GOP Representative Lauren Boebert pointed a loaded gun and mockingly took aim at a restaurant employee who expressed support for Barack Obama, DailyMail.com can reveal.
The unnerving incident took place in the kitchen of Shooters Grill, the restaurant that Boebert, 35, runs with her husband Jayson, 41, in Rifle, Colorado.
Boebert, who was elected to represent Colorado’s 3rd District in 2020, is known as a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, even opening a gun-themed restaurant in 2013.
Signs all over the walls and windows of Shooters encourage patrons to bring guns into the restaurant, where servers all carry conspicuously holstered firearms.
The former employee, who spoke to DailyMail.com on condition of anonymity, recalled: ‘I was in the back at the grill and there were diners in the restaurant.
‘I heard her say, “Hey”, and call my name, and I turned around to see she had this .380 black pistol that she always carried pointing right at me and she just started laughing.
A former employee claims Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert pointed a loaded gun at him during a shift at her Shooters Grill restaurant in Rifle, Colorado
Boebert and her husband, Jayson, 41, are the owners and operators of the restaurant whose theme is based on protecting Americans’ Second Amendment Rights. She is pictured armed with a gun at the restaurant in 2018
Waitstaff at Shooters all carry conspicuously holstered firearms and patrons themselves are encouraged to come in and dine with their guns
‘I was shocked. I turned around to go back to work and I could hear her messing with the gun behind me and heard her say: ‘Oh my God, there’s one in the chamber,’ and start laughing again.’
DailyMail.com learned about this incident independently and without any involvement from American Muckrakers PAC, the group now under threat of legal action for a string of outlandish and, Boebert’s camp insists, fallacious claims about the congresswoman.
Boebert is co-chair of the House’s Second Amendment Caucus. She spoke at a press conference on gun rights in Washington on June 8
Approached for comment by DailyMail.com, Boebert’s spokesperson Ben Stout said: ‘The congresswoman has never pointed a loaded firearm at any employee’s head, past or present.
‘It seems this allegation is coming from a disgruntled employee.’
According to the cook, who no longer works for Boebert, other staff members witnessed the incident which took place around 2014 and before Boebert entered politics.
At the time, he was one of the few open Democrats of Boebert’s staff and had a sticker on his workstation that read, ‘Obama for a third term.’
He described the working environment at Shooter’s as ‘toxic’ and claims that he was frequently singled out and derided by Boebert for his political views.
‘Working there was just a horrible experience,’ he told DailyMail.com.
Boebert is infamous for having trolled actor Alec Baldwin, 64, following the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, on the New Mexico set of the movie Rust.
One day after the October 21, 2021 shooting Boebert shared a 2014 tweet from Baldwin in which he wrote: ‘I’m going to make bright banana yellow t-shirts that read, “My hands are up. Please don’t shoot me”.’
A former cook at Shooters Grill told DailyMail.com Boebert once mockingly aimed a loaded gun at him during a shift in 2014
The restaurant is decorated with signs and plaques honoring the right to bear arms in the US
Boebert, the Republican representative for Colorado’s 3rd District, has been a vocal and controversial supporter of guns
Boebert (far right) poses with waitresses carrying guns in their holsters outside Shooters Grill
Boebert was roundly criticized for reposting the tweet with the comment: ‘@AlecBaldwin are these still available? Asking for a movie producer…’
Now, her former employee has claimed that Boebert’s own adherence to gun safety was patchy at best.
‘She made a big thing of how she was all about gun-safety, but she didn’t practice what she preached. She pointed a loaded gun right at me. How safe is that?’ he said.
He added: ‘On another occasion she handed her gun to a friend and had her point it at me. She’s just a horrible person and a horrible businesswoman.’
The member of staff also alleged that employees sometimes went for weeks without getting paid.
According to Boebert’s congressional disclosures, Shooters lost $143,000 in 2019 and $226,000 in 2020.
With less than two weeks to go before voting closes in the primaries that will decide whether Boebert wins her party’s nomination for a second term, the congresswoman for Colorado’s 3rd District has found herself the target of increasing criticism and scandal.
Boebert is infamous for having trolled actor Alec Baldwin, 64, in a series of controversial tweets following the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, 42, on the set of upcoming film Rust
Newly revealed audio shows that Washington Republican Rep Jaime Herrera Beutler angrily confronted the staunch Trumper on January 11, 2021 – five days after rioters broke into the Capitol.
Boebert was among the Republicans who voted against certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory.
Boebert’s restaurant is in Rifle, Colorado, a town that takes its name from a local creek
She was also accused of putting her colleagues’ lives in danger by tweeting live updates about their movements as the ex-president’s supporters swarmed the US Capitol on January 6.
In the audio Beutler can be heard asking Boebert if it was true that she had done this.
Boebert replied: ‘Um, yes, those tweets did go out and that was something that was live and public information that was broadcast live.’
Beutler bit back: ‘So don’t ask us about security if you’re telling the attackers where we’re at.’
Last week DailyMail.com revealed that American Muckrakers PAC had called for Colorado’s Department of Human Services, Office of Children, Youth and Family to investigate Boebert for reckless abuse of a child.
Their call came in response to the allegation that she ‘covered up’ an off-roading accident when one of her four sons was in the vehicle. The group claims the accident took place in May 2020, two weeks before Boebert won a Republican primary.
Boebert proudly boasted about her restaurant and railed against the government’s order to close non-essential businesses in the early days of the Covid pandemic
DailyMail.com reported the wreck which took place when Boebert was off-roading with her sister-in-law, Tori Hooper, 28, in Moab, Utah.
