Justice for Jamaal Bowman
The New York congressman willfully pulled a fire alarm to disrupt a congressional proceeding, and now he’s lying about it.
Another day, another act of decadent Democrat behavior.
On Saturday, while Congress was preparing to vote on a stopgap measure to keep the U.S. government funded and thereby keep it from — heaven forbid! — shutting down, New York City Democrat Congressman Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in the House of Representatives’ Cannon office building. His deliberate action, which appears to have been an attempt to delay a vote by Congress, caused an evacuation of the building and has rightly triggered an investigation by the Capitol Police.
As The New York Times reports: “The alarm was triggered at the same time that House Democrats at the Capitol were stalling a vote on a spending measure to keep the government operating for another 45 days. Speaker Kevin McCarthy had unveiled the bill just minutes earlier, and Democrats were scrambling to read the bill and determine whether to support it. Later in the day, the bill passed 335 to 91, with more Democrats voting for it than Republicans.”
Bowman, as his Wikipedia bio notes, is the founder and former principal of a public middle school in the Bronx called the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action. Further, it notes that he belongs to the Lower Hudson Valley chapter of the — wait for it — Democratic Socialists of America. This, along with sheer idiocy, would help explain the Alinskyite tactic of falsely pulling a fire alarm to achieve a political end.
In a Saturday night statement from Bowman, he claimed that he didn’t pull the alarm to delay the vote, as common sense dictates, but instead because he was rushing to the Capitol to cast a vote and came to a door in the Cannon building that would not open.
“I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused,” Bowman said. “But I want to be very clear: this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite — I was trying urgently to get to a vote.”
Clearly, Bowman and his fellow New York City leftist, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, need to get their stories straight. AOC, a former barkeep who answered to “Sandy Cortez” before she decided to run for Congress, lashed out at Republican efforts to expel “a member who in a moment of panic was trying to escape a vestibule.”
“Give me a break,” said AOC to dozens of viewers of CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
No, Sandy, you give us a break. No one is stupid enough to believe your explanation of Bowman’s actions — not even the low-information voters who elected you.
For that matter, no one is stupid enough to believe Bowman’s explanation of an innocent mistake. The dude is a former principal. One of his duties as such was certainly to pull a fire alarm on occasion in order to conduct fire drills and thereby ensure that his students could evacuate the school in a safe and orderly manner. His claim that he thought he was pulling a switch in order to open a door doesn’t pass the giggle test.
As New York Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis put it: “This is the United States Congress, not a New York City high school. To pull the fire alarm to disrupt proceedings when we are trying to draft legislation to AVERT A SHUTDOWN is pathetic … even for members of the socialist squad.”
Malliotakis is right, of course, but she’s missing the real point: Falsely pulling a fire alarm is a felony, and Bowman must be criminally charged for it. Why hasn’t he been arrested for this felony? Why hasn’t he been finger-printed? Where’s his mugshot?
And not only that: In addition to the felony of having falsely pulled a fire alarm, Bowman appears to have been intent on disrupting an official congressional proceeding. And where have we heard that language before? Yep, hundreds of January 6 defendants were arrested and prosecuted on that very same charge, 18 U.S.C. § 1512©(2). Some were even placed in solitary confinement while they awaited trial.
“If it really was just an accident,” asked House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this morning, “when the Capitol Police came to interview you, why would you lawyer up right away?”
The video of what Bowman did immediately after pulling the alarm should be very telling. Did he walk back into the building to explain his mistake? Or did he slink away in an effort to hide the fact of what he’d done?
Our Mark Alexander asks a great question: Was Bowman under the influence of drugs when his did this? Think about it: How stupid would a sentient being have to be in order to pull a fire alarm in one of the most heavily surveilled buildings in the most heavily surveilled city in the United States and think he could get away with it?
Here’s another important consideration: Was this act premeditated? Was it a conspiracy? Did any of his staff members know about it? Or, more seriously: Did any other members of Congress know about it? And if so, who else is involved in this conspiracy? Is it possible that Bowman conspired with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to delay the vote? As independent journalist Julie Kelly points out: “Dems were angry GOP didn’t allow enough time to read the funding bill before forcing a vote. Minority whip filed motion to adjourn; Rep. Jeffries used ‘magic minute’ privilege to delay vote.”
Finally, Bowman may have put others’ lives at risk by keeping firefighters from being able to respond to a real fire in a timely manner. Why hasn’t the FBI snatched up Bowman’s cellphone like they did to Republican Congressman Scott Perry while he was on a family vacation? Let’s take a look at Bowman’s emails and text messages and see what they reveal.
“The House has only expelled five members in history,” notes Fox News’s Chad Pegram. “The last was Ohio Democrat James Trafficant in 2002.” Those who remember the, um, colorful Trafficant will recall that he was not only corrupt but also a constant burr in the britches of his fellow Democrats. “Beam me up!” he used to exclaim as he pointed out the latest Democrat legislative outrage in Congress.
Bowman deserves to follow Trafficant, and anything less than his expulsion from Congress will merely reinforce the belief that no one is ever held accountable in the Beltway and that our two-tiered justice system — one tier for those on the Right and another for those on the Left — is alive and well and utterly out of control.
But moreover, if justice isn’t served to Bowman — if he manages to escape criminal charges and expulsion in favor of some toothless reprimand — it’ll reinforce the growing belief in our country that Democrats are utterly unserious about enforcing the laws on our books — from illegal immigration to rioting to shoplifting to hate crime hoaxes, and, yes, falsely pulling fire alarms.
POSTSCRIPT: Malliotakis says she plans to introduce a measure calling for Bowman’s expulsion from Congress. As a supporting document for this measure, she should introduce Bowman’s own statement of March 30, in which he celebrated Trump’s indictment by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg: “No one in this country is above the law — including former President Trump.”
*Updated to include additional information and analysis, including the specific code violation, 18 U.S.C. § 1512©(2), which was used to prosecute January 6 protesters, and the Alinskyite nature of Bowman’s felonious stunt.