Former CNN host Don Lemon has pleaded not guilty to charges stemming from his coverage of a protest last month at a church over federal immigration raids in Minnesota.
Lemon, 59, was charged with conspiracy to deprive rights and interfering with religious freedoms by allegedly obstructing someone's First Amendment rights by force.
The arrest came after he went into the Cities Church in St Paul on January 18 with protesters who claimed one of its pastors was an immigration enforcement official.
He livestreamed the protest in an incident that resulted in charges for eight others as well.
Lemon did not speak as he entered the courtroom on Friday in St Paul, Minnesota, where two dozen protestors were gathered to support him, chanting [Attorney General] Pam Bondi has got to go, according to the Associated Press.
Four co-defendants who were there with Lemon also pleaded not guilty.
Lemon has defended his decision to enter the church, stating he was simply fulfilling his duty as an independent journalist covering the protest. I have spent my entire career covering the news. I will not stop now, he said soon after the arrest.
During Friday's hearing, one of Lemon's lawyers, Abbe Lowell, expressed concerns to the judge that investigators had taken Lemon's cellphone when they arrested him in Los Angeles late last month.
Lemon and eight other co-defendants, including another journalist, have been charged with conspiracy against religious freedom at a place of worship and injuring, intimidating, and interfering with the exercise of the right of religious freedom at a place of worship.
In the January 18 incident, protestors disrupted a service at the church by chanting ICE out and Justice for Renee Good, the mother of three who was shot by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer in Minneapolis. Lemon has stated that he was there as a journalist and not affiliated with the church's protestors.
Footage from the scene showed a chaotic interaction inside the church, part of the Southern Baptist Convention, as protesters and members of the congregation clashed verbally.
Federal agents killed a second protestor, an intensive care nurse named Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis two weeks later. Both Pretti and Good were killed during protests against the Trump administration's immigration policies in Minnesota.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt commented on Lemon's arrest, asserting that Trump will not tolerate the intimidation and harassment of Christians in their sacred places of worship.
Lemon, a long-time critic of Trump, was fired from CNN in April 2023 after 17 years following controversial comments about candidate Nikki Haley.
