VINCE JRNL

Two more arrested in Minnesota church protest, Pam Bondi says

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday the arrest of two more people who werenamed in a federal indictment in connection to a protestat a Minnesota church.

Pam Bondi (Aaron Schwartz / CNP / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In a Monday social media post, Bondi said Ian Davis Austin and Jerome Deangelo Richardson had been arrested. Both were among the nine people, including journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort,named in an indictmentthat a federal grand jury returned last week.

Lemon, a former CNN anchor, was arrested Friday in connection with his coverage of the Jan. 18 protest at The Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The protest was aimed at the church's pastor, who according to demonstrators works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security called the protest a coordinated attack on the church.

Last week's indictment charges all defendants with conspiracy against the rights of religious freedom at a place of worship and injuring, intimidating and interfering with the exercise of the right of religious freedom at a place of worship.

"If you riot in a place of worship, we WILL find you," Bondi said inher social media post.

Last week, a federal magistrate released Lemon and other defendants who'd been arrested, rejecting a criminal complaint against them. The judge found the administrationlacked probable cause for the arrestsunder a federal statute that a top Justice Department official conceded had never been used previously in the context of a protest at a church.

Upon his release, Lemon vowed to continue covering the news, as he said he was doing at the church protest.

His attorney Abbe Lowell said upon Lemon's arrest that it was an "unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration."

The arrest of Lemon, a well-known journalist, has added to outrage over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in Minnesota and the recent killings of two U.S. citizens by federal officers.

byVincento Seyarto

in

February 02, 2026

Two more arrested in Minnesota church protest, Pam Bondi says

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced Monday the arrest of two more people who werenamed in a federal indictment in connec...

Victims complain of death threats as government says it's fixing redactions in Epstein-related files

NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department said Monday it had withdrawn several thousand documents and "media" related todisgraced financier Jeffrey Epsteinafter lawyers complained to a New York judge that the lives of nearly 100 victims had been "turned upside down" by sloppy redactions in the government's latest release of Epstein-related materials.

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, shows the report when Epstein was taken into custody on July 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

Justice Department Jeffrey Epstein

The department blamed the release of sensitive information that drew an outcry from victims and their lawyers on mistakes that were "technical or human error."

In a letter to the New York judges overseeing the sex trafficking cases brought against Epstein andconfidant Ghislaine Maxwell, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton wrote that the department had taken down nearly all materials identified by victims or their lawyers, along with a "substantial number" of documents identified independently by the government.

Clayton, who is based in Manhattan, said the department has "iteratively revised its protocols for addressing flagging documents" after victims and their lawyers requested changes to the process for review and redaction of posted records.

He wrote that documents are promptly pulled down from the public website when victims flag a concern that something should be redacted. He said the concern is then evaluated before a redacted version of the document can be reposted, "ideally within 24 to 36 hours."

Clayton's letter came in response to a letter sent Sunday to Judge Richard M. Berman from two lawyers for Epstein victims who had sought "immediate judicial intervention" because of what they described as thousands of instances when the government had failed to redact names and other personally identifying information.

The judge scheduled a conference for Wednesday, saying the lawyers could invite their clients and that he understood the concern of the lawyers and the urgency but also added: "I am not certain how helpful I can be."

He also encouraged the lawyers, Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards, to "continue to resolve open issues in good faith."

In their letter to Berman, the lawyers included comments from eight women, including one who wrote that the records' release was "life threatening" and another who said she'd gotten death threats after 51 entries included her private banking information, forcing her to try to shut down her credit cards and accounts.

After Epstein took his own life in August 2019, Berman held a hearing in Manhattan federal court and allowed his accusers to speak. Berman, who presided over the sex trafficking case against Epstein, put the Sunday letter on the public docket on Monday.

Also Monday, a section of the Justice Department'sEpstein files websitethat had contained public court records from Epstein and Maxwell's criminal cases and civil lawsuits was no longer functioning.

A message seeking comment on the website issue was left for the Justice Department.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interviewSunday on ABC's "This Week" that there have been sporadic errors in redacting, or blacking out, sensitive information but that the Justice Department has tried to work quickly to address them.

"Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectified that. And the numbers we're talking about, just so the American people understand, we're talking about .001 percent of all the materials," Blanche said.

The effect of errors in the document redactions was highlighted Monday morning at a sex trafficking trial in New York federal court when lawyers for twohigh-end real estate brokersand their brother asked Judge Valerie E. Caproni for a mistrial because of documents that were made public without necessary redactions.

Deanna Paul, a defense lawyer at the trial of Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander, said the "government through its own conduct has destroyed the possibility of a fair trial in this case" after the names of the brothers were included in several documents released on Friday. The brothers have pleaded not guilty to drugging and raping multiple girls and women from 2008 to 2021.

Paul said the Alexander brothers had now been "branded" with the "most toxic association."

The judge tentatively rejected the mistrial request but still confronted a prosecutor, asking: "Government, really?"

"Yes, I understand where the court's coming from," replied Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Espinosa.

She said she wasn't sure how the documents were "caught up in the universe of documents" related to Epstein but confirmed that at least one of the documents that mention the Alexander brothers "should have been properly redacted" and she said the documents had been withdrawn from public circulation.

As she spoke, Espinosa also gave an update on the general release of Epstein-related documents by the Justice Department, saying that the remaining documents to be released were "primarily related to civil litigation" that might require a judge's approval to be made public.

__ The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.

byVincento Seyarto

in

February 02, 2026

Victims complain of death threats as government says it's fixing redactions in Epstein-related files

NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department said Monday it had withdrawn several thousand documents and "media" rela...

All DHS officials in Minneapolis will wear body cameras, Sec. Noem says

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday all federal officers under DHS who are deployed in Minneapolis will receive body cameras.

"As funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide. We will rapidly acquire and deploy body cameras to DHS law enforcement across the country," Noem wrote in a message on social media.

Adoption of body cameras has been a core demand of Democrats who oppose continued funding for DHS, contributing to apartial government shutdownthis week as lawmakers stalemate over how the White House's immigration priorities get their funding.

Democrats have called for significant changes to DHS, specifically to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Proposals include banning masks for agents, requiring body cameras and visible identification, and ending some roving patrols, particularly in Democrat-led cities like Minneapolis.

RELATED STORY |Bystander videos highlight Trump administration's pattern of deception in Minneapolis

The immigration surge has led to a month of unrest in Minneapolis and led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens, who were shot by DHS officers. Renee Good was fatally shot by an ICE officer and and Alex Pretti was fatally shot by Border Patrol agents in separate incidents weeks apart.

byVincento Seyarto

in

February 02, 2026

All DHS officials in Minneapolis will wear body cameras, Sec. Noem says

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Monday all federal officers under DHS who are deployed in Minneapoli...

King Charles' brother Andrew crouches over woman in new Epstein photos

Newly released photos are showing former British royalAndrew Mountbatten-Windsorin a compromising position.

Innew files released by the U.S. Department of Justicein relation to the investigation of convicted sex offender and accused sex traffickerJeffrey Epstein, the former Prince Andrew is seen kneeling on all fours over an unidentified woman on the ground.

In the latest photos, released Jan. 30 and shared online,King Charles III'sbrother is bending over and touching the waist of a fully clothed woman's stomach while she is on the floor. In a second photograph, Andrew is on his hands and knees, crouching over the woman, whose face has been redacted.

Prince Andrew, Duke of York, the disgraced royal has became a source of embarrassment for his brother King Charles III following a 2019 TV interview in which Andrew defended his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He was stripped of his military titles in 2022 and senior royal status, shuffled off into retirement after being sued by Virginia Giuffre, an American woman who accused him of sexually assaulting her when she was 17. Now, Andrew is renouncing his royal titles and honors amid continued scrutiny over his Epstein connections, despite denying all allegations against him.

Look back at his life in the royal family, including here as Andrew arrives for the Requiem Mass service for Katharine, Duchess of Kent, at Westminster Cathedral on Sept. 16, 2025, in London.