Democrat Jamaal Bowman turns himself IN to cops after he was charged for pulling a fire alarm on Capitol Hill

Rep. Jamaal Bowman pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor charge for improperly setting off a fire alarm Thursday morning ahead of a vote to prevent a government shutdown.

A day after he was criminally charged in the Capitol Hill incident, he appeared in DC Superior Court for the arraignment.

Under an agreement with prosecutors, Bowman will have to pay a $1,000 fine and write an apology to the Capitol Police.

The New York Democrat called allegations that he deliberately sounded the alarm “complete BS” and claimed he thought he was opening a door.

But Capitol Police referred him to prosecutors, who charged him with one misdemeanor charge and ordered him to appear in court.

The September 30 incident took place in the Cannon House Office building and led to calls from Republicans to expel him from Congress.

The charge was “intentionally and knowingly causing a false fire alarm, in violation of the DC Code,” and the New York Democrat was ordered to appear in court for arraignment on Thursday.

Representative Jamaal Bowman has been criminally charged with one misdemeanor count for pulling the fire alarm during a vote in the House of Representatives

He has said he will pay a $1,000 fine and issue a formal apology to the Capitol Police to have the charges dropped.

“I am responsible for activating a fire alarm, I will pay the fine imposed and I look forward to these charges ultimately being dropped,” he said in a statement.

Capitol Police have now completed their investigation into the September 30 incident, which Bowman’s office described as a mistake.

‘We have completed our investigation. “Our officers collected all evidence, packaged it and sent the entire case and charges to prosecutors for consideration,” they said in a statement.

Bowman, a former school principal, said he pulled the alarm while rushing to open a door to get to a vote.

But the incident came as Democrats tried to delay a vote on a bill to extend the government funding deadline and prevent a government shutdown.

Democrat Jamal Bowman says claims that he purposefully pulled a fire alarm to disrupt Republicans in the House of Representatives as they debated an emergency bill to prevent a government shutdown are “BS.”

“I thought the alarm was going to open the door,” Bowman told reporters about the incident.

“I was rushing to vote, trying to get to a door.”

“(Bowman) generated a fire alarm in Cannon this morning,” a spokesperson for the Congressional Administration Committee said. “An investigation is underway into why it was withdrawn.”

Bowman called the idea that he pulled the fire alarm to delay a vote “complete BS.”

Rep. Bryan Steil, chairman of the House Administration Committee, said of the accusation: “Bowman’s apology does not pass the sniff test. After pulling the fire alarm, Representative Bowman fled the scene, passed multiple Capitol Police officers and had every opportunity to notify USCP of his mistake.”

Bowman’s stunt infuriated Republicans, with Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., drafting a resolution to expel him.

But the House fallout for Bowman was derailed by the impeachment of Kevin McCarthy and the three-week standoff to find a speaker that followed.

After former Speaker McCarthy’s last-minute decision to introduce a clean continuation resolution (CR) in the House of Representatives that would extend funding at the 2023 level established under Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrats feared they would had been fooled.

They wanted more time to read through the document before voting on it, but had to vote on it that day – September 30 – to avoid a government shutdown. That’s where Bowman’s move, which Republicans claim would thwart the vote, came into the picture.

Republicans had tried until almost the last minute to pass a party-line deal that included steep budget cuts and border security provisions. But with 21 Republicans opposing that plan on Friday, Chairman Kevin McCarthy finally had enough and agreed to table a clean funding extension that had Democratic support — and contained no conservative priorities.

He would always have to put a bipartisan deal on the table at the end for it to pass the Senate, but a Republican-only deal would have been a victory over cuts and a starting point for negotiations. .