The Justice Department under President Trump has acknowledged that a false allegation involving former CNN anchor Don Lemon and another journalist appeared in federal court filings connected to its investigation of an anti-ICE protest.

The admission surfaced alongside newly uncovered records showing that federal investigators obtained warrants authorizing sophisticated surveillance technology to locate Lemon's 21-year-old producer, Jerome Richardson — even though Richardson was already prepared to turn himself in.

According to Wired, the investigation stemmed from a protest at a Minnesota church that disrupted a service and drew national attention after Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort documented the incident. Federal authorities, per the report, sought to build a criminal case against people involved in the protest, including journalists who maintained they were present to cover the event rather than participate in it. The collision of newsgathering and protest enforcement is a recurring flashpoint in American press freedom debates, with press freedom organizations documenting numerous cases in recent years of journalists facing arrest or charges while covering demonstrations.

The disputed claim appeared in affidavits supporting applications to track Richardson. Investigators asserted that video footage showed Lemon, Fort, Richardson and others "chanting with agitators." Prosecutors later admitted, however, that Lemon and Fort had not been chanting.

According to Fort's lawyers, the government conceded that the false allegation appeared in at least 15 warrant affidavits.

The admission does not establish that investigators knowingly submitted false information. It does, however, add another wrinkle to an investigation already fraught with judicial pushback and disputes over the nature of the federal surveillance. Accuracy in these filings carries procedural weight: warrant affidavits are sworn statements, and under longstanding U.S. doctrine, warrants premised on statements made knowingly or with disregard for the truth can be vulnerable to challenge — a threshold that turns on intent the records so far do not resolve.

The warrants also illustrate how far investigators were prepared to go to track down Richardson. Federal judges in Minnesota and Pennsylvania approved the use of cell site simulators — devices that mimic a cell tower to identify and locate a phone. The technology can also harvest identifying information from devices of people in the vicinity who are not subjects of the investigation. That bystander exposure sits at the center of a yearslong debate over the tools: law enforcement agencies value them for locating suspects, while civil liberties groups argue they sweep in data from uninvolved people, and several states now require a warrant before one may be deployed.

Investigators obtained the second warrant just two days before Richardson voluntarily surrendered at a federal courthouse in Philadelphia. Richardson had publicly stated that he expected to go into federal custody. He was released on bond that afternoon following his surrender.

The records do not establish that agents actually deployed the surveillance devices.

The investigation had already met with resistance from the courts. A magistrate judge initially denied five of the eight arrest warrant applications. The government's request to have that decision overturned by the appeals court was rejected, and the government has since withdrawn its request.

In the filing, the court's chief judge stated that two of the people targeted by the government were journalists rather than protesters, and found no evidence of any criminal conduct on their part. Prosecutors subsequently secured a grand jury indictment.

The newly released records do not answer why investigators were seeking such intrusive surveillance, or how the false allegation kept reappearing in the documents they submitted to federal judges. How the courts weigh that concession as the case proceeds remains to be seen.