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Congress Scrambles for a Deal to Avert a Lengthy Government Shutdown; Don Lemon and Georgia Fort Arrested After Minnesota Church Protest; Actress Catherine O'Hara Dead at 71; A.I. Manipulated Images Impersonating Celebrities on Facebook. Aired 1:30-2p ET
Aired January 30, 2026 - 13:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[13:33:50]
REP. STEPHEN LYNCH, (D-MA) OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: -- agree on a bunch of things. Let's get them passed and then let's fight it out on DHS and on ICE protocols and things like that, given the terrible, terrible tragedies that occurred in Minnesota over the past few weeks.
BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": Congressman Stephen Lynch, we have to leave the conversation there. Thanks so much for the time and sharing your perspective.
LYNCH: Thank you, Boris.
SANCHEZ: Of course. So the White House is touting the arrest of former CNN Anchor, Don Lemon. We're following the latest on that case.
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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We continue to follow our developing news about the arrests of former CNN Anchor, Don Lemon, and another independent journalist, Georgia Fort. Both were taken into custody in connection to a protest last week at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota.
SANCHEZ: Attorney General, Pam Bondi, this morning posting on X news of their arrests. Both were covering the protests inside the city's church and interviewing witnesses about what was unfolding inside the sanctuary.
Lemon made it clear that he was not an activist nor a part of that protest.
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DON LEMON, INDEPENDENT JOURNALIST, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: This is an operation that is a secret, that they invited folks out.
[13:35:00]
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is Operation Pull Up, more of a clandestine operation. We show up somewhere. They don't expect us to come there. And then we disrupt business as usual.
LEMON (voice-over): So right now, it's kind of mayhem. We're not part of the activists, but we're here just reporting on them.
LEMON: Did they explain to you why they're here?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They did not.
LEMON: They said that there is someone here at Easterwood, someone who is a member of ICE, and he's a pastor of the church.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday. We asked them to leave, and they obviously have not left.
LEMON (voice-over): So this is what the First Amendment is about, about the freedom to protest.
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SANCHEZ: Lemon's attorney, Abbe Lowell, issued the following statement, quote, "Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in Los Angeles, where he was covering the Grammy Awards. Don has been a journalist for 30 years, and his constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done."
KEILAR: Lemon is expected to appear in federal court today, and CNN has released a statement that says, "The Department of Justice already failed twice to get an arrest warrant for Don and several other journalists in Minnesota, where a chief judge of the Minnesota Federal District Court found there was no evidence that there was any criminal behavior involved in their work. The First Amendment in the United States protects journalists who bear witness to news and events as they unfold, ensuring they can report freely in the public interest, and the DOJ's attempts to violate those rights is unacceptable."
We're joined now by former Federal Prosecutor, Ankush Khardori. He's also a Senior Writer at POLITICO Magazine. Of note here, Ankush, is that DOJ tried and failed to charge Lemon and four others last week. What has changed here?
ANKUSH KHARDORI, SENIOR WRITER, POLITICO MAGAZINE: Well, there's no indication that there's any new evidence, right? So far as we are aware, we haven't seen the charging papers. What has changed evidently is that they were able to secure an indictment from a grand jury on these charges after trying and failing before the magistrate and then trying to get the U.S. district judge to intervene. What I would say is, about the indictment here is, obviously, that is a significant procedural fact.
However, I think in this context, it's worth recalling what happened in the case of James Comey last year, which is he was indicted, somewhat to people's surprise, including my own at the time, actually. And what we came to find out after those court proceedings started to go on and there was questions from the judges about what actually happened during the grand jury proceedings is that Lindsey Halligan, who was then the U.S. attorney overseeing the case, had misled the grand jury on multiple material points of law. And a decision was issued that was sharply critical of her performance during that grand jury.
So I think we should be cautious. In our ordinary circumstances, we would take the idea of a grand jury returning an indictment as a very significant fact here. But we don't know what happened in that grand jury room. And this is an administration where they have sent prosecutors into grand juries, not knowing what they're doing, misrepresenting facts and misrepresenting the law. So that's what's changed. But, we need to be cautious around how we assess that development.
SANCHEZ: As you said a moment ago, we haven't actually seen the documentation for these charges. But Lemon's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told CNN that he's being charged with two federal crimes, conspiring to violate someone's constitutional rights and violating the FACE Act. What do those entail?
KHARDORI: Well, I mean, the conspiracy to violate someone's rights can be as simple as coordinating with someone to impede their ability to exercise a right, including their right to exercise their religion.
