Monday at 8:30 a.m., my two attorneys will be in a courtroom in Weld County, Colorado, and I will be on the line, ready to testify, because a member of Congress decided the cheapest way to deal with a reporter was to make something up about him.

On September 17 I filed a sworn ethics complaint against Lauren Boebert with the House Ethics Committee, verified under penalty of perjury, reviewed by a lawyer before it went in. It laid out roughly $30,650 in fourth-quarter bonuses to her District Director, a $5,000 payment booked as “fundraising consulting,” and a roughly $200,000 payment a witness says he watched move through a joint account. It laid out the part-time hiring of her brother’s wife at a rate that annualizes to about $146,000. Two people gave me written statements. The day before I published, I emailed everyone named and asked for comment. One person answered, Jayson Boebert, and I ran his response in full and unedited, even though it cut against my story.

She has never answered any of it. Not in a filing, not under oath, not anywhere that being wrong would cost her something. She told CBS Colorado the complaint was “utterly false,” which is an easy thing to say into a camera.

She did not sue me for defamation. If I had invented $200,000 in hush money about you, you would sue me and you would collect. Her staff’s lawyers knew how to find me. When Jeff Small’s attorney sent a demand, I pulled him from the complaint that week. When Raven Finegan’s attorney sent one, I pulled her too and took her photos down. That is the job. Nobody ever sent me a word about the bonuses, the consulting payment, or the $200,000.

What she did instead, three days after I filed, was go to a Colorado court and tell a judge I was stalking her.

She said I photographed her buying cigarettes. She said I photographed her getting Botox. She said I trailed her for a hundred miles.

None of it happened.

I have never followed her, never photographed her, never been near her. I invented none of my reporting and she invented all of that, under oath, to get a temporary protection order against a journalist who filed an ethics complaint about her three days earlier.

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That is the trick, and it is an old one. You cannot beat the story, so you make the reporter too expensive to keep going. You do not have to win. You only have to cost him more than he has. It has cost me more than $50,000. I do not have $50,000. I am a journalist and a single father of three living in the mountains of North Carolina, and every dollar came out of my pocket or out of what readers of this newsletter sent me.

Colorado has a law for this, the anti-SLAPP statute, C.R.S. 13-20-1101, written because legislators understood that the courthouse makes a decent silencer. In October the judge ruled it applies to this case. Monday is the day Alan Feldman and Dan Ernst stand up in that courtroom and argue it should end the thing. I will be on the line and ready to testify.

And she lost. The Associated Press called the race for Eileen Laubacher on Friday, 187,518 to 184,066 as of AP’s count at 3:36 p.m. Eastern. with an estimated 99 percent counted, and those numbers may have moved since. The petition is still live anyway. A woman who will be a private citizen in January is still asking a judge to limit what an American reporter can publish about her, on a story she made up. Losing an election does not withdraw a filing. Somebody has to stand up and get it thrown out.

If this works on me, it works on the next one. Most reporters covering a member of Congress do not have readers who will chip in. They have an editor who sees the word stalking in a court filing and quietly moves them to another beat. That is the whole point.

So I am asking. Help me pay the people standing up Monday.

Help David Beat Boebert in Court

Checks to American Muckrakers PAC, Inc., 237 Rock Ledge Rd, Spruce Pine, NC 28777.

If we win, Colorado law lets the court order her to pay our fees, and we will ask for every dollar. The lawyers get paid Monday either way.

I will tell you exactly what happens in there. Same as always.

David B. Wheeler

Co-Founder & President, American Muckrakers

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

DBW

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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• Laubacher 185,923.

• Boebert 182,686.

• Mangeris 12,605.

• Lead: 3,237 votes.

• Not one new ballot posted in two days.

That’s normal. Colorado county offices don’t work weekends. Douglas and Larimer still have ballots and they’re back at it today.

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Nothing else has happened either. No call, no concession, no recount filed. She legally can’t request one until Friday the 13th.

We’ll let you know the second anything moves. Stay tuned.

One ask before you go

Her campaign is talking recounts. Her lawyers are in a Colorado courtroom trying to get a restraining order against me for reporting on her. The hearing is November 16. Seven days.

The legal defense fund is short. Every dollar goes to the lawyers fighting this.

DONATE TO THE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND

Please donate today. Thank you.

DBW

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

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Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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• Laubacher 185,923.

• Boebert 182,686.

• Mangeris 12,605.

That’s 381,214 ballots and a 3,237-vote lead, 0.85 points, off version 386061 of the Secretary of State’s feed.

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The Weekend

152 votes came in since yesterday. All out of Arapahoe. 105 Laubacher, 40 Boebert, 7 Mangeris. Laubacher lead up another 65.

Don’t read anything into the slow day. It’s Sunday. Colorado county election offices don’t sit around posting results on the weekend. Douglas hasn’t budged since Thursday, Larimer since Friday, and both of them still have ballots sitting there. They go back to work Monday.

Here’s what the week actually tells you. Laubacher’s lead has not gone down one time. Not one batch since Wednesday night. Six days of that.

What’s Left Out There?

Call it 11,100 ballots. About 85% of those sit in Douglas, Larimer and Arapahoe, and Laubacher is carrying all three. Weld finished Thursday. El Paso Friday.

Run what’s left at the splits those counties have actually been producing, not what anybody wishes they’d produce, and they net Laubacher another 477.

The Recount Line

Automatic recount in Colorado kicks in when the margin falls inside 0.5% of the leader’s total. For this race, as it stands now, that’s 930 votes.

Admiral Laubacher is up 3,237.

So the free recount isn’t happening. And to actually win the seat Boebert needs roughly 65% of the two-candidate ballots left, a 30-point margin, out of three counties she’s losing by double digits. BeetleJuice’s best county in the entire district was Weld at 62%. Weld closed four days ago. (Remember all of the undervotes against her? The Weld Clerk estimated that at 2,500.)

The math isn’t close. It stopped being close Thursday.

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BeetleJuice Boebert trying to shut me up. The hearing is November 16.

Her campaign is out there talking recounts. Her lawyers are in a Colorado courtroom asking a judge to put a restraining order on me. A journalist. For reporting on her.

I filed a special motion to dismiss under Colorado’s anti-SLAPP statute. The judge ruled the statute applies. Briefs are filed. Hearing is November 16. Eight days.

The legal defense fund is short. Every dollar goes to the lawyers fighting this one. If you don’t think a member of Congress gets to use a protection order to shut down coverage of her own conduct, this is where you help.

DONATE TO THE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND

Please donate today. Thank you.

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Four Days, Zero Filings

Thursday night Scott Gessler, her campaign lawyer and a former Republican Secretary of State, told reporters the campaign was “investigating some very unusual voting patterns” and expected this “to head to a recount, one way or another.”

Four days on. No county named. No precinct. No batch. No recount request filed, no complaint filed, nothing filed anywhere by anybody. Colorado Politics asked him to explain himself and got no answer. Not a single clerk in this district has reported an irregularity. Neither has the Secretary of State.

They did get the claim into Democracy Docket, which covers election law nationally. The allegation is traveling a lot further than the proof.

And while I’m at it: “Eileen Laubacher Defeats Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 4th District” is trending on X right now. That’s an auto-generated trend headline, not a call. AP hasn’t called this race. NBC hasn’t. Nobody has. Don’t pass it around like it’s a source.

Where This Election Lands

Push the leftovers through at county splits and you get about:

• 191,500 for Laubacher

• 187,800 for Boebert

• 12,970 for Mangeris.

• Turnout near 392,300

• Roughly 87% of what 2024 did.

• Final margin somewhere around 3,700, range 2,900 to 4,400.

