Lauren Boebert’s many scandals and controversies

Colorado Republican has become extremely well known during a relatively short tenure in Washington for her pro-Trump grandstanding and willingness to call out enemies at every turn

Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert once more finds herself at the centre of a storm after it was revealed that police are investigating an alleged physical altercation between the politician and her ex-husband.

The representative was reportedly involved in an exchange with Jayson Boebert at the Miner’s Claim restaurant in Silt, Colorado, on Saturday night and police have since confirmed to The Independent that officers are looking into the incident and examining security footage from the venue’s dining room.

The Daily Beast quoted an aide to the conservative as saying that Mr Boebert had called the police claiming to be a “victim of domestic violence” – a claim his former wife has refuted.

Ms Boebert’s office has since told The Independent: “This is a sad situation for all that keeps escalating and another reason I’m moving. I didn’t punch Jayson in the face and no one was arrested. I will be consulting with my lawyer about the false claims he made against me and evaluate all of my legal options.”

The episode is only the latest example of the attention-seeking Maga Republican hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

She recently 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 during a recent appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.

The former owner of the Shooter’s Grill gun-themed restaurant in the inevitably named town of Rifle only entered Congress in January 2021 but was quickly forced to downplay associations with the far-right Proud Boys and distance herself from earlier enthusiastic remarks about the QAnon conspiracy theory and has since established herself as something akin to a Bizarro World answer to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Here’s a look at some of her other less-than-flattering brushes with the spotlight.

Tweeting about Pelosi’s movements during the Capitol riot

Ms 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 Ms 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.”

Ms 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

The Republican 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 Ms Omar receiving multiple death threats.

Having already accused her rival of being “a full-time propagandist for Hamas” on social media in May 2021, Ms Boebert was seen on video the following September joking at a Staten Island Conservative Party dinner that she had encountered Ms 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 Ms Omar and Rashida Tlaib, another Muslim Democrat, as “black-hearted evil women”.

They declined to accept her reluctant apologies, with Ms Omar calling her a “buffoon” who “thinks bigotry gets her clout”.

Heckling Joe Biden at the State of the Union

Ms Boebert also made a spectacle of herself at the president’s State of the Union address in March 2022 when Mr 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 Mr 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.

Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene scream ‘Build the Wall’ as Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address in March 2022 (Getty)

Falling out with MTG

Often thought of as something of a double act, as the above embarrassment illustrated, Ms Boebert and Ms 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,” Ms Taylor Greene reportedly said. “And you copied my articles of impeachment after I asked you to co-sponsor them.”

“OK, Marjorie, we’re through,” Ms 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.”

Getting thrown out of a theatre over ‘Beetlejuice-gate’

Last September, Ms Boebert was forced to make an undignified exit from a live-action musical stage version of Tim Burton’s gothic comedy Beetlejuice in Denver after being asked to leave by the management.

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.

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.”