Arrest, citations and restraining orders: all the legal dramas in Lauren Boebert’s family
Lauren Boebert’s family clashes with the law date back two decades – as her oldest son follows in his parents’ mugshot footsteps. Sheila Flynn chronicles the Boeberts’ legal dramas
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“Now that I’m in the public eye, the Left attacks us relentlessly – facts be damned,” Lauren Boebert wrote in her 2022 memoir My American Life, published 18 months after she first took office as a Colorado congresswoman, in an attempt to explain her then-husband’s 2004 indecent exposure arrest.
“They point to Jayson’s arrest and say awful things about him – rather than applaud a man who’s made a few mistakes along the way, learned from them, and then made himself a true success, got married, and is raising four incredible young men.”
Fast forward another 18 months or so, however, and more mistakes have added to that list – including alleged criminal activity by one of those “young men” as the Boebert brood adds to its booking photo repertoire, with news that her 18-year-old son was arrested and charged with a spate of break ins.
The family has been no stranger to tussles with authority over the years, and there is a healthy respect for outlaw tendencies in both the constituency Boebert currently represents and the one she’s attempting to win — although usually that’s tied to self-reliance, dependability, decorum and family values.
Boebert outlines some of the more historical offences in her book. The first was the arrest of Jayson in 2004, before they were legally married and after they met at the Rifle McDonald’s when she was 16 and he was 22.
“We had a common-law marriage until I was almost twenty-one, but since a common-law marriage isn’t sufficient for some insurance purposes, we got officially married in 2007,” the devoted Christian wrote in My American Life.
Three years before that, however, Jayson had been involved in a controversial incident at a local hangout on a night when he “decided to try to bond with my stepfather,” she wrote.
“The two of them went to the Rifle bowling alley and got to chatting over drinks. The female bartender flirted with Jayson, having heard previously from his friends what a catch he’d be. They even teased her by saying he’d gotten a great tattoo in a private area, which made her curious, so she pressed Jayson to show it to her right there at the bar. He ignored her and was embarrassed she was doing it in front of my stepfather.”
The bartender, Boebert wrote, “wouldn’t stop.”
“Jayson, clearly having had too much to drink, decided he’d heard enough, stood up, and acted like he was going to unzip his pants. Before he got that far, the owner of the bowling alley intervened. He told Jayson to stop and kicked him out. Jayson felt he was the one being harassed and didn’t want to leave. The two argued, and Jayson threw a basked of fries at the owner. The police were called.”’
The bartender told police Jayson exposed himself, she wrote, but she also turned out to be 17 – “which made it illegal for her to be working as a bartender in the first place,” Boebert complained.
It also meant he was arrested for indecent exposure to a minor; he took a plea deal because “he was a young oil field worker without a lawyer or the desire to hire one,” she wrote. He was left with a charge on his permanent record – but it wouldn’t be long, it seems, before other members of the family would be trotting right after him.
The first up was the congresswoman herself. She found herself in handcuffs in 2015 at a Colorado music festival, allegedly after protesting the treatment of a young woman who’d been given a citation. A deputy told the Republican “this was none of my concern and that I was interfering,” she wrote in her memoir. “The deputy ordered me to leave. I refused.”
The situation escalated into “a cacophony of yelling between me and the two deputies,” she wrote, during which she tried to film them and “one of them threatened me with arrest if I didn’t stop.
“I had every right to be there and I told him so,” she wrote. “I felt I hadn’t done anything wrong. A deputy then tried grabbing the phone out of my hand, and the next thing I knew, I was in handcuffs and on my way to the detention area.”
She was cited for disorderly conduct, complete with a mugshot.
The following year, she was pulled over for speeding and arrested for non-payment of a ticket – concluding her memoir’s description of the incident with: “Democrats, as they do, would work double-time to convince the world I was a lawless, dangerous criminal. They’d spend millions of dollars plastering my mugshots across all forms of media.”
The actions of her own family and her enterprises, however, would continue to make that easy.
In 2020, Garfield County obtained a restraining order in an attempt to stop her gun-themed Rifle restaurant, Shooters – famed for its armed wait staff and a previous food poisoning debacle – from continuing to flout Covid laws.
