The House Ethics Committee announced on Thursday that it would not pursue a complaint against left-wing New York Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman for pulling a fire alarm in a Capitol office building last September as lawmakers debated a hotly contested spending bill.
A committee majority, including Republicans, announced Thursday that hammering Bowman with an ethics violation would be “moot” after the House voted to censure him last month.
The committee made this move despite finding Bowman’s official statements about why he pulled the alarm were “less than credible or otherwise misleading.”
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As the Tampa Free Press reported in October, Bowman pled guilty to breaking Washington, D.C., law by falsely pulling the alarm.
He was let off with a misdemeanor conviction for creating a phony emergency. A judge ordered him to write a letter of apology to the U.S. Capitol Police and pay a $1,000 fine.
Bowman claimed he mistakenly pulled the alarm while rushing to vote on the spending bill, which the House was debating under threat of a government shutdown. He maintained that he thought the alarm was actually a switch to open a locked door.
Then the video surfaced. Security camera footage clearly showed that Bowman willfully pulled the alarm.
Some Republicans wanted Bowman expelled and charged with a federal crime for disrupting an official proceeding, the same charge leveled against many of the rioters from the Jan. 6, 2021, melee at the U.S Capitol.
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GOP Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin advocated for an ethics investigation into Bowman for his conduct.
That was what the Ethics Committee passed on Thursday.
As Daily Wire reported, the Office of Congressional Ethics investigated and determined Bowman was lying about the vote. The House had already adjourned before he yanked the alarm and Bowman knew that.
Yet despite the video and his guilty plea, the OCE determined “there was not ‘substantial reason to believe that Rep. Bowman may have obstructed or attempted to impede an official House proceeding,’” the Daily Wire reported.
On Thursday, Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican, and the top Democrat, Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, declared, “In light of the House’s intervening censure of Representative Bowman, the Committee determined that further review of Representative Bowman’s conduct would be moot.”
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