Rachel Maddow

And in less than three years, she and her show, Here's the Truth with Georgia Fort, have won three Emmy Awards and were nominated for 11 other Emmy Awards.

And then a few days ago, federal agents descended on her home in the middle of the night and they arrested her.

Attorney General Pam Bondi bragged that she personally ordered Georgia Fort to be arrested.

She alleged that Ms.

Fort's reporting on an anti-ICE protest last month at a St.

Paul church was an attack that she somehow participated in by reporting on it.

Eight other people, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, have also been arrested for participating in that protest, or indeed for covering it as journalists.

When a judge ordered Ms.

Fort released from custody, a crowd gathered at the federal courthouse in Minneapolis to greet her upon her release.

Her lawyer calls the charges, quote, a transparent and unconstitutional attempt by our federal government to intimidate journalists and chill their protected speech.

A legal reporter, Quinta Jurecic, wrote about the case this way in The Atlantic, wrote about the indictment in this case this way.

She said, quote, "'The indictment itself makes for a strange read.

No attorneys other than the political appointees appear on the filing, a hint that career Justice Department employees might not have wanted to be involved.

The government treats Lemon and Fort as co-conspirators of the protesters without acknowledging any protections afforded by their role as journalists.'"

Quote, on the basis of the record available so far, the case against them appears factually weak, legally shoddy, and marred by a baffling series of procedural irregularities that raise serious questions about the Justice Department's ability to win in court.

Jurassic says, this prosecution is best understood not as law enforcement, but as propaganda, as junk intended purely to get attention.

But, quote, that doesn't mean it isn't dangerous.

Dangerous in a broad sense to journalism and democracy, yes.

Dangerous very specifically to journalist Georgia Fort, who now will have to fight off these charges as plainly bogus as they appear to everyone who has looked at them.

Georgia Fort is going to join us here live next.