Democratic representative Jamaal Bowman pulled a fire alarm on Saturday in a Capitol office building before a House vote on a stopgap measure to avoid a government shutdown.
The alarm prompted the Cannon House office building to be evacuated and triggered outcry from Republicans including the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who compared the New York congressman’s actions with those of the January 6 rioters.
“I was really appalled watching Democrats’ actions today, to delay it, to get a shutdown,” said McCarthy amid Democrats’ complaints that they did not have sufficient time to review the bill Republicans released last-minute in an attempt to avoid a government shutdown.
“That’s a new low,” he said, adding, “We watched how people have been treated if they’ve done something wrong in this Capitol. It would be interesting to see how he is treated and what he was trying to obstruct when it came to the American public.”
Brian Steil, a Republican Wisconsin representative and chair of the House administration committee, announced that an investigation into the incident is underway.
Georgia’s Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she is calling on the justice department to prosecute Bowman “using the same law they used to prosecute J6 defendants for interfering with an official proceeding”.
Meanwhile, the Republican representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York said that she is drafting a resolution to expel Bowman, tweeting, “This is the United States Congress, not a New York City high school. This action warrants expulsion & I’m introducing a resolution to do just that.”
Malliotakis’s fellow Republican representative Elise Stefanik echoed similar sentiments, tweeting, “A Democrat member of Congress just committed a felony by pulling the fire alarm to try to delay and stop a Congressional vote to fund the government.”
In DC, falsely pulling a fire alarm is considered a misdemeanor.
after newsletter promotion
In a statement to The Hill, a spokesperson for Bowman said, “Congressman Bowman did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote,” adding, “The congressman regrets any confusion.”
Speaking to reporters, Bowman said, “I thought the alarm would open the door.”
It remains unclear whether Bowman will be prosecuted.
The 45-day funding resolution, which Bowman and a majority of Democrats ultimately voted in favor of, passed with a 335-91 vote in the House. The bill is now with the Democrat-majority Senate, and lawmakers have until midnight on Sunday to pass it and send it to president Joe Biden to sign into law before a government shutdown.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