The FACE Act includes a prohibition on intimidating or threatened conduct, not only in places where people are receiving reproductive health treatment, but also in churches. Now, these are the charges, right? I don't think the issue -- well, there are going to be two levels of issues here. One is, do these charges make sense? Should they survive a -- what I expect will be a robust pretrial defense around the First Amendment and news gathering.
That'll be one part of it. We'll see what happens there. But then the rubber may eventually just hit the road around the facts, right? And we've seen the videos and what we know of the videos suggest that the magistrate judge and the district judge were correct in their initial assessments, and that there wasn't really any evidence of any crime.
We'll see what happens as this case unfolds. But that's sort of where things are now.
KEILAR: And Don has said that he was present at the demonstration as a journalist and not as a protester. Can you parse out the different factors here? This was private property. This was a place of worship. He is a journalist and there are rights. There are norms. And I just wonder sort of what you are making of how these things are interacting.
KHARDORI: Look, you're exactly right.
[13:40:00]
I mean, this has proceeded so quickly and so irregularly. It looks like they wanted to prosecute him and they took a bunch of different steps until they could find a way to do it. And so, that's bad enough, right? It contaminates the case and it's bad for how criminal justice works in this country. To me, what I find even more disturbing under the circumstances is he was there recording, right? And people could dispute whether or not he was going about it the best journalistically, whatever.
He was there recording, OK? So we wouldn't necessarily know what's going on inside that place if we didn't have recording. We just had -- last weekend, we had an American murdered -- excuse me, not murdered, killed on video and the administration went out and lied about it for days, even though it was on video, right? And then they brought out the second-tier players, Todd Blanche, Tom Homan, to not exactly lie but to mislead the public about what had happened and why it had happened.
So, I cannot really think of a time in recent memory where the value of video and independent journalistic work, even everyday citizens, right, Americans, just recording what's happening in these spaces where they're constitutionally entitled to record. I can really -- it's hard for me to imagine a more important time in American life for us to hold the line on these things.
KEILAR: Ankush Khardori, thank you so much for being with us. And we do have some Breaking News just into CNN, and this is very sad to report. Actress Catherine O'Hara, known for her roles in "Home Alone," so many other films, and "Schitt's Creek" has died at the age of 71. We'll tell you what we're learning right after this.
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KEILAR: We're following some sad Breaking News here. Award-winning actress, Catherine O'Hara has passed away. She's known for so many films and TV shows. "Beetlejuice, Best in Show, The Last of Us, Schitt's Creek," and who could forget her iconic line in "Home Alone"?
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PETER MCCALLISTER, PLAYED BY ACTOR JOHN HEARD, HOME ALONE: What else could we be forgetting?
KATE MCCALLISTER, PLAYED BY ACTOR CATHERINE O'HARA, HOME ALONE: Kevin!
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SANCHEZ: O'Hara was 71-years-old. Joining us now is Dominic Patten. He's Executive Editor at Deadline.com. Dominic, this one is a shock.
KEILAR: Hold on one second, Dominic. We're trying to fix your audio.
SANCHEZ: Yeah.
KEILAR: We're having a hard time hearing you. But I was just saying -- as we try to re-establish that with Dominic, I was just saying to you, I feel like I've been hanging out with her so much recently.
SANCHEZ: Yeah.
KEILAR: I feel like I spent the holidays with her. I watched "Home Alone" movies with my kids.
SANCHEZ: So many great movies. And "Schitt's Creek," with apologies to Eugene Levy and his son, she stole that show. So many great lines in that show. A great character actress, someone who across generations and across decades made people laugh. Let's go ahead and take a quick break as we try to iron out these audio issues. But this is really stunning and sad Breaking News.
Actress Catherine O'Hara dead at 71-years-old. CNN has just confirmed it. Again, we're going to take a quick break. We'll come back and keep talking about her and honor her legacy.
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SANCHEZ: Back to the Breaking News on CNN. We've just confirmed that Catherine O'Hara, the iconic actress behind some iconic roles, has passed away at the age of 71. Let's discuss with Dominic Patten, the Executive Editor at Deadline.com. Dominic, we were saying a moment ago, she's remembered for so many hilarious moments, and this news is a surprise.
DOMINIC PATTEN, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, DEADLINE.COM: I mean, it's shocking, Boris. I mean, she's 71-years-old -- was 71-years-old. I can't believe I'm saying that now about Catherine O'Hara. She was on the carpet at the Emmy's in September. You know, she was getting prepared, we understand, to prepare to do Season 2 of "The Studio" on Apple TV with Seth Rogen, where she plays a former studio executive and mentor to his main character. So this is a big shock to the Hollywood community.
KEILAR: She's sort of a model for longevity in a career, and people are just stunned. In a way, I mean, 71 years young, right? She was so in her prime.
