Rep. Lauren Boebert‘s mugshots were splashed across billboards and made the subject of her rival’s attacks during the 2020 election.
In her new book My American Life, the Colorado Republican dives into detail about some of her pre-congressional brushes with law enforcement and an arrest that led to unflattering headlines about her husband, Jayson.
Boebert acknowledges that her arrest record gave her some pause when making the decision in 2019 to challenge incumbent Republican Rep. Scott Tipton in a primary.
“My background, upbringing, lack of formal education, and run-ins with the law were sure to make this impossible,” Boebert writes of her thinking at the time, according to an advance copy of her book provided to the Washington Examiner.
The first arrest she mentions (though reportedly not the first one that occurred) involves a 2015 dust-up with police at Country Jam, a music festival in Colorado at which her well-known restaurant, Shooters Grill, was providing catering.
Boebert writes that as she searched for an employee who failed to return from a break, she saw a police officer who “aggressively grabbed” a girl who had been detained for underage drinking and “sat her back down” in a chair, refusing to allow the young woman to return to her mother.
“I started yelling from about fifteen yards away and quickly made my way over. I was fired up,” Boebert writes of how the altercation began. “It bothered me seeing this young gal being treated so harshly.”
Boebert, 28 years old at the time, admits that the interaction devolved into a screaming match between her and the officers involved, who warned her that the matter of the girl was none of her business.
“They were ordering me to leave, and as they did, I brought out my smartphone and began recording them on video. I threatened to show it to the news media, and that’s when one of them threatened me with arrest if I didn’t stop,” Boebert writes. “I had every right to be there and told him so. I felt I hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Boebert was put in handcuffs, cited for disorderly conduct, and ejected from the festival, at which point she writes that she was disappointed she’d miss the night’s headline performance by Tim McGraw.
Critics have accused Boebert of hypocrisy for promoting a law and order message while having her own troubled history with the law.
But Boebert addressed those concerns in her book by arguing her behavior was the result of how officers had treated the unnamed girl, not of any animosity toward police.
“For the record, I have the utmost respect for law enforcement,” she writes while noting that in the case of the Country Jam incident, “I believe the deputies misbehaved.”
Officers at the scene described Boebert’s behavior slightly differently.
According to a police report from the time, officers warned Boebert several times that her yelling was causing others around her to behave in a disorderly way.
“Lauren continued her behavior and was advised she was being escorted off the property. Lauren said, ‘No I’m not’ and attempted to run away from our presence,” the police noted in a report.
“Lauren said multiple times that she had friends at Fox News and that the illegal arrest would be national news,” the police said.
In any case, the mugshot Boebert endured as a result of that day’s events did not occur when she was removed from the music festival.
That came later after the restaurant owner admitted she “made the mistake of missing my court date” related to the disorderly conduct citation.
“When I later went down to settle the matter, I signed paperwork I hoped would resolve everything — this meant I’d be getting a mugshot and meeting with a deputy district attorney,” she writes.
In the same chapter, titled “Pretty Little Mugshots,” Boebert details a second brush with law enforcement that resulted in another mugshot — one in which she laments that she “wasn’t looking [her] best” because she was scrambling to get her children to school.
Months earlier, Boebert writes that she was driving herself and her husband home after a long day of work at their restaurant and had driven up the steep hill near their home when her wheel caught the shoulder and their truck rolled into a ditch.
Boebert claims the site of the accident was out of cellphone range and just a mile from their house, so the two opted to walk home and call the police for help once they got cellular service. She said she received a citation for careless driving and, once again, failed to resolve the citation after the fact.
Boebert writes that she was later arrested while driving her sons to school for a failure to pay the ticket she received.
“Unfortunately, I knew from my previous experience what was coming my way,” she writes about how she felt when the police took her to the station after pulling her over. “This wasn’t going to be good at all. I also knew another mugshot was in my future, and messy hair and a hoodie don’t make for a great look.”
The freshman congresswoman is running for her second term in office after a turbulent tenure that has included scrutiny of her vote on Jan. 6 last year to challenge the 2020 election results that made Joe Biden the next president, as well as accusations from some constituents that she has focused more on building her public profile than on her district.
Boebert survived her primary in late June despite an effort from Democrats to encourage Democratic voters in her district to drop their party affiliations and vote against her in the race.
In her book, published on Tuesday, Boebert defends her election-related rhetoric and other grounds on which critics have attacked her.
Among them is the 2004 arrest of her husband for indecent exposure.
Reports have suggested Jayson Boebert boasted to two young women at a bowling alley of a tattoo on his genitals and flashed his penis when the two women did not believe the tattoo was real.
Lauren Boebert, according to the county sheriff’s report, was recorded as a witness.
But she did not mention being present for it in her book, in which she says the night of the episode began when Jayson Boebert “decided to try to bond with my stepfather.”
“The two of them went to the Rifle bowling alley and got to chatting over drinks,” she writes, omitting the fact that she was, according to police, with them.
“The female bartender flirted with Jayson, having heard previously from his friends what a catch he’d be. They even teased her by saying he’d gotten a great tattoo in a private area, which made her curious, so she pressed Jayson to show it to her right there at the bar,” Lauren Boebert writes. “He ignored her and was embarrassed she was doing it in front of my stepfather. She wouldn’t stop.”
Lauren Boebert argues her husband was the one who felt harassed by the bartender, not the other way around, and that eventually he “decided he’d heard enough, stood up, and acted like he was going to unzip his pants.”
“Before he got that far, the owner of the bowling alley intervened,” Lauren Boebert writes.
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Witness statements painted a different picture of the event. A witness, one of the women mentioned as a victim in the 2004 sheriff’s report, said in a statement that Jayson Boebert “came up behind us and pulled his penis out of his pants” after personally bragging to her and another woman about his intimate tattoo.
A second young woman told police a nearly identical story that painted Jayson Boebert as the instigator.
The sheriff’s report noted that Lauren Boebert denied seeing Jayson Boebert expose himself.
