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Boebert (left) referred to Omar as a bomb backpack Muslim, saying she saw her at the capitol. Boebert was lying about her encounter with Omar
November 28, 2021
Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert apologized Friday for using anti-Muslim language in describing a recent encounter she had with Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
According to a video clip posted by a Twitter account called PatriotTakes, Boebert made the remarks this holiday break. In it, she says she and a staffer were taking a Capitol elevator when she saw an alarmed Capitol police officer running toward them saying there might be a bomb in the U.S. Capitol.
She said she turned to her left and spotted Omar standing beside them.
Boebert said, “Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine,” drawing laughs from her audience.
“And I said, ‘Oh, look, the jihad squad decided to show up for work today.’ ”
“This whole story is made up,” Omar tweeted late Thursday, “fact, this buffoon [Boebert] looks down when she sees me at the Capitol. Sad she thinks bigotry gets her clout, Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny and shouldn’t be normalized.”
In her apology, Boebert didn’t address Omar’s criticism that Boebert made up her story about the encounter at the U.S. Capitol.
Boebert tweeted that “I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar. I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction.”
“Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslim tropes get no condemnation.”
The Council on American- Islamic Relations condemned Boebert’s remarks on Friday.
It said Boebert’s allusion to a backpack is an “Islamophobic smear that all Muslims are terrorists,” as well as her use of the term “jihad squad.”
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s national deputy director, told CNN Friday that “to make this disgusting joke, misuse an Islamic term, is beyond the pale.” Mitchell explained that “jihad” is a sacred term referring to “any struggle taken up for the sake of God,” including charity work and fighting for social justice.
Omar and Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib sometimes refer to themselves as “the squad.”
Boebert has a history of history of minor arrests and court no-shows. Boebert — who often espouses a pro-police, law-and-order message — has been arrested and summonsed at least four times over the past decade, records show.
Boebert’s first run-in with police was in the fall of 2010, after a neighbor, Michele Soet, alleged that Boebert, then 23, was harassing Soet and Soet’s husband. The alleged harassment occurred in the days after Soet called police because Boebert’s pit bulls were loose and threatening the life of her dogs.
Boebert was arrested twice in Mesa County in 2015. As first reported by Colorado Newsline, Boebert was detained on June 20, 2015, after a verbal altercation with police at Country Jam, a music festival near Grand Junction. Boebert, then 28 years old, allegedly shouted at people detained on suspicion of underage drinking, urging them to flee from police, which caused the young drinkers to become unruly. While she was being handcuffed for disorderly conduct, Boebert tried to twist away from police, according to deputies' reports.
She allegedly shouted that her arrest was unconstitutional, that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.” It did not become national news.
Boebert was released from custody and told to appear in court that August but missed her court date because, as she told a judge, she forgot what day of the week it was. “I am now aware today is Friday,” she wrote on Aug. 28, 2015, hours after she was supposed to be in court.
The judge, Craig Henderson, rescheduled for later that year. But Boebert again was a no-show at a Nov. 20 hearing. In a handwritten note to the judge, she did not include a reason for her absence.
“I apologize for irresponsibly wasting the courts time with this matter. I want nothing more than to be finished with this case, as it is not something I keep on the forefront of my thinking,” she wrote.
The court was less accommodating that time, records indicate. On Dec. 1, 2015, Boebert was arrested by sheriff’s deputies for failure to appear, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation arrest records. The next month, the disorderly conduct charge was dismissed because there was “no reasonable likelihood of conviction should (the) case go to trial,” a prosecutor wrote at the time.
Rep. Lauren Boebert is seen in booking photos taken by the Garfield County Sheriff’s Office on Feb. 13, 2017.
