Note To Terrorists

by digby

… wear a bow tie:

The man who was arrested with two guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition near the Capitol during President Barack Obama’s health care speech in September had been an employee of the George W. Bush White House. The arrest of the man, Joshua Bowman, was widely reported at the time, but the news stories made no mention of his previous employment: For several years he worked in the Executive Office of the President, dealing with tech issues, including White House emails, his lawyer, George Braun, tells Mother Jones.

On the night of September 9, Bowman was on his way to meet Braun, a Bush administration political appointee, at the National Republican Club on First Street, SE when he was stopped by Capitol Police around 7:45 p.m.—minutes before Obama was scheduled to deliver a major address to Congress pushing his health care initiative. Bowman had driven up to a security checkpoint and told officers he wanted to park, but his lack of a permit for the area aroused their suspicions, and they asked to search his car.

Bowman had a bumper sticker like this one on his car, according to court records. (Patriot Depot).Bowman had a bumper sticker like this one on his car, according to court records. (Patriot Depot).The previous weekend, Bowman and Braun had gone duck-hunting, according to Braun. But Bowman forgot that he still had the guns in his car when he consented to a search of his vehicle, a Honda Civic with a bumper sticker proclaiming, “I’ll keep my guns, freedom, and money…. you keep the change.” The officers found a Beretta 12 gauge automatic shotgun, a .22 caliber long rifle, and over 400 rounds of ammunition in Bowman’s trunk. The guns were unloaded and in their cases, according to court records. Braun says they were disassembled. The Capitol Police took Bowman into custody and charged him with two counts of possession of an unregistered firearm and one count of unlawful possession of ammunition. He faced up to $3,000 in fines and as much as three years in jail. (The case is still pending.)

When Braun—who was at the National Republican Club, hanging out with congressmen including Iowa’s Tom Latham and Nebraska’s Lee Terry—finally heard from Bowman, it was around 10 p.m. Bowman told Braun he needed Braun to get him out of jail, explaining that he had been stopped with guns in his car. “Don’t you know that’s illegal?” Braun asked. Both men were surprised when they heard the story on the radio as they left jail the next day. Braun thought the coverage was excessive. “They were making him sound like a terrorist,” Braun said. “Does [Bowman] look like a terrorist? He has the élan to walk around with a bowtie.”

I’ll bet those party crashers wish they had such highly placed defenders.

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