Activist organization suing Lauren Boebert: American Muckrakers, an organization that has been feuding with the Congresswoman for years and sometimes made questionable assertions about her, has sued Lauren Boebert for defamation.
Lauren Boebert in Legal Trouble?
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), whose service in Congress has been marked by outrageous statements and odd stunts like trying to make the AR-15 the country’s “national gun,” has been met at every turn by an organization that has made some questionable assertions of their own, about her.
American Muckrakers PAC is a Super PAC that frequently targets well-known conservative officeholders, and they have often taken aim at Boebert. This has included everything from alleging the Congresswoman worked as an escort, to alleging that she had multiple abortions, to recent rumors that Boebert is dating pastor and country singer Sean Feucht.
A CNN fact check last year alleged that the organization has made “multiple false claims” about Boebert, including about the escort work and abortions. David Wheeler, the group’s co-founder, admitted that his group had been “sloppy” and published some “inaccuracies,” but that they stood by the “main points of the story.”
Now, Wheeler has filed a defamation suit against Boebert, per Insider.
The suit alleges that Boebert defamed him in an appearance last year on Sean Hannity’s radio show.
“Defendant Boebert admitted during that broadcast that her motive was to thwart Plaintiffs’ first amendment rights to public participation in matters of public concern, stating, ‘We’re going to make sure this political hack never has the opportunity to do this to anyone else again,’” the suit says, as reported by Insider.
“When faced with Plaintiffs’ well-corroborated scoops, reporting that Congresswoman Boebert served as a paid escort, had twice aborted pregnancies and had used illegal drugs including methamphetamine, Defendant went on the offensive by threatening litigation and making the news-story about Plaintiffs’ character, funding, and alleged mendacity,” the suit continued.
Boebert did not sue American Muckrakers at any point, but merely accused them of lying, both on Hannity’s show and on social media.
Attorney Jarvis Best went through the complaint on Twitter and found it unconvincing. First of all, the sourcing on American Muckrakers’ claims is unusually thin- it quotes a Twitter account that reached out to them in a direct message, and that source themselves heard about the drug and prostitution rumors second-hand. Also, the picture of Boebert as an “escort” does not look especially like her.
“She heard that Boebert was on meth, stripping and hooking, and that she had two abortions. She heard it from her friend, who heard it from her daughter,” the Twitter thread said.
American Muckrakers also claimed that they received fewer donations after their Boebert report, but Best notes that this may be because very few people believed the escort report.
It’s a natural thing in politics, especially for a figure as disreputable as Lauren Boebert, for their opponents to believe anything bad about them. But in this case, there is much reason to believe that the accusations against Boebert aren’t true.
Another longstanding rumor about Boebert was put to rest last week when the Congresswoman acknowledged that “Sweet” Stan Lane, a well-known professional wrestler of the 1980s and 1990s, is not her biological father.
Boebert’s mother had long alleged that Lane, who was part of the famed wrestling tag team The Midnight Express, was the Congresswoman’s father. And while a DNA test years earlier had ruled him out, the tech who took the DNA samples from Lane was convicted of accepting bribes to switch DNA vials in an unrelated case. But a second DNA test was taken recently, showing that Lane is not Boebert’s father, the parties acknowledged.
“It is my desire to step back and enjoy my retirement with my wife,” Lane said in a statement to the media. “If she continues the search for her biological father, I hope she finds the answers she has been looking for.”
Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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