‘I really am sincerely sorry’: Rep. Jamaal Bowman on his alarming ‘unforced error’

WASHINGTON – After Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm in a House Office Building last month, Republicans – from then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) – pounced.

Some called for his expulsion, while others accused the progressive lawmaker of being an insurrectionist.

Bowman exclusively tells Raw Story he’s been kicking himself over the episode since.

“Yeah. I hate unforced errors, and this is an unforced error,” a contrite Bowman told Raw Story at the Capitol Thursday.

The second-term Bronx congressman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor today. He could have faced time behind bars, but instead struck a plea deal and paid a fine.

“That’s done. I did all that,” Bowman said.

Besides having to pay a $1,000 fine, Bowman now has to write a letter of apology to the Capitol Police.

“Which I really am sincerely sorry to have caused that,” Bowman said. “Then three months, as long as I stay out of trouble, it will be dismissed.”

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Bowman has tussled with the far-right before, but he says the speed with which his Republican colleagues jumped to heavy-handed conclusions is dangerous.Just days after the weekend incident, GOP Conference Secretary Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI) released a measure to censure Bowman, which would have stripped him of all his committee assignments.

Then Bowman’s fellow New Yorker, Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), introduced a resolution to expel Bowman – a rare and little used tool since the Civil War. Greenecalled for him to be prosecuted the same way Jan. 6 insurrectionists were for interrupting an official congressional proceeding (which Bowman didn’t do, as the alarm was in a House Office Building, not the Capitol Building itself).

Greene found an ally in then-Speaker McCarthy. At the time, just days before he was ingloriously ousted by members of his own party, McCarthy piled on, accusing Bowman of “a new low.”

“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,” McCarthy told reporters.

All the piling on from Republicans – whether from the party’s far-right or from its leadership ranks – was pure insanity to Bowman.

“Crazy,” Bowman said. “It's crazy.”

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Even while the hits kept coming – from Republican talking heads on cable to popular far-right conspiracy theorists – the educator and former school principal saw through what he considers a GOP smokescreen.

“That was all a distraction,” Bowman said. “It happened at the perfect time for them. It happened at the same time that Democrats were coming to save them from shutting down the government and it happened right before they were going to vacate their speaker, so, you know, this was all a convenient distraction for them.”

In the end, Bowman says his mistake wasn’t big enough to rescue the GOP from the three weeks of self-induced terrible news cycles as the party’s simmering civil war over selecting a House speaker boiled over, grinding the House to a halt.

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The party this week settled on little-known Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as the new speaker of the House.

“But at the end of the day, they can't hide behind their continued dysfunction as a party,” Bowman said. “The American people see that clearly.”

As far as the misdemeanor charge, Bowman didn’t get any special treatment, according to District of Columbia officials.

“Congressman Bowman was treated like anyone else who violates the law in the District of Columbia,” a spokesperson with the office of the DC attorney general said. “Based on the evidence presented by Capitol police, we charged the only crime that we have jurisdiction to prosecute.”

Is the episode behind Bowman now?

“I hope so. Yeah,” Bowman told Raw Story before he laughed. “As soon as you all stop asking about it!”