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.
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.
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
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
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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.