Cure and provisional ballots run through November 12 and aren’t in that.

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What a Recount Would Cost BeetleJuice Boebert

Colorado makes the loser pay for a requested recount, in certified funds, up front, before anybody re-runs a ballot. She hasn’t filed for one and she hasn’t set up a recount fund. Checked the FEC Sunday: her only committee is still Lauren Boebert for Congress, no new Colorado committee has registered since Election Day, and her last filing of any kind was October 31.

Three other candidates around the country have already stood up recount funds since November 1. She hasn’t. What she does have is $274,161.88 in the bank and no debt, per her October 22 report.

The actual price gets set by the 21 county clerks and published by the Secretary of State no later than November 27, so nobody has a real number yet. But the state posted its prices the last time this happened. Statewide recounts in 2022 ran about $256,000 across 64 counties, roughly $4,000 a county, and the two statewide races that week differed by $260 despite different ballot counts, which tells you Colorado prices this by county and staffing, not by ballot. Twenty-one counties puts CD-4 somewhere around $100,000 to $175,000. Call it half her cash on hand, paid to machine-rescan the same scanners under a rule written during Scott Gessler’s own term as Secretary of State, chasing a 3,237-vote gap in a process that moved exactly four votes the last time her own race went through one.

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And, interestingly, I have an interest in what happens with this recount. As you may know, she filed a restraining order against me for reporting on her. In return, we filed an anti-SLAPP motion against her. My motion essentially asks the judge to treat her restraining order as a political act to restrict my 1st Amendment rights as an American and journalist. The SLAPP act also requires Boebert to pay my legal fees if I win our motion. We are going to win that motion based upon the law.

My Running Tab

Thursday I said the final margin would be about 2,700. Friday I moved it to 3,900. Saturday, 3,500. Today, 3,700.

I keep moving it because the inputs keep moving. What hasn’t moved in six days is which direction this thing is going.

Counties are back at it Monday. I’ll run the numbers again.

DBW

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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From the Secretary of State’s feed, version 386035, Saturday morning:

• Eileen Laubacher (D): 185,818, 48.8%

• Lauren Boebert (R): 182,646, 47.9%

• Douglas Mangeris (L): 12,598, 3.3%

• 381,062 ballots counted.

• That’s about 97% of what anybody expects to come in.

• Laubacher’s margin is 0.83 points.

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What Ballots Came in Overnight

2,377 votes. All of them from two counties, Arapahoe with 2,177 and Larimer with 200. Laubacher is winning both. Her lead grew another 103.

Look at the week. Thursday morning she was up 2,513. Friday, 3,069. Today, 3,172. Her margin has not gone down in a single batch since Wednesday night. Not one.

Where the Rest of the Vote Is Now

Roughly 11,250 ballots left. About 85% of those sit in Douglas, Larimer and Arapahoe, and she’s carrying all three. Weld finished Thursday. El Paso finished Friday. I talked to Weld Clerk Carly Koppes myself, and her people were done and proud of it.

Run every remaining county at the split it’s been producing all week and the leftovers net Laubacher another 362 votes.

The Recount Line

Colorado triggers an automatic recount when the margin falls within 0.5% of the leader’s total. For Laubacher that’s 929 votes right now.

She’s up 3,172. That’s three and a half times the line.

So forget winning for a second. For Boebert to even get the free recount she’s fundraising off, she has to find more than 2,200 net votes out of about 11,250. To actually win she needs roughly 65% of what’s left, a 30-point margin. Her best county all week was Weld at 62%, and Weld is closed.

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What BeetleJuice Boebert is Saying

Scott Gessler, her campaign lawyer and a former Republican Secretary of State, said Thursday night that the campaign is “investigating some very unusual voting patterns” and expects “this election to head to a recount, one way or another.”

He didn’t name a county. He didn’t name a precinct. He didn’t name a batch. Colorado Politics asked him for details and he didn’t answer. Not one clerk in the district has reported an irregularity, and neither has the Secretary of State’s office.

That same day a Boebert fundraising email told donors the race “goes into an automatic recount if the margin is 0.5% or lower.” That is not the law. The threshold is 0.5% of the leader’s total, not of all votes cast. Gessler didn’t answer questions about it. Neither did her spokesman.

They’re raising money off a number they got wrong.

Where it Ends

Push this week’s county splits through the ballots still out and you get something like 191,400 for Laubacher, 187,900 for Boebert, 12,970 for Mangeris. Turnout lands near 392,300, about 87% of 2024. Final margin somewhere around 3,500, call it a range of 2,800 to 4,300.

Cure, provisional and military ballots come in through November 12 and are not in that number. They’ll add a few hundred. They have never flipped a margin this size.

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Where I’ve Been Wrong in the Post-Election Count

Thursday I had the final margin at about 2,700. Friday I moved it to 3,900 because the overnight batches ran better for Laubacher than the county averages said they would. Today I’m at 3,500, because there turn out to be fewer ballots left than I thought yesterday.

I’ll keep posting the arithmetic. Including the days it makes me look dumb.

DBW

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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americanmuckrakers.org

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The Count Continues

As of AP’s latest update Friday midday:

• Eileen Laubacher (D): 184,624 (48.8%)

• Rep. Lauren Boebert (R): 181,555 (47.9%)

• Douglas Mangeris (L): 12,506 (3.3%)

Total counted: 378,685. Laubacher leads by 3,069 votes, 0.8 points. AP estimates 95 percent of the vote is in.

The Secretary of State finally refreshed Thursday night after missing its own 4 PM MT deadline. The state shows Laubacher ahead by 3,024 on 377,647 votes, slightly behind AP’s count.

The overnight batch broke her way

Since Thursday morning, 17,205 new votes have been counted. They split 49.2 percent Laubacher, 46.0 percent Boebert, 4.9 percent Mangeris, a Laubacher margin of 3.2 points. Her lead grew by 556 votes, from 2,513 to 3,069.

That is the first batch since election night that moved the margin in her direction, and it happened for the reason I laid out Thursday: the counties with ballots left are the counties she is winning.

Six counties reported. By my arithmetic from AP’s county margins:

Larimer added 7,409 votes at roughly 51 Laubacher to 44 Boebert, net Laubacher about 500.

Douglas added 6,382 at roughly 52 to 43, net Laubacher about 600. That is noticeably bluer than Douglas’s Wednesday batch, which ran near even.

Arapahoe added 1,194 at roughly 58 to 38, net Laubacher about 240.

Adams added 1,020 at roughly 61 Boebert to 36 Laubacher, net Boebert about 260.

Weld added 834 at roughly 62 to 32, net Boebert about 257.

El Paso added 366 at roughly 82 to 12, net Boebert about 257.

The 14 plains counties and Elbert added nothing. Several show refreshed timestamps with identical vote totals, which means they are reporting and have nothing new to report.

Weld’s numbers check out

Clerk Carly Koppes told me Thursday that Weld was done except for cure ballots and ballots forwarded from other counties. The county has since added 834 votes, which is exactly what that description predicts.

Weld has now added 4,176 CD-4 votes since Wednesday evening. The clerk’s figures, 7,500 ballots with about 2,500 leaving the congressional race blank, implied roughly 5,000 CD-4 votes. Thursday I flagged a gap of about 1,700 between her numbers and what the count showed. Most of that gap has now closed.

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Boebert’s lawyer raises “unusual voting patterns”

Late Thursday, Scott Gessler, an attorney for the Boebert campaign and a former Republican Colorado secretary of state, issued a statement:

“We are investigating some very unusual voting patterns and expect this election to head to a recount, one way or another.”