And just last month, a restraining order has been granted to the congresswoman against her husband. Boebert and Jayson divorced last year, the end of the marriage finalized a month after the congresswoman was ejected from a Denver theater for misbehaviour.
The 37-year-old, in the company of a Democratic Aspen bar owner, was accused of vaping and groping her date during a performance of Beetlejuice. She blamed it on the divorce, which was finalized in October, but the Boeberts’ family trouble was far from over.
In January, police were called to a restaurant in Silt – the neighboring town to Rifle and where the Boeberts raised their four boys – after an altercation between the representative and her husband. Affidavits state that Jayson Boebert was yelling, drinking and cursing and repeatedly refused to leave the scene on 6 January despite requests from police, the Denver Post reported.
“This is a sad situation for all that keeps escalating and another reason I’m moving,” Boebert said in a statement from her campaign manager. “I didn’t punch Jason in the face and no one was arrested.”
According to affidavits, the couple had been discussing their relationship when the situation became “heated,” the representative put her finger on her ex-husband’s nose, and he claimed that she punched him, the Post reported.
The restaurant brouhaha wasn’t even out of the headlines, however, when Jayson Boebert was arrested on assault charges in connection with a late-night incident involving his son. Garfield County sheriff’s deputies said in an affidavit that they were called by one of the couple’s sons in the early morning hours of 9 January after Jayson returned home drunk and began an argument which turned physical, the Post reported.
The son called his mother and police, and his father grabbed a rifle before leaving, according to the affidavit.
Jayson Boebert was arrested later that day on suspicion of misdemeanor assault, criminal mischief, prohibited use of a firearm, obstructing a peace officer, trespassing and disorderly conduct in connection to both incidents, the Post reported from online records, which also showed him facing another assault charge.
Not even a month later, the Republican firebrand was granted a temporary restraining order against her ex-husband after accusing him of threatening her and entering the family’s home without permission. It included protections for the couple’s three sons, AP reported, and the hearing date for whether the order will be made permanent is scheduled for next week.
In the meantime, however, a third member of the Boebert brood has landed himself in legal trouble. The couple’s oldest son, 18-year-old Tyler Jay Boebert – who welcomed a child of his own last year with his teenage girlfriend, making Boebert a grandmother at 36 – was arrested on Tuesday in Rifle in connection with a wave of break-ins.
“The arrest comes after a recent string of vehicle trespass and property thefts in Rifle,” the police department said Tuesday on Facebook. “Boebert is facing the following charges: four felony counts of Criminal Possession ID Documents - Multiple Victims, one felony count of Conspiracy to Commit a Felony, and over 15 additional misdemeanor and petty offenses.This is an ongoing investigation, no further information will be released at this time.”
The teen was being held Wednesday on charges including theft of less than $300, criminal possession of a financial device and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, AP reported.
“I love my son Tyler, who has been through some very difficult, public challenges for a young man and the subject of attention that he didn’t ask for. It breaks my heart to see my child struggling and, in this situation, especially when he has been provided multiple opportunities to get his life on track,” said Boebert in a statement on Wednesday. “I will never give up on him and I will continue to be there for him. As an adult and father, Tyler will take responsibility for his actions and should be held accountable for poor decisions just like any other citizen.”
The Republican has repeatedly referenced her family drama as a reason for her decision to abandon the congressional campaign in CD3, where she was narrowly reelected in 2022, in favor of the race in more heavily conservative CD4 – hundreds of miles across the state from where she raised her children. Detractors, however, point to her near-loss to Democrat Adam Frisch as a huge motivator, while Boebert faces carpetbagging accusations from voters and political opponents on her new potential turf.
Her most recent campaign posts on social media have featured her sons; over the weekend, she posted pictures from the Tanner Gun Show in Castle Rock “recently” – where “my boys and I had a great time” – and a 16 February post on Instagram featured a cowboy-hat-clad Boebert in the driver’s seat, a teen to her right, with the caption: “Guess I’ll be entertaining myself for the next 100 miles...”