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Today's scheduled drama revolves around the last-minute efforts to pass a continuing resolution funding the government for 45-days, with Congress coming in on a weekend. There's a lot of complex politics going on, between a right-wing faction that seems as interested in drama as day to day governance, Democratic interests in more expansionist efforts, the matters of Ukraine, and some politicians not being present due to COVID or death. With a bill getting through the House on widely-bipartisan efforts (with 90 Republicans and only 1 Democratic Representative voting no), some Republicans are pondering whether this will be seen as an admission of weakness. The current one's a fairly far cry from the much more significant cuts that previously faced both Democratic . That's fairly standard politics, though.
Instead, we have something hilarious:
(Bowman later voted for the bill.)
There's obvious comparisons to Other High-Profile Incidents though they're pretty inapt; as funny as Bowman photoshopped into the Lectern Thief's or Qanon Shaman's faces is, the lack of trespassing does matter. Between this, Santos pretending he's a whole lot more interesting than he was, The Squad playing with edgy racism, and Boebert giving an inexpert handjob during the showing of Beetlejuice, all we need now is a pregnancy and a Congressman buying shitty alcohol with a fake id to complete the whole high school bad decisions spread. To really complete the farce and the metaphor, Bowman's background includes some time spent as work at a school that would suspend or expel people for this. Bowman's claim to have confused an alarm system and a door release is not especially likely, but it's enough of a fig leaf that I'll be surprised if the House GOP's resolution to expel him goes anywhere, let alone the potential charges for falsely pulling a fire alarm in DC. Bowman's district is 84% Democratic, so it'd not mean anything even if he were to voluntarily resign, and it's not like he's Menendez.
Maybe he'll end up with a token fine? I'd be surprised.
Which doesn't matter, but eventually you run into the "that's how escalation works" bit.
How does “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so” not apply? I see no reference to trespassing.
Though it does say they can be fined, imprisoned for up to 20 years, or both. You’re probably right that they’ll fine him $20 and call it a day. Such an equitable justice system we have.
You've conveniently left out the 1 word that could exonerate Bowman. The relevant text is this:
So the law does not apply to Bowman if he can make a convincing case it was an innocent mistake (which is of course exactly what he is now claiming). It makes sense that the law is qualified this way, otherwise a janitor accidentally triggering the fire alarm could go to jail for 20 years.
The claim “I didn’t realize a fire alarm would set off an alarm” is pretty weak.
Of course, I have a strong prior that Bowman is an ass so I’m predisposed to disbelieve him. But…who has ever seen a red box clearly labeled fire alarm and thought “I should pull this to open a door” before even trying to open a door? No, the excuse is so lame that I believe at a “beyond a reasonable doubt” Bowman did it to interfere with Congress. At minimum, he should be expelled because even if his defense is correct then he is too stupid to be a congressmen.
That's not what he said. He said: “I was trying to get to a door. I thought the alarm would open the door, and I pulled the fire alarm to open the door by accident.”
That's also questionable (if you pulled the alarm because you thought that would open the door then you didn't do it by accident) but the point is: he doesn't deny intentionally triggering the fire alarm, but he claims his intent was to open the door, not to prevent the vote. And that seems at least possible. On twitter I saw this image of the location with a sign that reads:
(But note that in the still of Bowman pulling the alarm that sign seems to be missing! Which maybe explains why he pulled the fire alarm lever on the wall instead of pushing the exit bars as the instructions by the door suggest.)
This does make it sound like you can open the door by setting of the fire alarm (which also makes logical sense), though it's pretty clear you're only supposed to do that in case of an emergency. Maybe Bowman thought that the alarm would be local and he could just shut it off after opening the door, or maybe he knew the building would be evacuated but thought nobody would know he was the one that triggered the alarm. Either way, it doesn't show that he pulled the alarm in order to delay the vote happening at the Capitol.
The evidence against an intentional action is this:
You can also see the fire alarm in that image. It's bright red and says "FIRE".
This is no doubt evidence that could be brought up, however it would also make logical sense to me that the whole Hill would be evacuated/go into lockdown in the event of an unplanned fire alarm in one of the complex's buildings.
I read somewhere (I don't remember where), that the motive could have been to buy time to actually read the bill. Which, honestly, is a great motive. I'd be in favor of multiple hours-long fire drills so that they would actually read every stupid 2000-page bill they put up for a vote. However I don't expect Bowman to be pulling the fire alarm next time the Democrats try to quickly ram through a bill.
The discussion isn't about whether or not he set off the fire alarm (he clearly did) but whether he did it with the intent to prevent/delay the vote on the funding bill happening in the nearby Capitol building. That's not so clear.
Maybe Bowman will eventually admit something along the lines of “I set off the fire alarm because I was in a rush to leave the building” which is pretty bad (and probably against some law or other) but it's an order of magnitude better than “I set off the fire alarm because I wanted to stop congress from voting on a bill”, which makes him guilty of a felony that carries up to 20 years in prison as a penalty.
For Bowman this doesn't strike me as a great reason to risk 20 years imprisonment, which honestly makes me think it's more likely the “I was in a hurry to leave the building” excuse is genuine.
The obviousness of it being a fire alarm speaks to intent, I would think. Unless the defense is "I'm a huge idiot who doesn't know what a fire alarm is". If it was some special gold-plated Capitol Hill fire alarm variant I could believe it was unintentional. But it is a totally standard fire alarm you'd see all over the country.
As to the rest of your post, the real issue here is that only the left receives this much charity from the legal system and the mainstream media.
I'm starting to think you're trolling me, but in the interest of assuming good faith, I'll say for the third and final time: the question isn't whether he had the intent to set off the fire alarm but whether he set off the fire alarm with the intent to stop the vote.
It only speaks to an intent to set off the fire alarm, not an intent to disrupt an official proceeding. The question is: why did he set off the fire alarm? Three options:
You can say the obviousness of the fire alarm makes option 1 unlikely (and I mostly agree) but it does not prove option 3 over 2.
Yes, that's a problem, but that doesn't prove the intent of Bowman.
Maybe it makes sense for the Republicans to assume the worst because when it came to the January 6th protesters the Democrats assumed the worst, but here on this forum we are not active participants in the culture war, we're only discussing it. I think the Jan 6 protesters were judged much too harshly, but I'm also willing to entertain the notion that Bowman is just a dumbass who was in a rush (option 2), rather than a man intent on undermining American democracy (option 3).
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