The statement named no county, cited no data, and described no specific irregularity. Gessler did not respond when Colorado Politics asked him to specify which patterns he meant. No county clerk, the Secretary of State’s office, or the Laubacher campaign had responded as of Friday morning.

Separately, a Boebert campaign fundraising email misstated Colorado’s recount threshold. A campaign spokesman did not respond to a question about it. The actual threshold Friday morning was 923 votes. The current margin is more than three times that.

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Where the remaining ballots are

AP’s county percentages imply about 20,000 ballots left. I think the real figure is closer to 16,000, and here is why.

El Paso County has finished counting and will not post again until after the eight-day cure period. Weld is done except for cures. The 14 plains counties have posted nothing since election night, and Elbert nothing since Wednesday afternoon. AP’s model still assigns those counties about 5,500 ballots between them. Some of that is cure and military ballots due by Nov 12. Much of it is model estimate rather than paper.

What is unquestionably real sits in three counties:

Douglas, about 8,400 left at a 52 to 43 late split, worth about 750 to Laubacher.

Arapahoe, about 3,600 left at 58 to 38, worth about 720.

Larimer, about 2,400 left at 51 to 44, worth about 170.

Everything else combined, roughly 1,600 ballots running about 62 Boebert to 33, worth about 465 to her.

Net of all of it: Laubacher gains roughly 1,200 more votes.

One caution the other way. AP told the Denver Gazette the race was over 97 percent counted at 9 AM Friday. Three hours later its own page said 95 percent. AP revised its expected turnout upward, meaning it now believes more ballots exist than it did that morning. That is the opposite of the lesson Weld taught this week.

What Boebert needs

Trailing by 3,069 with roughly 16,000 ballots left, Boebert needs about 60 percent of the two-candidate remainder, a margin of roughly 20 points. On AP’s larger estimate of 20,000 remaining, she needs about 58 percent, a 16-point margin.

Her best single batch all week was Weld at 62 percent, and Weld has finished counting. Roughly 90 percent of what remains is in Douglas, Arapahoe and Larimer, where her overnight batches ran 43, 38 and 44 percent.

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Projected final tally

• Laubacher: about 190,100

• Boebert: about 186,200

• Mangeris: about 13,200

• Total about 389,500.

Projected margin: Laubacher by about 3,900, range 2,800 to 4,600.

The low end assumes AP’s full 20,000 is real and the plains counties deliver one more red batch. The high end assumes those counties are finished and the remaining ballots run as Thursday night’s did. Cure, provisional and military ballots through Nov 12 are not in these numbers.

The recount line

Colorado orders an automatic recount when the margin is within 0.5 percent of the leader’s total. That is about 923 votes today and about 955 at the projected final. The current margin is 3,069.

• Laubacher by 3,000 or more: 62 percent

• Laubacher by 1,000 to 3,000: 31 percent

• Laubacher by under 1,000: 4 percent

• Boebert wins: 3 percent

Laubacher wins in about 97 percent of outcomes. An automatic recount, about 4 percent. A candidate may also request and pay for a recount at any margin, which is the scenario Gessler’s statement points toward.

What We’re Watching For You Today:

• Douglas County, about 8,400 ballots left and posting daily. This is the race.

• Arapahoe at 80 percent counted, the lowest in the district and her strongest county per ballot.

• Larimer, about 2,400 left after Thursday’s 7,409.

• Whether Gessler’s office identifies any county, precinct or batch behind the “unusual voting patterns” claim.

• Whether AP calls the race. CD-4 is the last uncalled congressional contest in Colorado.

• Cure, provisional and military deadline is 11:59 PM Nov 12. Counties finish tabulating Nov 13.

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Revision

Thursday I projected Laubacher by 2,700. The overnight batches ran bluer than I assumed in Douglas and Larimer, and her lead grew by 556 instead of drifting down. The projection moves to 3,900. I have now revised this number four times in three days, every time because the late ballots refused to behave like the ballots that came before them.

DBW

Methodology: Vote totals from AP as of Friday midday, Nov 6, and the Colorado Secretary of State feed, version 385816. County batch splits are derived by subtracting Thursday’s AP county totals and margins from Friday’s; AP publishes county margins rounded to one decimal, so each derived split carries an error of up to a few points. Remaining ballots from AP’s county percentages, adjusted downward for counties that have publicly finished counting. Recount threshold per Colorado law. Scenario probabilities are the author’s judgment. The Gessler statement is quoted as reported by Colorado Politics and the Denver Gazette. All figures unofficial.

Sources:

• Colorado Politics: Laubacher maintains lead

• Denver Gazette: Boebert campaign alleges ‘unusual voting patterns’

• Newsweek: Boebert team flags ‘unusual voting patterns’

• Colorado SOS results feed

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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This is the bunker scene from Der Untergang (Downfall), the clip the internet has been re-captioning for nearly twenty years to mock everyone from football coaches to tech CEOs. The film itself is a serious work about the last days of a regime that murdered six million Jews and millions of others. Nothing here makes light of that. The Holocaust was real, its survivors and the memory of the dead deserve our respect, and the hatred behind it has not gone anywhere.

The joke in this meme has never been the Nazis. The joke is a tyrant melting down over something small, and in this version the something small is Lauren Boebert losing a district that was handed to her on a plate. If the format isn’t for you, I understand, skip it. If it is, enjoy, and keep your eyes on the real fools.

DBW

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The Count Continues

As of AP’s latest update Thursday morning:

• Eileen Laubacher (D): 176,162 (48.7%)

• Rep. Lauren Boebert (R): 173,649 (48.0%)

• Douglas Mangeris (L): 11,669 (3.2%)

• Total counted: 361,480.

• Laubacher leads by 2,513 votes, 0.7 points.

• AP estimates 92 percent of the vote is in.

The Secretary of State’s feed has not refreshed since 5:38 PM MT Wednesday, when it showed Laubacher ahead by 3,483 on 357,670 votes. The state’s next update is due by 4 PM MT today.

Weld is done, and 2,500 Ballots Skipped the Congressional Race in Latest Count

I spoke with Weld County Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes Thursday. Her office has finished counting CD-4 votes, apart from cure ballots and ballots forwarded in from other counties. Here is the number that matters.

An undervote is a ballot that was cast and counted but skipped one or more race. The voter turned it in, picked a governor or a senator, and left the congressional line empty. Those ballots count toward turnout. They just produce no vote in CD-4.

A typical congressional undervote runs 2 to 5 percent. Thirty-three percent is voter disgust and roughly ten times typical undervotes.

My read: people in Weld County who would not vote for Boebert and would not vote for a Democrat either found a third option, which was to vote for everything else on the ballot and stop. Two years of national coverage, a theater video, a move across the state, and a primary fight will do that to a politician’s own voters. It is the quietest way to tell an incumbent you are finished with her.

That is my read, and readers should weigh the alternatives. Late-arriving drop-off ballots skew toward voters who fill in less of the ballot. Weld spans three congressional districts, and the county already had a ballot-style problem this cycle with a Front Range Passenger Rail question that reached voters who should not have received it. Any of that could account for part of the gap.

What is not in dispute is the effect. The 7,500 CD-4 votes Boebert’s side was waiting on turned into roughly 5,000, and the batch that did arrive ran 57 to 36 rather than the 65 to 30 of Wednesday afternoon.

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What Moved Overnight

Three counties posted after the state’s Wednesday evening snapshot. All three lean Boebert.

• Weld added about 3,342 CD-4 votes in AP’s count, roughly 57 percent Boebert, 36 percent Laubacher, 6 percent Mangeris. Net Boebert, about 700.

• Adams added 232 votes, about 76 to 21. Net Boebert, roughly 130.

