Steve Bannon asked a court to waive his arraignment hearing scheduled for Thursday, indicating in a filing that he's pleading not guilty to contempt of Congress charges. The onetime adviser to former President Donald Trump filed the notice Wednesday in federal court, CNN reports. That means the remote hearing, assuming the judge agrees, would be only about logistics and procedural steps in the case.
Bannon has been indicted on two counts of contempt. He was in a Washington courtroom on Monday, when he turned over his passport and had travel restrictions imposed. "He and we just felt there is no reason to make the Court go through the formality of an arraignment," Bannon's lawyer, David Schoen, told CNBC in an email Wednesday. The AP notes that this is the first indictment for contempt of Congress since Reagan administration official Nancy Lavelle was indicted in 1983. She was acquitted on the contempt charge, but was later sentenced to six months in prison for lying to Congress. (More Steve Bannon stories.)
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