The Insurrection Tours

From Andrea Salcedo's 1-19-21 WASHINGTON POST article entitled "GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert Gave Capitol Tour to ‘Large’ Group Before the Riots, Democratic Lawmaker Says":

Amid a push to investigate whether any GOP lawmakers aided rioters at the Capitol, several Democrats last week accused an unnamed House Republican of leading groups on “reconnaissance” tours of the building before the Jan. 6 attack.

Now, two Democratic lawmakers say they personally saw one Republican — Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado — with a “large” group in a tunnel connected to the Capitol days before the attempted insurrection that left four rioters and one police officer dead.

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) said on Monday that he and Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) had both seen Boebert in the tunnel outside the Cannon House Office Building with a group sometime in the three days before the riots. He said he didn’t know who was in the group or if anyone with Boebert later participated in the attack.

“Congressman [John] Yarmuth refreshed my recollection yesterday,” Cohen told Jim Sciutto on “CNN Newsroom.” “We saw Boebert taking a group of people for a tour sometime after the 3rd and before the 6th. … Now whether these people were people that were involved in the insurrection or not, I do not know.”

Boebert, a gun rights advocate with links to the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, called Cohen’s remarks “false” and “slanderous” in a letter sent to the congressman on Monday, which she also shared on Twitter. Boebert said she had taken a number of family members into the Capitol on Jan. 2 for a tour and Jan. 3 to take pictures on the day she was sworn into office, but had not given any other tours.

“I haven’t given a tour of the U.S. Capitol in the 117th Congress to anyone but family,” Boebert said on Twitter.

Neither Cohen nor Boebert’s offices immediately responded to messages from The Washington Post early on Tuesday.

Cohen’s claims are the latest tumultuous episode for Boebert, whose spokesman resigned after the Jan. 6 riots as she faced blowback for voting against certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and for tweeting about the location of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) during the attack. Dozens of Colorado lawmakers have also demanded her resignation.

Last week, a group of Democrats asked congressional security officials to investigate “suspicious behavior and access given to visitors” one day before the Jan. 6 attack. In the days before the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol building, the Democrats said, lawmakers and their staffers witnessed an “extremely high number of outside groups” touring the Capitol, which closed its doors to the public in March as a coronavirus precaution.

On Jan. 12, without naming anyone, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) said she saw her colleagues leading “reconnaissance” tours a day ahead of the Capitol riots. Then, a day later, Rep. Sean Maloney (D-N.Y.), echoed Sherrill’s allegations in an interview with MSNBC where also without disclosing any names he said a GOP lawmaker had given protesters a tour of the Capitol on Jan. 5.

To read the entire article, click HERE.