• El Paso added 236 votes, about 76 to 18. Net Boebert, roughly 135.

No new numbers from Douglas, Larimer, Arapahoe, Elbert or the 14 plains counties since Wednesday afternoon. The first three are counties Laubacher is winning.

One caveat on Weld. If the county reported about 5,000 CD-4 votes in its final batch and AP has absorbed about 3,342 of them, roughly 1,700 may still appear in the state’s posting this afternoon. At Weld’s late split that would cost Laubacher about 350 votes. The 4 PM MT update settles it.

Where the Remaining Ballots Are Located

About 26,500 ballots remain, and roughly 90 percent of them sit in three counties Laubacher is carrying:

Douglas is the biggest pile, about 10,300. Its late batches have run close to even, 47 percent Boebert to 48 percent Laubacher, so the county that decides the district by size barely moves the margin: Laubacher +130.

Larimer has about 9,000 left and a 45 to 50 split, worth +530.

Arapahoe has the smallest of the three at 4,400, but the widest split, 35 to 60, which makes it her most valuable county per ballot at +1,150.

What is left on Boebert’s side is redder but much thinner now that Weld has stopped:

• The 14 plains counties have about 1,500 between them at 67 to 27, worth +590.

• El Paso (550 ballots at 76 to 18)

• Adams (530 at 76 to 21)

• Elbert (170 at 70 to 25) add another +690 combined.

Add it up and Laubacher nets about 370 votes out of everything left. Her three counties hold about 23,700 of the 26,500. Boebert’s six hold about 2,750.

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What Boebert Needs to Win

Trailing by 2,513 with about 26,500 ballots left, Boebert needs a 9.5-point margin on everything remaining, roughly 55 percent of the two-candidate vote.

Wednesday afternoon’s full batch of 14,389 votes ran Boebert +9.8, but that batch leaned on Elbert and Weld, both now finished. Without Elbert it ran +3.2.

Wednesday night’s 3,810 votes ran +25.5, and the three counties that produced them have little or nothing left. The remaining ballots, weighted by county and each county’s latest split, run slightly toward Laubacher.

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Projected Final Tally

The low end assumes the roughly 1,700 outstanding Weld votes land at Weld’s late split and Douglas, Larimer and Arapahoe run a couple of points redder than their late batches. The high end assumes AP already has all of Weld and Wednesday’s splits hold.

Cured ballots and military and overseas ballots through Nov 12 are not in these numbers.

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The Recount Line

Colorado orders an automatic recount when the margin is within 0.5 percent of the leader’s total: about 880 votes today, about 945 at the projected final.

• Laubacher by 2,000 or more: 54 percent

• Laubacher by 1,000 to 2,000: 29 percent

• Laubacher by under 1,000: 10 percent

• Boebert wins: 7 percent, most of it inside the recount line

• Laubacher wins in about 92 percent of outcomes. A recount, either way, about 15 percent.

What We’re Watching For You Today

1. Secretary of State posting by 4 PM MT, and whether Weld’s final number is larger than AP currently shows.

2. Larimer’s fifth posting, promised by 5 PM MT. About 9,000 ballots left there.

3. Douglas, about 10,300 left. Its late batches have run near even.

4. Arapahoe, about 4,400 left at roughly 60 to 35 Laubacher.

5. Whether the undervote that hollowed out Weld’s final batch shows up in other counties.

6. Counties send cure notices today. Cure, provisional and military deadline is 11:59 PM Nov 12. Counties finish tabulating Nov 13.

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Revision

Wednesday I projected Laubacher by 5,770, then 5,700. Both assumed late ballots would match each county’s overall numbers. They ran redder: Douglas by 11 points, Larimer by 6, Weld by 19. That took me to 2,650 Thursday morning. Weld finishing its count, with 2,500 of its last ballots skipping the race entirely, puts it at 2,700. The leader has not changed; the cushion has and I have adjusted our projections.

DBW

Methodology: Vote totals from AP as of Thursday morning, Nov 5, and the Colorado Secretary of State feed, version 385686, posted 5:38 PM MT Nov 4. Weld’s status and undervote figure from an interview with Weld County Clerk and Recorder Carly Koppes, Nov 5. Weld’s overnight split derived from AP’s county total minus the state’s Wednesday figures. Remaining ballots from AP’s county percentages, with Weld set to zero. Each county’s most recent late batch applied to its remaining ballots; Mangeris held at each county’s late share. Recount threshold per Colorado law. Scenario probabilities are the author’s judgment. All figures unofficial.

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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Eileen Laubacher’s lead over Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District has grown to roughly 5,000 votes after small midday updates from Arapahoe and Adams counties.

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Arapahoe added 462 votes and Laubacher’s margin there ticked up to 26 points. Adams added 51 votes, favoring Boebert by 26. Net effect: about 105 votes to Laubacher, pushing her lead from 4,894 at the 4:02 a.m. posting to about 5,000.

Douglas, Larimer and Weld, the three largest counties with ballots still out, have not posted since early this morning. Larimer has said to expect its next update by 5 p.m. Mountain.

The remaining universe is now an estimated 21,500 ballots, down from about 22,600. Roughly 14,000 of them are in Larimer, Arapahoe and Douglas, all counties Laubacher is carrying. Boebert’s strongest counties on the Eastern Plains are at or above 95% reported.

Running the remaining ballots at current county margins nets Laubacher another 700 or so. Projected final: Laubacher by about 5,700, or 1.6 points. The automatic recount line is about 840 votes.

To overtake a 5,000-vote deficit with 21,500 ballots left, Boebert would need about 62% of what remains. She has won 47.7% of the vote counted so far.

The ballot cure and military-overseas window closes November 12. The Associated Press has not called the race.

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

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Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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Democrat Eileen Laubacher leads Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert by 4,894 votes in Colorado’s 4th Congressional District as of the Colorado Secretary of State’s 4:02 a.m. Mountain posting on Wednesday, November 4. The Associated Press has not called the race. Neither candidate has conceded or claimed victory.

The count so far

Of 343,281 ballots tabulated districtwide:

• Eileen Laubacher (D): 168,729, 49.2%

• Lauren Boebert (R): 163,835, 47.7%

• Douglas Mangeris (L): 10,717, 3.1%

Douglas County is the anchor. It has reported 191,580 CD-4 votes, with Laubacher ahead there 103,482 to 82,393, a 21,089-vote advantage. Laubacher also leads in the Arapahoe and Larimer portions of the district. Boebert leads in Weld, Adams, El Paso, Elbert and the Eastern Plains counties.

Official results: https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/CO/127407/

There is no official count of ballots remaining

Colorado’s Election Night Reporting system publishes votes and whether each county has finished its election-night upload. It does not publish a county-by-county inventory of ballots still waiting to be counted. As of 9:05 a.m. Mountain on November 4, none of the 21 counties with territory in CD-4 had posted an outstanding-ballot total.

Every “ballots remaining” figure in circulation, including the ones below, is a model estimate built from expected turnout, not a count from a clerk’s office. The estimates vary widely. AP’s model, as published by NBC, had 83% of the expected vote in. The New York Times had 94%. A third-party tracker had 97%. The disagreement is about final turnout, not about the votes already counted.

The 2024 presidential-year total in CD-4 was 447,807. Midterms typically run 15 to 20 percent lighter, which points to a final total near 365,000 and roughly 20,000 to 22,000 ballots still to be added. That is the basis for the projection below.

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Election-night complete does not mean counting complete

A county can report its election-night upload as finished while still holding ballots that will legally enter the tally later. Four categories remain in play:

1. Ballots received by the 7 p.m. November 3 deadline but not yet fully processed. Larimer County stopped processing after its third posting at 11:41 p.m. Tuesday and resumed Wednesday morning. Its next update is expected by 5 p.m. Mountain today.