Stout, her spokesperson has now confirmed that an accident did occur, but that it was several months earlier, in 2019.
Boebert’s son and dog were in the back of the Jeep when she lost control and, according to Hooper, ‘bailed’ from the driver’s seat leaving her to struggle to right the vehicle which plunged into a ravine and struck a sheet of rock.
Stout says she was ‘ejected’.
DailyMail.com spoke with Hooper’s mother who confirmed that Boebert, ‘sorta kinda slipped’ from the vehicle leaving her daughter to struggle to regain control.
Now another source has come forward to tell DailyMail.com that Boebert never paid the bill for the emergency dentistry required by Hooper whose face and teeth were ‘smashed up’ in the incident.
According to the source: ‘The dentist who fixed Tori’s teeth did so in an emergency situation where Lauren called and brought her in after the accident.
‘Lauren never actually paid her bill. She never paid for [the dentist’s] services and her bill was sent to collections.’
Boebert and husband Jayson share four sons. DailyMail.com previously reported that one of the boys was in an off-roading vehicle years ago when Boebert allegedly lost control and fled
Boebert’s former sister-in-law, Tori Hooper, 28, who was married to her brother Benjamin Bentz (left) was left struggling to take control of the Jeep ATV as it careened down a ravine and smashed into a rock face in Moab, Utah after the congresswoman abandoned the driver’s seat
Stout said: ‘The congresswoman was never asked to pay this bill.’
Boebert’s finances on a grander scale are also the subject of scrutiny.
Last week Colorado officials announced they were investigating whether she violated the law by reimbursing herself more than $22,000 from her campaign before paying off $20,000 in state tax liens on Shooters.
Boebert paid herself more than $22,000 in mileage reimbursements sparking questions from campaign watchdogs. The sum of money equates to more than 38,000 miles – significantly more than the 29, 901 mile circumference of the earth.
Boebert fires back against American Muckrakers
Lauren Boebert has lawyered up and hit back against a string of allegations made public by American Muckrakers PAC.
The congresswoman for Colorado’s 3rd District has recruited the services of Colorado firm, Maven Law Group, to slam the PAC for knowingly publishing statements that, they assert, are fabricated.
In a lengthy legal letter addressed to American Muckrakers’ founder and president David Wheeler, and obtained by DailyMail.com, attorney Jonathan Anderson takes issue with a host of claims made public by the group that previously released a slew of unflattering information against North Carolina’s Rep Madison Cawthorn, 26.
DailyMail.com did not publish the PAC’s latest allegations about Boebert as we could not independently verify them.
They include the claim that she was ‘an unlicensed, paid escort and met clients through SugarDaddyMeet.com’ and that the fervent pro-lifer had two abortions – one around 2004 or 2005, the second in 2009.
Republican Rep Lauren Boebert, 35 (pictured speaking at the US Capitol on June 8) has also been accused of covering up an off-roading accident she caused in May 2020 that left her sister-in-law seriously injured
The PAC made these claims in a press release posted on its website earlier this week, stating that Boebert worked as an escort to wealthy men at a time when she was bankrupt and looking for ‘side income.’
It claimed that she called her work ‘pay for play’ and wrote: ‘According to our investigation, Boebert was hired by a wealthy male client in Aspen, Colorado, who was a Koch family member.’
The PAC also claimed that Boebert worked as a stripper and ‘had a meth drug problem at the time.’
The congresswoman’s initial reaction came in the form of an oblique tweet in which she posted, ‘Fact Check; Not true. Fake News. Four Pinocchios. Also…Y’all need Jesus!’
Now her lawyers have issued a more robust response describing the PAC’s release as a ‘total fabrication with no semblance of truth that defames more than one party.’
American Muckrakers circulated this picture to support its claim that Lauren Boebert had worked as an escort. But her rep says it is Melissa Carone, an election denier enlisted by Rudy Giuliani to testify at a 2020 election oversight hearing
In his stern letter Anderson points out that as far as the abortion claims are concerned, ‘Rep Boebert was pregnant with her first son in 2004 and 2005 and he was born in 2005, she was pregnant again with her third son in 2008 and 2009 and he was born in 2009, and she has never had an abortion.’
He goes on to state point blank that Boebert ‘has never been a stripper.’
Muckrakers also published photographs purporting to be of Boebert and described by her lawyers as ‘damaging.’
Today Boebert’s lawyers make it clear that one of the pictures is not in fact Boebert at all, but Melissa Carone, a Michigan election denier who was enlisted by Rudy Giuliani to testify at an election oversight hearing in 2020.
According to Boebert’s lawyers they have evidence that Muckrakers published many of their statements knowing that they were false.
As such, Anderson insists, Muckrakers’ conduct is not only ‘sloppy, reckless and wildly irresponsible’, it has left them open to civil and criminal liability – a situation that he describes as ‘legally and financially disastrous’ for the PAC, its individual donors and Wheeler.
Approached for comment Wheeler said: ‘Her counter-offensive says a lot about Boebert’s motivation. It’s all about damage control for her. Her election is in twelve days. The truth is out and she’s trying to divert voter’s attention away from her actions.
‘While we take the legal threat very seriously, if Boebert does file a lawsuit we’ll defend it vigorously and then likely counter sue for intimidation and other acts against our supporters, and staff.’
He added: ‘We stand by our sources and have corrected information when it’s been proven wrong.’
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