“Yeah, go to church. Find Jesus. Like, I mean, why is everybody so horny here?” —Lauren Boebert, speaking to reporters on April 16, 2026
On September 17, 2026, David B. Wheeler of American Muckrakers filed a Rule 15 complaint with the House Committee on Ethics against Representative Lauren Boebert. He signed it under 28 U.S.C. section 1746, which puts his own exposure on the line for every sentence inside it. Seven counts.
Here’s what everyone needs to know: Sworn words carry weight because the person who writes them can go to prison for getting them wrong. A person who lies in a document like that is looking at a federal criminal charge, and that is the weight an oath carries in American law, the same weight a witness carries when a lawyer walks them through a story in front of a jury and every word gets tested.
The complaint alleges sexual relationships with three House employees she supervised. It names former District Director Clarice Navarro Ratzlaff. It names current District Chief of Staff Raven Finegan. It names former Chief of Staff Jeffrey Small. The filing points to year-end bonuses paid from official funds totaling roughly $30,650, a $5,000 campaign payment on July 8, 2022 booked as Fundraising Consulting that the complaint describes as money for silence, and a payment of about $200,000 in March 2025 that landed after Navarro Ratzlaff said she planned to file an ethics complaint of her own.1
Whose money are we talking about
Official funds are taxpayer funds. Your paycheck feeds them. When a member of Congress moves $30,650 in year-end bonuses to employees the complaint says she was sleeping with, that is a question about your wallet and your government at the same time. Bonuses paid from official funds are your money. You are entitled to know what those payments bought. Power that spends quietly is power that expects you to stop counting. The $5,000 line item has a purpose typed right on the form, and forms like that get filed because the public was promised the truth about where the money went.
Then there is the $200,000.
Think about the timing the way a jury would. A woman tells people she is going to file an ethics complaint. Shortly after, roughly $200,000 moves. In a civil courtroom, a payment that shows up right behind a threat of exposure gets examined under a microscope, because the pattern is old and familiar and it has a name that everybody in the profession recognizes the instant they see it.
Exhibit C belongs to the public
The complaint describes Exhibit C as the complainant’s contemporaneous notes and source communications. It was not attached. It is available on request. That material needs to come out, and the House Committee on Ethics has the tools to make it come out, along with the sworn testimony of every person named. Produce it. Notes written at the time an event happens are the kind of evidence trial lawyers build cases around, because memory fades and contemporaneous writing does not. Exhibit C sitting in a filing cabinet helps no one. Under oath it becomes evidence.
The theater already taught us this lesson
On September 10, 2023, Boebert was removed from the Buell Theatre in Denver during a performance of Beetlejuice for vaping and recording, and the incident report added disruptive behavior. She told the public she got tossed for singing too loudly.
Then the surveillance video came out later and showed her and her date groping each other above and below the waist. She lied to to everyone about what happened until the video dropped and then she apologized. An apology timed to the release of the tape belongs to the tape. When a record exists, the record settles it. That is why Exhibit C must come out.
Why this rule exists
Rule XXIII, clause 18(a) bars a member from having a sexual relationship with an employee she supervises, and consent is no defense. The House wrote it that way on purpose. Picture the staffer whose rent, health coverage, and next job reference all run through one person’s signature. Saying no to that person is a fantasy the rule refuses to entertain. Add bonuses drawn from public money into the same relationship and you have the exact arrangement the rule was built to stop, because the moment intimacy and payroll authority sit in the same hands, every dollar that moves afterward carries a question nobody inside the office is positioned to answer honestly.
Open the subcommittee
Rule 19 gives the Committee an investigative subcommittee with subpoena power and sworn testimony. That is the machinery. Use it. Demand the payroll records, the bank trail behind the $200,000, the invoices behind that $5,000 consulting entry, and testimony from every employee named in the filing.
Call your representative and say the Committee needs to open a Rule 19 subcommittee on this complaint, because a sworn seven-count filing about taxpayer money and supervisory power deserves subpoenas rather than a shrug, and because the public that pays these salaries has the standing to see what the documents actually say.
Mitch Jackson, Esq.
I guess she takes a leaf out of the book of her boss? The motto would be "grab them by their d!ck, they let you do that"! The theatre video is quite clear and explicit in that respect
And this is where it starts because the misuses of taxpayer money has to matter. Every time voters hold people in government accountable, it is one more announcement to the rest of those working for the taxpayers that actions and laws count. Prosecutions will happen.