2. Ballots held for signature or identification cure. Counties must send cure notices by November 5. Voters have until 11:59 p.m. November 12 to fix them.

3. Provisional ballots awaiting eligibility review, also due by November 12.

4. Military and overseas ballots that were sent by 7 p.m. Election Day and arrive by November 12.

Ordinary domestic mail ballots that arrive after 7 p.m. on November 3 do not count, regardless of postmark.

Douglas County says its post-election updates will include ballots returned close to the deadline, eligible military and overseas ballots, and cured ballots. It last posted at 12:33 a.m. Wednesday and has not announced its next update time.

Douglas County is not all CD-4

On election night Boebert told supporters 50,000 Douglas County ballots had yet to be counted. No county official has confirmed that number. Douglas County is also split between the 4th District and Jason Crow’s 6th District, so a share of any uncounted Douglas ballots belongs to a different race. The Times estimated fewer than 5,000 CD-4 ballots remain in Douglas.

Where the remaining ballots are

Using the Times’ county-level estimates and each county’s current margin, with the Libertarian share held at 3%:

The three largest blocks of uncounted ballots are in the three counties Laubacher is winning. Boebert’s strongest counties are already at or above 95% reported. Kiowa County, where she leads by 71 points, reported 723 ballots cast and has fewer than 100 left.

Net effect of the remaining vote: Laubacher gains roughly 875.

What Boebert needs

Boebert must net 4,895 votes over Laubacher from everything added after the 4:02 a.m. snapshot. The share she would need depends entirely on how many ballots are left:

Any remaining Libertarian votes make the requirement slightly harder. Boebert has won 47.7% of the vote counted so far.

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My Projected Final Vote Tally

• Laubacher: about 180,100, 49.2%

• Boebert: about 174,350, 47.6%

• Mangeris: about 11,400, 3.1%

• Total: about 365,900

Projected margin: Laubacher by about 5,770 votes, 1.6 points.

Even if late-arriving ballots break 10 points better for Boebert than current county margins, she finishes roughly 3,500 votes short.

The recount line

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Colorado orders an automatic recount when the margin is within one-half of one percent of the leading candidate’s total. At current numbers that is about 840 votes. Laubacher’s lead is nearly six times that.

In 2022, the cure and military-overseas period cut Boebert’s lead in the 3rd District from 1,122 votes to 557, and a mandatory recount settled it at 546. That late period moved a few hundred votes. It did not move thousands.

The calendar

• November 5: counties must send cure notices

• November 12, 11:59 p.m.: cure deadline, provisional review deadline, last day for military and overseas ballots to arrive

• November 13: counties must finish tabulating accepted ballots

• November 24: risk-limiting audit report due

• November 25: county canvass deadline

• November 27: final results due to the state

The Secretary of State updates results at least once each weekday by 4 p.m. Mountain through November 12, except Veterans Day.

Prediction

Laubacher wins. The remaining ballots are concentrated in the three counties she is carrying, Boebert’s strongest counties are essentially finished, and the cure and overseas window has never moved a Colorado congressional race by more than a few hundred votes. The margin should widen into the mid-5,000s as Larimer, Arapahoe and Douglas post this week, and it will finish well outside the automatic recount threshold. If the Larimer and Douglas updates on Wednesday do not cut Laubacher’s lead below roughly 2,500 votes, the race is over in everything but the formal call.

DBW

Methodology: vote totals from the Colorado Secretary of State’s 4:02 a.m. MT posting on November 4, 2026. Remaining-vote estimates from The New York Times county table the same morning. Current county margins applied to remaining ballots; Libertarian share held at 3%; midpoints used where the Times listed a ceiling. Deadlines from the Secretary of State’s 2026 election calendar. All figures unofficial.

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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Since my attorneys filed our anti-SLAPP motion to throw out Rep. Lauren Boebert’s protection order case against my reporting, her lawyers have done one thing with real energy.

They have asked for more time.

I am not going to characterize it. I am going to show you the court’s own e-service notices, exactly as they landed in my attorney’s inbox, and let you draw your own conclusion.

The record

Filing No. 1. October 14, 2026. Served by Scott Eric Gessler, Weld County Court, Division 9, case 2026C001286, Boebert, Lauren v. Wheeler, David B. Document title: Unopposed Motion for an Extension of Time to Respond to Respondent’s Special Motion to Dismiss.

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We agreed to that one. My lawyers do not fight over scheduling, and a week is a week.

Filing No. 2. October 22, 2026, time-stamped 7:07 p.m. on a Thursday. Same lawyer, same case. Document title: Partially Unopposed Motion for an Extension of Time to Respond to Respondent’s Special Motion to Dismiss, with a proposed order attached.

“Partially unopposed” is a phrase worth decoding. Her attorney asked my attorney for a second extension, out to the following Monday. My attorney said no, file by Friday. So her side went to the judge for the extra days anyway.

Filing No. 3. October 25, 2026. Order re Partially Unopposed Motion for an Extension of Time to Respond to Respondent’s Special Motion to Dismiss. Granted.

So the response that was originally due has now been pushed, twice, and the next real date on the calendar is November 16. Election Day is November 3.

You can do that math yourself.

How we got here

For readers who are new to this, the short version.

In September I filed a sworn ethics complaint against Rep. Boebert with the House Committee on Ethics, built on House disbursement records, FEC filings, and named sources who gave written statements. I published it. Her office responded not with records but with a press release calling me a perjurer, and then, three days after the complaint was filed, she walked into a Weld County courtroom and asked for a civil protection order against me.

Not a defamation suit, where she would have to prove I said something false. A protection order, the kind of filing meant for people in physical danger, aimed at a journalist in North Carolina who has never been in her presence except for an eight-second handshake at a public event that she herself has posted about.

It was the seventh protection order petition she has filed since 2018. Five of the previous ones ended in dismissal or a vacated order, often because she did not show up. I wrote about that pattern earlier this month.

What happened on October 1

The temporary order hearing was October 1. By then she had retained Scott Gessler, the former Colorado Secretary of State, who entered his appearance the day before. The morning of the hearing her side filed a motion for contempt, arguing I had violated the temporary order by continuing to publish. My lawyers, Dan Ernst and Alan Feldman, had already filed our special motion to dismiss under Colorado’s anti-SLAPP statute, C.R.S. 13-20-1101, the law that exists precisely so public officials cannot use the courts to silence reporting about them.

The judge allowed me and my witnesses to testify remotely. More importantly, the court ruled that the anti-SLAPP statute applies to her case and set a briefing schedule. That is the schedule she is now stretching.

One more thing from that day that I take seriously. The court directed that I not tag or otherwise direct communication at Rep. Boebert on social media. I have complied and will continue to. Reporting about a Member of Congress is protected. Messaging her is not what I do, and the order does not change what I publish.

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Why the delay matters

Under the anti-SLAPP statute, once the court finds the law applies, the burden shifts to her. She has to show a reasonable likelihood of actually winning her petition. Her lawyers have had our motion since the end of September. They have now been granted until past Election Day to answer it.

If she loses the motion, the statute allows the court to order her to pay our attorney fees. My lawyers believe we will win. Dan, who handled my earlier federal defamation case against her, also reminded me of something every litigator knows: winning a fee award and collecting it are two different things, and collecting from a defendant can take years, if it happens at all.

Which brings me to the part she is counting on.

Every extension is another week my legal team stays on the clock. I pay for the clock. She does not. The invoices do not pause because her attorney asked the judge for a few more days. I owe my lawyers today, and I will owe them more by November 16.

