Incident details
- Date of incident
- April 3, 2026
- Legal orders
-
-
subpoena
for
communications or work product
- April 3, 2026: Pending
- April 17, 2026: Ignored
-
subpoena
for
communications or work product
- Legal order target
- Third-party: YouTube (tech company)
- Legal order venue
- Federal
Subpoena/Legal Order
Don Lemon attends his arraignment in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Feb. 13, 2026. As part of a government case against him, the Department of Homeland Security issued an administrative subpoena April 3 for his YouTube account information.
Six news media outlets and journalists, including Don Lemon, Georgia Fort and Megyn Kelly, were the target of an administrative subpoena issued to YouTube by a Department of Homeland Security agent in St. Paul, Minnesota, on April 3, 2026.
The subpoena, issued without judicial oversight by the agency’s Homeland Security Investigation arm, came to light in an Aug. 7 motion by Lemon to dismiss his ongoing prosecution on charges connected to his reporting of a Jan. 18 anti-deportation protest that disrupted a church service in St. Paul.
Journalists Georgia Fort and Junn Bollman were also indicted on the same charges.
The subpoena asked YouTube to provide information, names and IP addresses associated with six news-related accounts: BG On The Scene, Democracy Now!, Georgia Fort, “The Don Lemon Show,” Megyn Kelly and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
It was unclear why the agency sought information from accounts unrelated to its prosecution of Lemon and Fort. A DHS spokesperson told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker it would not divulge its investigative methods.
A spokesperson for Google, YouTube’s parent company, told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that it did not comply with the request, adding that the company handles law enforcement requests by balancing user privacy with legal obligations.
The government had previously sought information from Lemon and Fort’s YouTube account through a warrant, but it was denied twice by a federal judge.
In the August motion, Lemon’s attorneys said of the DHS summons, “This deliberate end-run around a judicial ruling to obtain entirely irrelevant information shows how far this administration is willing to go to punish Mr. Lemon for his reporting.”
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker catalogs press freedom violations in the United States. Email tips to [email protected].
