Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert recounted her brush with the law in the pages of her newly released book, "My American Life."
In a chapter titled "Pretty Little Mugshots," the MAGA lawmaker lays out her version of the events that lead to her twice being arrested, booked, and photographed prior to her ascension to the House of Representatives.
Her first story recounts a 2015 incident during an event called "Country Jam," where her restaurant, Shooter's Grill, was invited to work as a food vendor.
She recalled losing one of her employees to the event's many distractions — including "hunky cowboys" wandering the grounds — which prompted her to go search for the gun-toting waitress herself.
While she searched the event for her wayward worker, Ms Boebert said she encountered a tent manned by the Mesa County Sherrif's Office. According to Ms Boebert, "the local news media issues daily Country Jam incident reports with the number of arrests for disorderly conduct, minors in possession, and other infractions you'd expect when thousands of people come together and drink all day."
Ms Boebert would soon be among those cited in the local papers' incident reports.
Her version of the story goes like this: Ms Boebert approached the sheriff's detention area while searching for her lost employee. There, she saw a "young woman was sitting in a chair holding a citation and asking a sheriff's deputy if she could leave."
"She was pointing and explaining that her mother was nearby. It seemed odd that the deputy wasn't allowing the gal to leave. I mean, she'd already been given a citation. The longer the deputy left her there, the more upset the young woman got," she wrote.
The woman went to stand up, and a deputy "aggressively grabbed her and sat her back down."
"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," she wrote. "Without hesitation, I started yelling from fifteen yards away and quickly made my way over. I was fired up. It bothered me seeing this young gal being treated so harshly."
She said she began questioning the deputy as to why the girl was being detained and if she had been put under the arrest. The deputy allegedly told her to butt out and that it wasn't her business, which further infuriated Ms Boebert. She refused an order from the deputy to leave, saying "the first deputy had overstepped his bounds when he aggressively forced this gal back into a chair and tried to intimidate her."
The situation broke down into a screaming match between Ms Boebert and the deputies. She began filming and threatening to take the incident to the press, which prompted a deputy to try to grab her phone. She said the "next thing I knew, I was in handcuffs and on my way to the detention area."
She was cited and missed her court date. When she went to settle the issue, she was arrested and a mugshot was taken. The case was then dismissed. The lawmaker claims she was told her case would be expunged, but it never was.
The deputies told a slightly different version of events. Their account included Ms Boebert screaming into the tent to a group of minors who had been detained for underage drinking, telling them that they hadn't been read their Miranda Rights and encouraging them to leave the tent.
“Lauren continued yelling and causing the underage drinkers to become unruly,” the deputies' statement reported at the time. “Lauren’s behavior was becoming likely to cause a disorderly response from those in the area attending the concert.”
The "press" she threatened to go to were her "friends at Fox News," who she claimed would make her arrest "national news."
Her second brush with the law occurred a year later when she and her husband were driving home after closing up her restaurant. In order to get home, she said she had to drive up Stephens Hills, "the steepest and most dangerous road in town."
"It's a tough drive during the day, but especially so at night. There's a tight hairpin turn with no guardrail where plenty of people have had accidents; some have even died," she wrote. "With that in mind, I drove slowly up the hill, but danger was literally around the corner as my front wheel caught the edge of the shoulder, and the truck slid off the side and flipped into a ditch fifteen feet below."
Ms Boebert and her husband left the crash site and walked home to call in the accident. When they returned to the scene to meet with a state trooper, he cited her for reckless driving.
Months passed and Ms Boebert found herself in a position that many parents have faced — she was disheveled, running late, and her kids needed to get to school. She admits that she was speeding in order to meet her obligations when she was pulled over by a police officer.
She soon learned that there was a warrant out for her arrest as she had failed to pay her first ticket for reckless driving on the night she flipped her truck, and she was once again arrested.
"This was not a proud mom moment," she wrote.
Despite laying out in detail all of the extenuating circumstances and injustices that coloured her arrests, Ms Boebert does take responsibility for her actions near the end of the chapter.
"But when it gets down to it, I don't really have an excuse. I should have shown up to court. I should paid the tickets on time. I should have shown law enforcement the respect they deserve," she wrote. "I should have played by the rules."
However, even in a chapter dedicated to her transgressions, Ms Boebert is sure to remind readers of the truly nefarious actors in the world — the Democrats.
"Democrats, as they do, would work double-time to convince the world I was a lawless, dangerous criminal," the lawmaker, who once joked about being relieved that Representative Ilhan Omar didn't have a backpack, insinuating she could have been an Islamic suicide bomber, said. "They'd spend millions of dollars plastering my mugshots across all forms of media, going so far as to slap 'WANTED' across the mugshots."
