Journalist vows to fight federal charges connected to St. Paul church protest
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A Twin Cities journalist and an activist are the latest people to enter not guilty pleas in connection with a protest last month at a St. Paul church.
Demonstrators disrupted a Jan. 18 service at Cities Church on Summit Avenue after learning that local Immigration and Customs Enforcement official David Easterwood is a pastor there.
Georgia Fort, an independent Black journalist who documented the protest, made a brief appearance in St. Paul federal court, where she pleaded not guilty to felony civil rights charges along with activist Trahern Crews.
"As a journalist who is from Minnesota, this case just doesn't leave me fighting for my freedom, it is the government trying to muzzle me,” Fort said to journalists and supporters outside the courthouse after the hearing.
Matt Ebert, a former assistant U.S. attorney who entered private practice last year and is part of Fort’s defense team, said in court that he plans to oppose an expected prosecution motion to designate the case as complex. Such a designation would lengthen the time before the case could go to trial. The case is “legally, factually not complex,” Ebert told Magistrate Judge Doug Micko.
An attorney for Cities Church said in a January statement that the First Amendment does not protect “coordinated actions to violate the sanctity of a sanctuary" and praised the Justice Department’s effort to prosecute the activists and journalists.
Activist Trahern Crews also pleaded not guilty. On Friday, journalist Don Lemon entered the same plea along with four others including protest leader and civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong. Prosecutors charged nine people altogether.
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