Where the fund stands

The legal defense fund goal is $25,000. We are still about $10,000 short.

I am a single father in the mountains of Western North Carolina who runs a small accountability outfit. She is a sitting Member of Congress with a campaign account and a former Secretary of State at the table. Her strategy, as far as I can read it from the docket, is to make this last longer than my money does.

If you can help close the gap, here is the link:

https://secure.numero.ai/contribute/crimefamily

$25, $50, $100, whatever you can. Every dollar goes to the lawyers. If you prefer a check, make it out to American Muckrakers PAC, Inc., 237 Rockledge Rd, Spruce Pine, NC 28777.

When her response finally lands, we answer it. When the November 16 date comes, we argue it. When we win, we go after her for every dollar in fees, however long that takes.

But we have to get there first.

Thank you for standing with me.

David B. Wheeler President, American Muckrakers PAC, Inc.

If you have tips about Rep. Boebert, contact me at david@americanmuckrakers.com.

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About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her, with your help, in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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This morning I read my friend Denver Riggleman’s post about Vivek Ramaswamy and the ad he just released against Dr. Amy Acton.

Then I did my own research. Go watch Denver’s piece. It hit him hard for personal reasons he discussed, and it hit me harder.

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I know what some of you are thinking. I’ve put out some nasty material on Madison Cawthorn, Mark “Nudeafrica.com” Robinson, and BeetleJuice Boebert. Guilty. But every one of those hit pieces was built on reporting, public records, images, and the politicians’ own words. They earned what they got.

And I have always drawn one line: family stays out of it. The only exception is when a politician drags an adult relative into the campaign themselves, like BeetleJuice showing up to testify at the sentencing hearings of her adult son, Tyler Boebert, the biggest crook in Garfield County, CO. You put them on the field, they’re in the game. Otherwise, hands off.

Here is all you need to know. Dr. Acton’s mother is clearly a woman in crisis. When Amy was 12 years old, the state of Ohio took her away from that mother because of child abuse. Amy Acton survived that. She went on to become a doctor and the person who guided Ohio through the worst of a pandemic. That is the woman Vivek Ramaswamy decided to attack, and the weapon he chose was her abuser.

I don’t get incensed very often. Politics is not for the meek, and in 45 years I’ve been around plenty of weirdos, crooks, and, thankfully, some truly great candidates and staff. I’ve seen desperate. I have never seen anyone this desperate to win.

NOTE: What follows is NSFW, and may offend some. (I doubt it, my readers tend towards being tough minded.)

If that’s where you get off this post, no hard feelings. I won’t do this again, but I have to get it out of my system.

Vivek Ramaswamy is the biggest cunt I have ever not met in my 61 years on this earth.

I don’t use that word often. But I’m mostly English, so I’ll claim the heritage and ascribe it to this disgusting person. The only other politician I’ve ever slung it at is BeetleJuice Boebert, and even BB isn’t half the cunt Ramaswamy is.

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Don’t watch the ad unless you want to be sick to your stomach. I watched it so you don’t have to. And he’s not apologizing. He’s doubling down:

We actually do know what happened Vivek. Dr. Acton’s mother’s husband raped her.

Vivek deserves a special place in politician hell, and the good people of Ohio can send him there with a loss by double digits.

Send your love to . And, please send a vote of support via $5.00 or $1000. Donate if you can. I did.

As the only adults in this fucked up country right now, let’s stand up for Amy, and let’s put Ramaswamy where he belongs.

DBW

About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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Two weeks out. Every woman, man, non-binary, dog, cat and ant with a Substack and a spreadsheet has a prediction, and most of them are the same prediction with a different font. So I figured I’d skip the pundits and go straight to the machines. All of them.

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Ten chatbots: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Kimi, Mistral, Perplexity, Meta, and Qwen. That’s two American, one French, three Chinese, and whatever Grok is. Three questions. Who gets the House. Who gets the Senate. How many governors does each side end up with. One answer each, no weaseling, no “it depends on turnout.” I told them to go read the polls, the betting markets, and my own model at DatumSignals.com before they opened their mouths.

Ten for ten: Democrats take the House. Ten for ten: Democrats take the Senate. Governors came back somewhere between 24 and 27 Democrats, up from the 24 we’ve got now.

Unanimous. Tidy. And about as useful as a weather forecast that says “look outside.”

Here’s the thing. When ten robots all read the same four websites (Kalshi, Polymarket, Cook, and whoever’s averaging the generic ballot this week), you don’t have ten opinions. You’ve got one opinion in ten costumes. That’s not intelligence. That’s plumbing. Same water, different faucets.

So I did what my old editor at the North Warren Town and Country News would have done. I took the cheat sheets away. Ran it again: no polls, no markets, no forecast sites, no peeking at Datum. Figure it out from the map, the history, and whatever you think you know about the national mood. Give me a number.

The House didn’t blink.

All ten stayed Democratic, 68 to 92 percent. The president’s party has lost House seats in 18 of the last 20 midterms and the GOP majority is so thin you could read the Boebert indictment through it. If there were one. I’m just saying it’s thin.

The Senate fell apart.

Six of ten (ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Perplexity, Meta) swung to Republicans holding the chamber, 55 to 65 percent. Their argument is straight out of Poli Sci 101 at Iowa, which I took, and which I’ll note was not a chatbot: Democrats need four net pickups, most of the GOP seats on the ballot sit in states that’d vote for a fence post with an R on it, and Senate races come down to candidates, not mood. A 50-50 tie still belongs to the vice president. Only four stuck with Democrats (Claude, Kimi, Mistral, Qwen), and only Qwen sounded sure, because it bothered to count: Republicans defending 20 seats, Democrats 13. Math. Who knew.

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Meta reasoned its way to a Republican hold using the 2024 map. Wrong year, pal. That’s like forecasting the Hawkeyes with Hayden Fry’s roster. Perplexity, the one that searches the web whether you ask it to or not, had the live numbers sitting right in front of it and still called it for Republicans once I told it to quit leaning on the forecasters. It reasoned straight past its own data. I know people like that. Some of them are in Congress.

That’s the election in one breath. The House is a fundamentals story. The Senate is a mood story. If the mood holds fifteen more days, Democrats get 51. If it slips even a little, Republicans keep the gavel at 50 or 51, and the new House majority spends two years passing bills that go across the Capitol to die.

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Governors got messy.

Blind answers ran from “nothing changes” (DeepSeek, Perplexity, Meta, 24 D) all the way to 27 D. A few of the machines were working off maps older than my truck. One had Democrats “picking up” Maine, which Democrats already hold, and which Maine would probably like to keep. Toss those. The ones that actually knew the map clustered at 27 Democrats, 23 Republicans. That’d be the first Democratic majority of governors since 2010, back when the Ted Cruz was thinking about doing something with Boebert in Aspen.

So what does my model say?

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Datum Signals is the forecast I built for every Senate, governor, and House race in the country. It stands on three legs. First, structure: partisan lean, incumbency, how much money the challenger’s raising. Second, a behavioral mood index, state-by-state data on how people are actually feeling, updated every day. I call it the National Weather Service for civic emotions, and yes, I’ve trademarked that. Third, a midterm thermostat, the long-run habit voters have of smacking whoever’s in the White House. It refreshes daily and posts a live Brier score so you can see how often it’s been right. Out of sample, 2014 through 2024, it’s at 0.098. Lower is better. A coin flip is 0.25. Most cable guests would be happy to break 0.30.

This morning it’s got Democrats at 63 percent to take the Senate, 71 percent for the House, and 19 of the 36 governorships on the ballot, with Republicans at 16 and one toss-up. Add the seats that aren’t up and you land at 24 or 25 Democratic governors.

