Lauren Boebert.Photo: JASON CONNOLLY/AFP via Getty
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert won the Republican primary election in western Colorado’s Congressional District 3 on Tuesday.
Boebert — one of 147 Republican members of Congress whoobjected to certifying the electoral vote countafter the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — has been at the center of several controversies since she began her term in office in January 2021.
Accused of meeting with organizersof pro-Trump rallies on Jan. 6, Boebert has denied any involvement in the violent riot that followed. Hertweets during the attack— “Today is 1776,“one said, while another indicated House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s whereabouts — have been criticized.
An avid advocate for gun rights who vowed in a political ad tocarry a weaponto work in Congress, Boebert reportedly got into a standoff with Capitol Police when sherefused to allow officers to search her bagafter setting off metal detectors just days after the insurrection.
Boebert alsointerruptedPresidentJoe Biden’s State of the Union address earlier this year while he was speaking about increasing support for veterans — which he said was close to his heart as his older son, former National GuardsmanBeau Biden, died of brain cancer in 2015.
As the president spoke, Boebert was heard calling out “13 of them” — an apparent referenceto the service members killedin a suicide attack in the final days of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan — in a rare moment of open animosity during such speeches.
She has clashed with other members of Congress, too.
During a debate on a resolution tocensure fellow Republican Rep. Paul Gosarfor posting ananime video depicting violenceagainst another member of Congress, Boebert made a racist comment directed at Muslim Democratic Rep.Ilhan Omar, calling her a member of “the jihad squad” and accusing her of “praising terrorists.”
Video footage of a Boebert campaign event showed her telling a story aboutrunning into Omar in a Capitol elevator. In her anecdote, Boebert delivered the “jihad squad” line and implied that she was safe in an elevator with Omar because she wasn’t carrying a backpack.
Boebert also criticized Secretary of TransportationPete Buttigiegfor taking parental leave after he and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg,welcomed twins Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to their family.
“The guy was gone. The guy was not working! Because why? He was trying to figure out how to chest feed,“Boebert said in a November 2021 video, before going on to say that “ain’t nobody got time for two and a half months” of parental leave.
Earlier this month,Colorado officials opened an investigationinto Boebert’s 2020 campaign reimbursements to determine whether the more than $22,000 she paid herself with campaign funds was justified.
source: people.com
