Former CNN anchor Don Lemon pleaded not guilty on Friday to charges related to his involvement in a protest in which a group of anti-ICE agitators stormed a church in Minneapolis.

Lemon, who is charged with conspiracy to deprive religious freedom rights and a violation of the FACE Act, appeared for his formal arraignment on Friday, weeks after he joined a group of anti-ICE agitators in disrupting Sunday service at a St. Paul church. Lemon, who was live-streaming during the protest, has maintained he was at the protest in a journalistic capacity.

During the arraignment on Friday, prosecutors did not seek to detain Lemon. Minnesota Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko imposed standard release conditions for Lemon, including not violating laws.

Agitators who allegedly helped organize the protest, including William Kelly and Nekima Levy Armstrong, were also arraigned on Friday. All five of the defendants pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say the group of agitators disrupted the religious service and “intimidated, harassed, oppressed, and terrorized the parishioners, including young children, and caused the service to be cut short.”

Churchgoers said agitators blocked off the church’s stairs, preventing members of the church from reaching their children in the downstairs childcare area, according to Fox News.

The group chose to storm the church because they believe one of its assistant pastors works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

While Lemon now insists he was acting purely in a journalistic capacity when he entered the church, a review of his “coverage” of the event suggests he was acting more like the group’s spokesman.

Lemon informed his viewers ahead of the protest that he had conducted “reconnaissance” with the activists before they stormed into Cities Church.

“These are resistance protesters; they’re planning an operation we’re going to follow them on. I can’t tell you exactly what they’re doing, but it’s called Operation Pull-Up,” Lemon said during a live-stream.

“It’s Nekima Armstrong, she’s been doing this since George Floyd, Daunte Wright and others, where they surprise people, catch them off-guard and hold them to account,” he continued.

Lemon teased an impending secret “operation.”

“So that’s what we’re doing here, and after we do this operation, you’ll see it live, these operations are surprise operations, again I can’t tell you where they’re going,” he said.

However, after facing legal threats from the Trump administration, Lemon began insisting he had “no affiliation” with the activists responsible for disrupting the church service.

“I had no affiliations with that organization. I didn’t even know they were going to this church until we followed them. We were there chronicling protests,” Lemon said, contradicting the statement he made on his live-stream. “Once the protest started in the church, we did an act of journalism, which was report on it and talk to the people who were involved, which included the pastor, members of the church, and members of the organization. That’s it.”

Lemon has worked as an independent journalist since he was fired by CNN in 2023 after a Variety exposé detailed a mountain of harassment allegations from co-workers who said he repeatedly threatened female colleagues and often made provocative and erratic comments.

Now, Lemon is being represented in the Minnesota church case by Hunter Biden’s former attorney, Abbe Lowell, and former federal prosecutor Joe Thompson, who resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in January amid a mass exodus from the office over DOJ pressure to investigate the widow of Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE agent.