failing to comply with the law’s statutory deadlines and by wrongfully withholding agency records. 

According to newly unsealed court records, federal prosecutors had also previously sought search warrants for the YouTube accounts of Fort and Lemon, but those requests were denied by a federal judge in Minnesota. That judge criticized prosecutors for failing to inform the court about the Privacy Protection Act, which forbids, with few exceptions, the search and seizure of journalists’ work product. 

Prosecutors similarly failed to mention the PPA in their request for a search warrant targeting Natanson earlier this year. That revelation followed the release of the search warrant affidavit in that case, which the judge ordered after Reporters Committee attorneys filed an application asking the court to unseal all of the search warrant materials related to the raid so that the public could see the representations the government made to the court.

The judge who granted the warrant to search Natanson’s phone, laptops, and other devices later said he wasn’t previously aware of the PPA and scolded the government for its omission.