A congressional staffer locked his door “for safety” and made an emergency call after encountering a production team associated with Stephen Colbert’s late-night comedy show inside a House office building, according to a U.S. Capitol Police letter to Congress about the “Colbert Nine matter.”
Members of the group involved with The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which airs on CBS, were heard outside the office of an unidentified staffer who works for Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in the Longworth House Office Building around 8:26 p.m. on June 16, the Capitol Police disclosed in a new letter. The staffer reported he could hear the crew shouting and banging on the door of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s office (R-CO), which is located right next to Bowman’s.
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“Do you remember me? Do you remember me?” a crew member shouted, according to the Capitol Police. “It’s me. We’re going to leave something under your door.”
Capitol Police Intelligence Division agents arrived at the scene shortly after the call to their emergency number and interviewed nine people, two of whom invoked their Miranda rights.
Those who did give statements explained they were on the premises to film skits for the late-night comedy show and had also planned to film outside the offices of Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA).
As part of the skit, members of the team pretended to leave notes under the lawmakers’ doors that were allegedly meant to be invitations to a cocaine orgy, according to the Capitol Police. The group did not end up actually leaving anything, the letter says.
It was revealed on Monday that the Department of Justice declined to prosecute the nine members, who were arrested on charges of unlawful entry while filming segments for cigar-smoking puppet Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, who is handled by comedian Robert Smigel.
That decision was criticized by Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger himself in the letter dated Tuesday.
“It is unfortunate that despite all of the evidence the Department presented, including that the group or its leader had been told several times that they could not be in the buildings without an escort, that the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to prosecute any members of the group for Unlawful Entry,” Manger wrote.
The letter was sent to Jordan and Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL), who had sent a request to Manger seeking information, including surveillance footage, related to the arrests. The letter identifies all the people who were arrested, including Smigel, and said there is Capitol Police footage of the group outside of Greene’s office.
An officer said this was the same group he found at the Cannon House Office Building Rotunda “at approximately 2:30 p.m. and escorted out of the building for violating the building rules,” the letter reads. An officer “determined the group had violated the building regulations a second time and took them into custody for Unlawful Entry,” the letter adds.
The production team was at the Capitol to conduct interviews with Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), who both serve on the Jan. 6 committee, which held a hearing that day, as well as with Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), who is not a member of the panel, the Washington Examiner previously reported. However, the Capitol Police letter cited “additional facts” found in an investigation, including that the “group did not have any scheduled appointments on June 16th but on the 15th they had appointments and had been inside Congressional buildings.”
A congressional source told the Washington Examiner that the Late Show crew members were asked to leave earlier in the day that Thursday when they were outside the Jan. 6 committee hearing room without proper media credentials. Despite the earlier warning, the crew came back later to film segments for the show and were creating a disturbance by banging on congressional doors at night, the source said, adding, “They knew what they were doing was wrong.”
The team was let back into the House office buildings by an Auchincloss aide sometime after 4:30 p.m, according to Fox News, which said it was told the Auchincloss staffer was informed that the crew had more interviews to conduct.
“The congressman had a scheduled interview with CBS, as did other members of Congress,” Matt Corridoni, Auchincloss’s spokesman, told the Washington Examiner. “Our contact with them ended well before the building closed for the evening. We do not condone any inappropriate activity and cannot speak to anything that occurred after hours.”
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Colbert himself addressed the arrests on his show the Monday following the incident.
“The Capitol Police were just doing their job. My staff was just doing their job. Everyone was very professional. Everyone was very calm. My staffers were detained, processed, and released,” Colbert said before railing against “TV people” who compared the actions of Colbert’s team to the rioters on Jan. 6. “This was first-degree puppetry. This was high jinks with intent to goof, misappropriation of an old Conan bit,” he quipped.