PATTEN: Well, exactly. To that, Brianna, we talk about her as a two- time Emmy winner. She won her first Emmy in 1982 as a part of the glorious SCTV. She won her second Emmy in 2020 as part of "Schitt's Creek." So just if you talk about longevity, those alone among her wins, among her many awards and accolades, that should tell you so much about a career that, as you know, as we've already seen, the "Home Alone" quotes. Obviously, "Schitt's Creek" was a big career mountain for her.
"The Studio" was another one. This was a person who not only showed a lot of good taste as well as good talent, but literally became a comedy icon over decades.
SANCHEZ: So many good lines to cite. She will undoubtedly be missed. Catherine O'Hara passing away at 71-years-old. Dominic Patten, thanks so much for sharing that with us.
PATTEN: Thank you.
SANCHEZ: So, if you're a fan of the rock band "Heart" and you have spent some time perhaps scrolling through social media like Facebook, you may have seen some of these images showing what appears to be lead singer, Ann Wilson comforting a crying Ariana Grande, fighting with Joy Behar on "The View," even fainting on stage and on a stretcher and several more.
KEILAR: The problem with these images and the stories they tell, they're not real. They're all fake, posted by Facebook pages impersonating Wilson with A.I.-generated images and fabricated headlines. The real rock legend, Ann Wilson, truly joins us now live to talk about this.
Ann, tell us, I mean, when did you discover these pages and what did you think when you found out about them?
[13:55:00]
ANN WILSON, LEAD SINGER OF "HEART": Well, I think I first came across them when I started to go back onto social media. I came off the road and I started, you know, filling the time with social media and there they were, all these things that were really kind of shocking and weird and just not true. And some of them really sort of cruel and brutal.
I just really didn't like it. And I didn't like the fact that they sort of confuse our fans. You know, they don't know what's real and what's not real.
SANCHEZ: Yeah, it's a wild west on the Internet when it comes to artificial intelligence and using people's likeness. I understand that you reported these pages, but they're still up. Did you get an explanation as to why?
WILSON: No, we just -- we made a post that said these pages are the ones that aren't real. They're fake. And please don't -- don't hit them. Don't, like try and block them, especially just report them. And there was no response. There was no, like nothing changed. In fact, it just keeps on going toward the worst.
It's hard to describe how cruel some of them are. There was one post of my husband dead in a hospital bed and me leaning over him crying into a handkerchief. And his daughter called me up and said, what's going on with dad? You know, did not understand that it was not real. And that's when it struck me that this stuff is really cruel.
KEILAR: Yeah, it's cruel. And you say it's a public safety issue. Talk a little bit about that --
WILSON: Yes.
KEILAR: -- as you explain how the effect it's having on your family.
WILSON: Well, on the family and on the band, you know, the fans don't really know when we're saying something is going to happen really, or if it's just a fake post from A.I. And so, they get all confused and it's kind of hurting our ticket sales and it's bothering our business.
But my family is the thing that really bothers me the most because they involved Nancy, they involved my daughter, me, of course, passing out on stage and things I've never done before. You know, they had for a while -- they had some really sort of ugly ladies who were standing in as Ann and Nancy. And you know, I mean, that's just sort of cosmetic stuff.
But still, I didn't like it because it's not us. You know, I just want fans to see the real thing. So what do you do?
SANCHEZ: Yeah, that is so odd. Do you know or have any idea, any insight on to where this is coming from? Who is behind this?
WILSON: It's really hard to tell. At times there's a phone number down below, but if you call it, it ends up being a number that won't connect or it's in a garage somewhere, you know, just ringing and ringing and ringing. Sometimes I think they're out of the country.
I just don't like the feeling behind it that, you know, you can just feed Americans all this fakery and they just don't know whether to buy it or not. It's not helping anything right now.
KEILAR: I mean, ultimately, Ann, what do you think this is going to require on the part of -- I don't know, if you're getting law enforcement involved or if you are getting some kind of cyber experts involved? Because this is an issue for you, but it could be an issue for anyone and certainly, a lot of entertainers and other notable folks.
WILSON: It's certainly could (ph), especially when they make these posts that are involved in politics and they have, like my sister or me, screaming at Trump or screaming at somebody else. It doesn't matter what you think personally, politically, but I just don't think that the social media is any place to fake it.
KEILAR: Yeah. Ann, we're so sorry that you're dealing with this, but thank you for coming on and highlighting this. It's such an important issue.
WILSON: Well, thank you for having me.
KEILAR: It's our pleasure. Ann Wilson, thank you so much.
And a new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.
SANCHEZ: Happening now, CNN is reviewing today's release of the Epstein --