That puts Datum right in the pack on the Senate, which is where a mood-driven model ought to be. On the House it’s the most cautious number on the board; if this is a wave, we’ll be right on direction and a hair underconfident. On governors it’s on the low end, which tells me the toss-up bucket is probably hoarding races that belong in Lean D. I’ll be poking at that this week. The whole thing’s public at datumsignals.com/forecast, and if you think you can beat it, there’s a page for that too. Bring a lunch.

My calls, on the record.

House: Democrats.

Senate: Democrats, 51 to 49.

Governors: 27 Democrats, 23 Republicans.

I’ll grade every one of these against the actual results November 3, same as I grade the model, and the receipts will be sitting at datumsignals.com/calibration whether I like them or not.

One last thing.

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The point of a stunt like this isn’t to find out what the robots think. It’s to find out what they’re thinking with. Yank the inputs and you learn which of your beliefs are holding up the roof. Mine, it turns out, is a nine-point generic ballot surviving two more weeks. I’ll take that bet. But at least now I know exactly what I’m betting on.

I’ll run this whole circus again a week from today and once more on election eve. Same ten robots, same three questions. We’ll see who flinches.

Your turn.

Ten machines, one thermometer, and I’ve shown you my cards. Vote below and I’ll run your numbers against the robots next week. If this crowd beats ChatGPT, I’m putting it in the headline.

Finally, any comments, suggestions, or critiques are welcome.

DBW

About the Author

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Lauren Boebert, Ken Paxton, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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I pulled every electronic filing Lauren Boebert’s campaign and her six joint fundraising committees have submitted to the FEC since she first filed in late 2019. Not the summaries. The raw files, line by line, memo by memo, 107 reports with the amendments reconciled. Then I pulled the House of Representatives’ own Statement of Disbursements for every quarter she has been in office and laid her official payroll next to her campaign payroll.

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What you get is a gravy train extraordinaire. Donors in DC, FL, Rifle, Grand Junction and Windsor thought they were buying a fighter. What they bought was a lavish lifestyle for the candidate, her family and a second paycheck for the favorites around her.

The numbers

From December 2019 through September 30, 2026, Lauren Boebert for Congress reported $16.8 million in receipts and $16.6 million in disbursements. Team Boebert JFC and the smaller victory funds controlled by her moved another $1.8 million. Of the campaign’s itemized spending, about $1.02 million went to travel across 1,456 transactions, and about $188,000 went to food and drink across 319 transactions.

A million flipping dollars in travel for a House seat. Two hundred flights on United and American. Two hundred twenty-one Uber rides. Enterprise rental cars in Sarasota, Florida, over and over again, including one billed to the 2022 recount account in March 2023. The recount was in Colorado.

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The stuff you do not put on a campaign card

Start small. On July 12, 2024, the campaign paid $402.35 to Ray-Ban and called it “campaign attire.” That same reimbursement cycle included $240 to Halo Hair in Loveland, coded “debate prep.” The FEC has said for years that hair and clothing are personal expenses. Her compliance firm, Huckaby Davis Lisker, knows that. They filed it anyway.

Now go bigger. In June 2022 the campaign sent $36,000 to Post Hill Press, the publisher of her memoir. Another $6,000 followed in June 2023. Purpose: “Books.” A month before that first check, her campaign was running ads telling supporters to go buy the book. Her 2022 financial disclosure reported no royalty income. So the campaign bought tens of thousands of dollars of her own book from her own publisher, and we are supposed to believe none of that money found its way back to the author.

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In May and June 2021 the campaign Venmo’d $6,650 to a man named John Pacheco in Rifle. The filing says “Rent/Utilities billed to campaign via Venmo in error.” She paid it back in July, after it showed up in the books. Rent. On a campaign card. By accident. Twice.

In 2026 the campaign started paying Vivint, a residential home alarm company, every month. She also expensed Starlink internet and a $1,163 Verizon bill. Safelite Autoglass got $2,635 across two visits, coded “travel/car repair.” Whose windshield?

There is a $15,000 payment to Grand Canyon Scenic Airlines in February 2022, a sightseeing and charter outfit in Boulder City, Nevada. There are nine stays at the Tideline Ocean Resort and Spa in Palm Beach totaling $14,519. There is the Trump hotel in Las Vegas, the Waldorf Astoria, the Brown Palace, and a $741 “event catering” bill at the Rainforest Cafe at Disney World. There are 32 Instacart orders, 37 King Soopers runs and 45 Grubhub deliveries, most of them coded as event catering or meeting expense. Somebody is eating very well on the donors’ dime.

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And there are the big checks nobody can explain. $50,000 to Rich Entertainment Touring in Nashville in the fall of 2022. $35,000 to Professional Bull Riders in May 2025 for “event site rental/tickets.” $4,148 to Sergio Gor, personally, for “event catering.” Sergio Gor is not a caterer. He is a Trump political operative.

You cannot read a motive off an FEC line, but you can add them up. I sorted every itemized disbursement into two tiers.

Tier one is spending that is hard to call anything but personal: $205,351 across 109 transactions. That is $78,652 in reimbursement checks written directly to Lauren Boebert, $42,000 for her own book, $38,126 in club memberships and dues at the Capitol Hill Club and the Conservative Partnership Center, $29,356 in clothing filed as campaign attire, $11,788 for the rent, the hair, the windshields, the home alarm, the Starlink and the Verizon bill, and $5,430 at the Apple Store.

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Tier two is the lifestyle. Travel, $946,972. Meals, groceries, Instacart and restaurants, $165,050. Entertainment and tickets, $109,360, which covers $50,000 to Rich Entertainment Touring in Nashville, the outfit behind Kid Rock’s tours, $35,000 to Professional Bull Riders, $7,500 to a California worship singer named John Feucht for “event entertainment,” and $5,000 to Rhema Music in Fruita, CO. That tier comes to $1,221,382.

Put the two together and you get roughly $1.45 million, about nine cents of every dollar her donors sent, spent on things that ended up on her plate, on her back, on her face, in her garage or in her hotel room. The $205,000 she will have trouble explaining. The $1.45 million she will have trouble living down.

What she took home

Set the campaign aside for a second and just count what landed in Lauren Boebert’s own account.

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Her congressional salary, January 3, 2021 through September 30, 2026, at the statutory $174,000 a year: $998,505. On top of that, the House reimbursed her personally $76,654, according to the Statement of Disbursements: $58,119 in Washington lodging, including the $2,000 a month housing allowance she has drawn nearly every month since it started in 2023, $12,880 in meals, $3,688 in taxis and rideshares, $1,967 in airfare. Then her campaign wrote her 29 reimbursement checks totaling $78,652.

That is $1,153,811 paid to Lauren Boebert by Lauren Boebert’s employer (the taxpayers), Lauren Boebert’s office budget, and Lauren Boebert’s donors. The taxpayers covered her rent. The donors covered her mileage. And she still charged the Ray-Bans to the campaign.

Code Red

A firm called Code Red Communications collected $256,212 from the campaign between August 2023 and October 2025 for “strategic consulting.” Its address on the filings moved from Grand Junction to Lone Tree in April 2024, right when she abandoned the Western Slope for the Fourth District. On December 6, 2024, a month after the election was over, the campaign cut Code Red a single check for $96,430.41.

Who owns Code Red Communications? What strategic consulting is worth $96,000 after the votes are counted? I do not know yet. I intend to find out.

The second paycheck

This is the part that should bother everyone, including the people who vote for her.

Thirteen people who drew a federal salary in her congressional office also drew checks from her campaign. Taxpayers paid those 13 people $3.85 million in House salary. The campaign paid them another $291,372 on top of it, most of it while they were on the House payroll.

