Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert returns to the public eye again this week for the Colorado GOP primary election.
The firebrand politician previously announced that she would be switching districts for her re-election campaign in 2024, moving from Colorado’s 3rd congressional district to its 4th and blaming an influx of “Hollywood money” from high-profile Democratic donors like Barbara Streisand and Ryan Reynolds for driving her away.
As the former owner of the Shooter’s Grill gun-themed restaurant in the inevitably named town of Rifle, who is known for controversial takes and comments, including enthusiastic remarks about the QAnon conspiracy theory, some may be unused to seeing her name in headlines for the right reasons.
Here’s a look at some of her other less-than-flattering brushes with the spotlight.
Police investigation over claims she punched her ex-husband
Boebert was investigated by police earlier this year following claims of a physical altercation between the politician and her ex-husband at a Colorado restaurant.
Jayson Boebert accused his ex-wife of punching him in the face but later recanted his claim. According to police, the restaurant did not have any surveillance video recording at the time and no witnesses came forward to provide a statement about what happened.
“Due to a lack of any evidence, the allegations of domestic violence against Rep Lauren Boebert are unfounded and the investigation into Rep Lauren Boebert is closed,” Silt police said in a statement at the time. Ms Boebert had previously denied the allegations.
Jayson Boebert was later arrested for third-degree criminal trespass, obstruction and disorderly conduct in connection with the restaurant incident, Kite said, along with other charges pursued by county authorities. He was released the same day, according to jail records.
Days after the incident he also allegedly got into the physical fight with his son, leading his being charged with reckless endangerment.
Support for Donald Trump during criminal trial
Boebert was among the few devotees of the former president to actually turn up in-person to support him during his criminal trial last month, after which he was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
Boebert arrived to court with fellow GOP lawmaker Matt Gaetz to protest Trump’s innocence.
Following claims that the former president had often fallen asleep during proceedings, Boebert made went out of her way to explain them away.
Trump wasn’t sleeping, he was praying, the Colorado representative claimed during a House hearing in May adding, somewhat bizarrely, that if he was indeed sleeping as has been widely reported, at least he looked “pretty.”
“I know when I fall asleep on airplanes my mouth kinda drops open,” she said. “And his mouth is kinda tightlipped, so maybe it’s just a somber moment of thought.”
Getting thrown out of a theatre over ‘Beetlejuice-gate’
In perhaps her most headline-grabbing incident, Boebert apologized after she was forced to make an undignified exit from a live-action musical stage version of Tim Burton’s gothic comedy Beetlejuice in Denver, last September.
Fellow audience members had complained about her vaping near a pregnant woman, talking too loudly, taking flash photographs, and inappropriately groping her date, Aspen bar owner Quinn Gallagher. The pair was asked to leave by the management.
After initially denying having behaved obnoxiously at the show, she was subsequently forced to apologise when video footage emerged revealing her doing precisely as alleged.
On social media, users were quick to contrast Ms Boebert’s own public conduct with her homophobic advice to: “Take your children to CHURCH, not drag bars.”
The incident has followed Boebert around since, and she has faced multiple questions over it as recently as this month during a live televised debate with other GOP candidates.
She was heckled with chants of “Beetlejuice” by student protesters at George Washington University, during a visit in May.
Tweeting about Pelosi’s movements during the Capitol riot
Boebert faced calls for her resignation just days into her career as a congresswoman in the aftermath of the riot at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 when it emerged that she had tweeted out sensitive information concerning the whereabouts of House speaker Nancy Pelosi in the midst of the attack.
“Speaker has been removed from the chambers,” she posted, which, although it did not provide any specific details, led to allegations that she was attempting to guide the rioters who were “coming for” the Democrat with malicious intent.
Protesters from Rural Colorado United, a state activist group, duly organised demonstrations outside her offices, calling Boebert “unfit” to serve.
“Lauren Boebert has betrayed the American people and is a conspirator in the insurrection that occurred at Capitol Hill on January 6th,” the group wrote in a press release.
“As the citizens she represents in Congress, we cannot recall her and we cannot impeach her, but we do not accept that she is fit to represent the people of Colorado District 3 in Congress. We can only hope that her colleagues in Congress expel her.”
Boebert had made clear her intention to oppose the formal certification of the 2020 election result in Arizona just before the insurrection effort erupted outside.
Islamophobic jokes about fellow representatives
Boebert also has a history of making off-colour jokes about her political enemies, notably suggesting that Democratic representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, a Muslim, is a terrorist, leading to Omar receiving multiple death threats.
Having already accused her rival of being “a full-time propagandist for Hamas” on social media in May 2021, Boebert was seen on video the following September joking at a Staten Island Conservative Party dinner that she had encountered Omar in a DC elevator and called her a member of the “Jihad Squad” to her face, embellishing the anecdote for her audience by saying she had told a congressional aide: “She doesn’t have a backpack, she wasn’t dropping it and running, so we’re good.”
At the same event, she was reported as describing Omar and Rashida Tlaib, another Muslim Democrat, as “black-hearted evil women”.
They declined to accept her reluctant apologies, with Omar calling her a “buffoon” who “thinks bigotry gets her clout”.
Heckling Joe Biden at the State of the Union
Boebert also made a spectacle of herself at the president’s State of the Union address in March 2022 when Biden reflected on the recent deaths of American servicemen in Afghanistan, and she shouted out: “You put them in there, 13 of them!”
She was referring to the killing of US soldiers in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport the previous August, the insensitivity of her remark drawing boos from the chamber.
Later, she and Georgia counterpart Marjorie Taylor Greene – who had already pointedly turned their backs on Biden’s cabinet – chanted “Build the wall!” when he discussed the problems of illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border, taking the opportunity to revive the spectre of Donald Trump’s famous white elephant infrastructure project, which remains unfinished to this day.
Falling out with MTG
Often thought of as something of a double act, as the above embarrassment illustrated, Boebert and Taylor Greene had a very public confrontation on the floor of the House of Representatives in June 2023, with the former accusing the latter of calling her a “little b****” and spitting at her.
The cause of their feud? A dispute over which of them would get to file the latest round of spurious articles of impeachment against President Biden.
“I’ve donated to you, I’ve defended you. But you’ve been nothing but a little b**** to me,” Taylor Greene reportedly said. “And you copied my articles of impeachment after I asked you to co-sponsor them.”
“OK, Marjorie, we’re through,” Boebert allegedly responded, to which her Georgia counterpart is understood to have retorted: “We were never together.”
Asked about it later, the Colorado representative seethed to CNN: “I’m not in middle school.”
