The House censured Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) on Dec. 7 for wrongfully pulling a fire alarm on Capitol Hill.
Mr. Bowman is the 23rd person to be censured by the House. He appeared in the well of the House floor as he was formally censured.
It comes a few months after Mr. Bowman activated a fire alarm, which delayed a House vote over a continuing resolution to fund the government through mid-November.
Mr. Bowman pleaded guilty on Oct. 26 to a misdemeanor for pulling the fire alarm inside the Cannon House Office Building on Sept. 30.
It was a violation of a District of Columbia law that states: “It shall be unlawful for any person or persons to willfully or knowingly give a false alarm of fire within the District of Columbia, and any person or persons violating the provisions of this subsection shall, upon conviction, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and be punished by a fine not more than the amount set forth ... or by imprisonment for not more than 6 months, or by both such fine and imprisonment.”
He was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and write an apology letter to the Capitol Police, and he was sentenced to probation.
He’s scheduled to appear before the D.C. Superior Court on Jan. 29, 2024, where it'll be determined if he complied with his sentence. If so, the misdemeanor of falsely pulling a fire alarm will be dismissed.
“I am responsible for activating a fire alarm, I will be paying the fine issued, and look forward to these charges being ultimately dropped,” Mr. Bowman said in a statement at the time.
Minority Leader Responds
Ahead of the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) criticized the censure resolution.“Extreme MAGA Republicans continue to utilize tactics such as censoring Democratic members of Congress, burying their heads in the sand with respect to unlawful or unacceptable conduct,” he said during his weekly press conference on Dec. 7.
MAGA stands for “Make America Great Again,” the movement led by former President Donald Trump.
“Why are extreme MAGA Republicans wasting so much time on these efforts to target Democratic members of Congress, target President Biden, target President Biden’s family members?” Mr. Jeffries said. “It’s because the extreme MAGA Republicans have nothing to show for their narrow fading and decreasing majority.”
The GOP currently has an eight-seat majority that shrunk last week when Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) was expelled from the House following a House Ethics Committee report that showed that he violated the law.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who served as House speaker between January and October, announced on Dec. 6 that he would retire from Congress at the end of the year.
Shortly before being expelled from Congress last week, Mr. Santos introduced a resolution to expel Mr. Bowman.
He lamented that had anyone else—for example, a member of the media or a GOP member of Congress—pulled a fire alarm on Capitol Hill, he or she would have been charged for obstructing a congressional hearing.