Jeff Small was her chief of staff from January 2021 to January 2025. The taxpayers paid him $767,892 for that job. On December 13, 2022, the campaign paid him $28,057.69 for “strategic consulting/recount oversight.” On January 14, 2025, two weeks before he left the House payroll, the campaign paid him another $10,000 for “strategic consulting.” In between, the campaign reimbursed him $23,690 for travel and meals, much of it filed as “includes vendors not required to be itemized.” Translation: we are not telling you where the money went.

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Raven Finegan joined the House office in September 2022 as a Western Slope field rep and was promoted to regional director, district director and then district chief of staff in under three years, $456,014 in taxpayer salary along the way. On top of that she took $55,707 from the campaign, $15,500 of it labeled recount oversight. Jasmine Higgs, listed by the House as a part-time employee paid $282,833 over four years, took $41,195, including a $15,000 check in May 2023 for “recount oversight.” Clarice Navarro, her other district director, took $18,996. Daniel Hungerford, Jacob Settle, Ben Stout, Tabby Rosenthal, McKenna Farley, Bernadette Lake. Press secretary, comms director, legislative director, caseworker. All on both payrolls.

The recount that never ended

The 2022 recount was certified on December 12, 2022. The campaign spent $249,329 out of its recount account. $63,217 of that is dated after December 31, 2022. The $15,000 to Jasmine Higgs for recount oversight is dated May 8, 2023. Raven Finegan and McKenna Farley each got $7,500 for recount oversight on March 29, 2023. Rock Chalk Media got $48,250 out of the recount account for digital advertising.

There was nothing to oversee in May 2023. The recount had been over for five months. Those are bonuses with a label on them.

The question I keep asking

I want to be precise here, because her lawyers read everything I write. The filings do not show a dollar going from any of these people back into Lauren Boebert’s pocket. They show a congresswoman who runs her campaign like a family business: the staff get paid twice, the candidate’s personal bills get paid once and corrected later, and the biggest checks go to vendors nobody has heard of for services nobody can describe.

So I will ask it as a question. When a chief of staff making $190,000 a year of public money gets a $28,000 “consulting” check from the boss’s campaign six days before Christmas, and the boss is a woman who has had tax liens, a foreclosure, a bankruptcy and a husband who could not keep a job, what is that money for? When a part-time House employee gets $15,000 to oversee a recount that ended five months earlier, who decided she had earned it, and what did she do with it?

What happens next

I have my anti-SLAPP case pending before the Weld County Courts. Boebert’s lawyer is due to file a response to our Motion by October 22nd after one extension was granted. We’ll see where that case goes.

If the FEC actually did it’s job, I would file another complaint about Boebert’s payments. But they’re pretty toothless right now and don’t even have enough members to convene a hearing or rule on complaints.

I’m hoping some former staffer, friend or family member that’s received a check will come forward and go on the record or file a whistleblower case and receive immunity from prosecution. The truth will eventually come out, in my experience in politics and with bad bosses like Boebert.

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Every row referenced here comes from the FEC’s own electronic filing system and the House Statement of Disbursements. A six-page sources and methods report, with every total, the staff table, and the FEC filing number for each transaction named above, is embedded below so you can check the work yourself. The full dataset, all 80,231 receipts and 4,149 disbursements, is going into the VoteROI database and will be published. If you worked in that office, or for that campaign, or you know who runs Code Red Communications, I would like to hear from you. Background or off the record is fine.

News tips: david@americanmuckrakers.com

DBW

Boebert Gravy Train Sources And Methods

17.2KB ∙ PDF file

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Here is how we did this report. I'm sure her lawyers will download it. I look forward to see them and LB in court in November. But, I doubt that will happen. She's a coward.

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About the Author

Donate to AM MUCK Here

David B. Wheeler is the president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, the Western North Carolina accountability organization best known for helping end Madison Cawthorn’s congressional career in 2022, the rare instance in modern politics of a sitting incumbent losing his own primary because somebody bothered to do the homework. Since then, American Muckrakers has turned its attention to Beetlejuice Boebert, Ken $$ Paxton, Mark (Nudeafrica.com) Robinson, Bymoron Donalds, Chunk Give Me Some Lovin Edwards, and a growing roster of politicians who confuse service in public office with a personal ATM. He publishes accountability journalism at Muckrakers.Today.

Wheeler co-hosts the MUCK YOU! podcast with Col. Moe Davis, the retired Air Force colonel and former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. He is the author of Color the Crooks, Case File #001: Lauren Boebert, the coloring book James Carville endorsed with the words “She earned every damn page. Buy it.” *He is also the founder of VoteROI.com, a political data company built on 86.9 million FEC records that helps donors figure out where their money actually goes, which, as this essay makes clear, is a question more people should be asking.

Wheeler has also recently started a competitor to ActBlue, VOTEROI, and an election prediction product that does not use polling: DATUM SIGNALS

Before all that, Wheeler spent three decades in politics, elections, and event production in more than 50 countries on all seven continents. Along the way he lowered the Mississippi River, produced the first professional sports event ever held in Moscow, and produced the first marathon ever run on Antarctica. His political education started early: Page for the Iowa House of Representatives, intern in the United States Senate, and National Committeeman for Iowa on the Young Democrats of America national committee. David was the lead advance guy for then Senator Obama in Iowa City, Iowa, in October of 2006, and then again during his presidential announcement in Waterloo, Iowa, in February 2007. And, he has some good stories from both experiences.

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An Iowa native and proud Hawkeye, Wheeler is a father of three and lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina, in the district Chuck Edwards is currently failing. He believes sunlight is the best disinfectant, filings don’t lie, and the loudest guy in the room is usually the one with the most to hide. David grew up with a mother and father that agreed that “God is coming back. And, she is pissed.” That about says it all.

And, Beetlejuice Boebert claimed she was going to sue him for defamation. She never did, so David sued her in Federal Court in Denver and partially won.

Paid for by American Muckrakers PAC II (americanmuckrakers.com). Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Donations made to American Muckrakers, Inc. are not deductible for federal or state tax purposes.

This publication is First Amendment protected speech and commentary on matters of public concern. All individuals referenced are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in a court of law. No portion of this publication may be used for commercial purposes without the written consent of American Muckrakers PAC, Inc. and David B. Wheeler.

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Fire Boebert & Legal Defense Fund

Lauren Boebert built her whole political career on one story: the gun-toting small business owner who fought for her workers. The people who actually worked for her say it’s garbage. And she swore to it anyway.

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Boebert’s office called the complaint “utterly false.” Her spokesperson said there was no truth to it whatsoever. That’s her right. The Committee, not her press shop and not me, will decide what the evidence shows.

What she did next is a different matter, and it’s why there is now a Second Amended Complaint. Here is what changed, and why.

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Addition 1: Jasmine B. Higgs and the family payroll

The most significant addition is a new count on nepotism, and it centers on a part-time employee most people have never heard of.

Jasmine B. Higgs has been on Boebert’s House payroll since August 25, 2022. Before that, by her own résumé, she was a server…

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When Shooters Grill in Rifle shut its doors in the summer of 2022, at least one of its employees didn’t have to look far for her next job.

Jasmine B. Higgs is on Rep. Lauren Boebert’s congressional staff. LegiStorm lists her as a constituent services representative, and the office directory lists her as a part-time employee.

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From the grill to the Capitol payroll

Higgs’s own online résumé tells the story. She worked at Shooters Grill in Rifle from March 2018 through July 2022, first as a server and then as a manager. Before that, she was a host at the Ale House in Grand Junction.

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