Federal prosecutors unsealed a superseding indictment Friday charging 30 more people for their roles in the January invasion of Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Twenty-five of those defendants were already in custody by the time Attorney General Pam Bondi announced the charges on X. Arrests occurred as far away as North Dakota and New York.
In total, 39 people now face charges of conspiracy against religious freedom and interfering with the right of religious freedom. The charges carry real weight: the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act, statutes designed to protect Americans from having their fundamental rights stripped by mob action.
Bondi did not hold back:
"YOU CANNOT ATTACK A HOUSE OF WORSHIP. If you do so, you cannot hide from us — we will find you, arrest you, and prosecute you."
Six weeks after a mob stormed a Sunday worship service, the Department of Justice is making clear that disrupting a church carries consequences.
The indictment paints a picture that looks nothing like the peaceful demonstration the defendants and their allies have described. According to The Post, the DOJ alleges that participants met for a "pre-operational briefing" in a shopping center and then entered the church in two waves. The first wave positioned themselves among congregants. The second commenced what prosecutors called a "disruptive takeover operation."
That's not civil disobedience. That's operational planning with designated waves and assigned roles.
The night before the invasion, two defendants "conducted reconnaissance around the Cities Church in preparation for the next day's takeover operation" and filmed a video documenting their observations, including parking areas and how to obstruct an alleyway. The group exchanged text messages coordinating the action, and activist Nekima Levy Armstrong was advised of Don Lemon's plan to travel to Minneapolis "for the operation Pullup action."
On the morning of January 18, participants gathered in the parking lot of a Cub Foods on University Avenue in St. Paul to discuss "how the operation would be conducted once they arrived at the Church," including the two-wave entry plan.
Reconnaissance. Briefings. Waves of entry. The language reads like a tactical operation because, according to prosecutors, that is exactly what it was.
The indictment alleges that the defendants "oppressed, threatened, and intimidated the Church's congregants and pastors" by occupying the main aisle and rows of chairs near the front of the church, engaging in "menacing and threatening behavior."
Protesters disrupted services, chanting "ICE out" while the court filing quotes one protester as declaring inside the church, "This ain't God's house. This is the house of the devil."
The indictment says the "agitators" entered the church in a "coordinated takeover-style attack." It adds: "Young children were left to wonder, as one child put it, if their parents were going to die."
Parents were blocked from reaching their children in Sunday School. Agitators screamed at crying kids. One told a child his parents were Nazis headed to hell. These are not the actions of people exercising their First Amendment rights. These are the actions of people who came to terrorize.
The indictment vastly increases the scope of a criminal case that already included former CNN anchor Don Lemon, independent journalist Georgia Fort, and prominent local activist Nekima Levy Armstrong. They have pleaded not guilty to civil rights charges.
Lemon has called the charges "baseless," claiming he was there as a journalist covering the news. His defense rests on the theory that livestreaming an invasion you traveled to Minneapolis to participate in counts as reporting. A civil lawsuit filed by a church congregant alleges that Lemon "livestreamed the protest, noting congregants' fear and distress, and appeared to take satisfaction in the disruption."
Levy Armstrong, identified in the indictment as a leader of the operation, offered her own take after the event:
"Check your hearts if you are more concerned about a disruption than the atrocities that we are experiencing in our community."
There it is. The tell. The argument is not that storming the church was lawful. The argument is that it was justified. That the cause sanctifies the conduct. It's the same logic that excused burning cities in 2020, and it deserves the same answer now: No.
Lemon told reporters after his court appearance, "For more than 30 years, I've been a journalist, and the power and protection of the First Amendment has been the underpinning of my work." He added that the process itself was the punishment and vowed he "will not be intimidated."
Journalists cover events. They don't coordinate travel plans with organizers for named operations, arrive for the briefing in the parking lot, and then claim reportorial privilege when the handcuffs come out. The First Amendment protects the press. It does not create a special class of Americans who are immune from civil rights law.
True North Legal, the law firm representing Cities Church, celebrated the new charges. Doug Wardlow, director of litigation, said the "indictment of 30 additional people for their involvement in the invasion of Cities Church sends a clear message: houses of worship are off limits for those who would use chaos and intimidation to advance a political agenda."
Wardlow told The Daily Signal:
"It shows just how serious the department is about protecting houses of worship. It underscores just how large and disruptive the invasion of Cities Church really was."
He called the invasion "a planned, coordinated effort to disrupt a worship service and interfere with religious exercise that placed congregants, including children, in fear for their lives."
Cities Church itself stated it is "grateful for the Department of Justice's continued commitment to enforcing federal law to protect churches and other places of worship," adding that "the Department's aggressive prosecution of this case affirms a foundational principle: in the United States, the sanctuary remains a sanctuary."
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division confirmed the charges involved both the FACE Act and the Klan Act, calling the operation "incredible teamwork" between prosecutors and federal agents. She noted from her personal account that 35 of the 39 had been arrested as of Friday afternoon.
All defendants who appeared in court were released without having to pay bail but are required to stay away from the block where Cities Church is located. Four individuals remain at large.
The church protest came amid a tense period for Minnesota, where the Trump administration sent thousands of federal officers for Operation Metro Surge following a series of government fraud cases. The invasion of Cities Church was part of that broader tension, but tension does not excuse terrorizing families at worship.
For years, the left has invoked religious liberty as a value only when it serves their preferred narrative. They championed the FACE Act to protect abortion clinics. They cheered hate crime statutes designed to punish those who target people for their faith. Now those same laws are being applied to people who stormed a church, and suddenly the statutes are oppressive tools of an authoritarian regime.
The laws didn't change. The targets did.
Thirty-nine people now face federal charges. More arrests may follow. A congregant has filed a separate civil lawsuit alleging emotional trauma. And the DOJ has signaled it is not finished.
The lawsuit alleges that on the morning of January 18, a coordinated group entered Cities Church, halting the worship service and chanting while obstructing aisles. The plaintiff alleges the demonstration interfered with her ability to worship and caused her to suffer damages, including emotional distress and trauma.
One defendant, newly indicted, captured the mood of the accused when he declared outside the courthouse:
"This is not American, this is not justice, this is the department of injustice. We will fight this tooth and nail, we will fight this through the courts, we will fight this in the street."
Fight it in the courts. That is every American's right. But families who went to church on a Sunday morning in January had a right, too. They had a right to pray without a mob screaming that their house of worship belonged to the devil. They had a right to hold their children without someone calling them Nazis. They had a right to a sanctuary that was actually a sanctuary.
Thirty-nine indictments say the law agrees.