‘I Would Have Advised Them Not to Do This’: CNN’s Elie Honig Warns Church Protesters Face Uphill Battle Against DOJ

CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig warned the protesters who invaded a Minneapolis church on Sunday that they may face an uphill battle in court during a Tuesday morning appearance on his network.

After playing a clip of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing that the Department of Justice is “investigating” the disruption of a church service — “It’s a crime; and so they will face a jury. If they’re convicted, they will go to prison,” said Blanche — anchor John Berman asked Honig to “remind people what the law says in the FACE Act.”

“So there are actually two laws, one of them being the FACE Act, the other being a civil rights law, which says it is a crime to intentionally interfere with another person’s free exercise of religion. Rarely used, these laws, but they certainly exist, and the conduct that we see here on its face seems to meet the requirements of those laws,” replied Honig. “Is it intentional? Sure. Are they interfering with people’s exercise of free religion? You see it on these videos. They intentionally went into a private church. So it is met on the face. Now, I do have to say, DOJ ought to think about the other factors. How long was this interruption? Was it brief? Was it long-term? I mean, was it just a matter of minutes or hours? And second of all, there was no violence used, no injuries. That said, the elements of the laws do seem to be met here.”

After tsk-tsking the DOJ for not approaching the investigation into the shooting of Renee Good with a similarly serious attitude, the former federal prosecutor was asked: “Given how clear the law does seem with what happened in that Minnesota church, if you were defending these protesters, what would you tell them? I mean, how would you handle this?”

“Well, first of all, I would have advised them not to do this. But if I did get one of these cases now, I would prevail upon DOJ to look at the discretionary factors. I would say this was a momentary interruption. It’s not as if they stopped these people from worshiping over days or weeks. And I would use the argument that it was not violent,” answered Honig. “But what I would be doing there is appealing to DOJ on the soft factors, not on the actual elements of the crime.”

Watch above via CNN.

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