Incident details
- Date of incident
- April 14, 2026
- Location
- Saint Paul, Minnesota
- Legal orders
-
-
subpoena
for
communications or work product
- April 14, 2026: Pending
- May 27, 2026: Dropped
-
subpoena
for
communications or work product
- Legal order target
- Third-party: YouTube (tech company)
- Legal order venue
- Federal
Subpoena/Legal Order
Independent journalists Georgia Fort and Don Lemon had their YouTube account information targeted by a grand jury subpoena on April 14, 2026, part of an ongoing Department of Homeland Security investigation into a protest they documented in St. Paul, Minnesota, months earlier. The subpoena was eventually withdrawn in May.
The two journalists’ YouTube account information had already been the focus of an April 3 administrative subpoena, a type of legal order that does not require judicial oversight. Google, the parent company of YouTube, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker earlier that it had not complied with the April 3 subpoena.
Both legal orders were part of Lemon and Fort’s ongoing prosecution on charges connected to their reporting of the Jan. 18 anti-deportation demonstration, which disrupted a church service. Photojournalist Junn Bollmann was also indicted on the same charges.
The April 14 legal order requested the same information that the earlier April 3 administrative subpoena had demanded, including IP address, payment information and email addresses associated with the accounts.
An identical subpoena was issued the same day for just Fort’s account information. It was not immediately clear why the agency had issued two separate requests for Fort’s data.
The Homeland Security Investigations agent who issued the orders did not answer repeated requests for comment. A DHS spokesperson said the agency doesn’t comment on ongoing investigations and referred the Tracker to the office of the U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota, who also did not immediately answer a request for information.
The batch of new subpoenas came to light through efforts Google began in early May to repudiate the various legal requests and to unseal them to the public. By Sept. 3, the company had filed a motion to unseal, arguing that the First Amendment mandated that the public had a right to access the grand jury proceedings.
On Oct. 28, a federal judge agreed and ordered the subpoenas unsealed and released Nov. 9, revealing that on May 27 the government had dropped the April 14 subpoenas.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogs press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
