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When Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) filed her 2022 financial disclosure in May, it was nearly indistinguishable from her 2021 report—and that could be a problem.
That’s because Boebert reported no royalties from the memoir she released last July, My American Life. Congressional guidelines and legal experts said her lack of reported income would violate House ethics rules.
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A Boebert spokesperson told The Daily Beast that the Colorado conservative and 2020 election denier did not receive any money from her book deal until January 2023.
“The book royalties will appear in her 2023 disclosure,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast. “This is consistent with guidance from the House Ethics Committee.”
But that does not actually appear consistent with ethics guidance.
The ethics instruction guide for 2022 congressional financial disclosures makes clear that members must disclose not only royalties they received, but anticipated royalties as well—“any royalties currently due from the publisher for completed sales.”
When The Daily Beast informed Boebert’s office about the rule, the spokesperson replied that they had reached out to the Ethics Committee ahead of filing, receiving a reply on May 11 that “no royalties needed to be disclosed in the 2022 financial disclosure since there had been no payment of royalties in 2022.”
The spokesperson added that the office is consulting ethics experts again, and would amend the report if needed.
A Boebert staffer later shared an email that their office received the evening after this article published, from the staff director and chief counsel of House Ethics, Tom Rust. In the email, timestamped 6:07 p.m. on Thursday, Rust appears to override the House guidance as it is written—and as three ethics experts interpreted it to The Daily Beast—and he seems to clear Boebert of disclosing details about her 2022 book deal and royalties.
“Based on this and the facts as you have presented them below, my staff-level guidance is that the Committee’s prior guidance was correct, and Rep. Boebert did not need to disclose any information about her publishing agreement or royalties on her 2022 financial disclosure statement,” Rust wrote in the email.
But the House ethics guidelines state that members should report “any royalties currently due from the publisher for completed sales,” and that “when an interest in future royalties cannot be ascertained, it is acceptable to report ‘indefinite’ or ‘unascertainable’ in Block B.”
<p><i>The period-end value includes any advances and contract payments in the form of earned income that have not yet been received for transfer of the intellectual property to the publisher, as well as any royalties currently due from the publisher for completed sales. When an interest in future royalties cannot be ascertained, it is acceptable to report “indefinite” or “unascertainable” in Block B. Disclose the type of income in Block C (e.g., by listing “royalties” in the “Other Type of Income” column) and the amount of income in Block D.</i></p>
Last year, Boebert ally Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) disclosed his 2021 book deal and royalties—even though he hadn’t received any royalty payments in 2021. (On Wednesday, Jordan reported earning between $100,001 and $1 million in royalties on that book in 2022.)
Ethics experts told The Daily Beast that the rules were not complicated and are in place for a reason.
Kedric Payne, vice president and senior director of ethics at nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast that “book deals are common in Congress,” and the rules “clearly require disclosure of royalty income.”
“Alarm bells ring when a lawmaker has book sales but doesn't report book income,” Payne said. “Voters have a right to know that their elected officials are fully transparent about their financial interests.”
Jordan Libowitz, communications director at government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, called the disclosure “odd,” and told The Daily Beast that “if Boebert earned royalties to be paid in the future, those should be disclosed.”
“It does seem odd that she’s claiming there were no royalties earned—even if not paid—during the first six months of the book’s release. If she could not calculate the royalties, that would still need to be disclosed,” Libowitz said. “She does not disclose anything about the book on her forms, which is unusual in this type of situation.”
Boebert’s disclosure also didn’t include any details of her agreement with her publisher, Bombardier Books, an imprint of popular conservative house Post Hill Press. Brett Kappel, political attorney at Hammon Curran, noted that it should have been disclosed as an agreement and an asset.
“Other congressional authors who have the same publisher managed to report the book contracts correctly,” Kappel told The Daily Beast.
Kappel pointed to prior disclosures from Boebert allies—like Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Ronny Jackson (R-TX), and Jordan—who all reported details about their agreements through Post Hill.
Post Hill did not reply to a request for comment.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), a Boebert ally and election denier, also included details of his Post Hill deal on his first filing as a member, in 2021, including a $50,000 advance. While senators can accept book advances, House members cannot. Jackson, however, finagled his deal in the weeks between his election and his swearing-in, when he still wasn’t technically a sitting member.
In 2021, The Daily Beast reported that Gaetz—after being informed that he had also failed to disclose his royalties—disclosed $25,000 in royalty income from sales of his memoir, Firebrand, between August and December 2020, a comparable timeframe to Boebert’s. Gaetz’s disclosure also included details about his agreement, such as passing 30 percent of his own profits to his agent, Sergio Gor, as well as a flat $35,000 payment to his “collaborator” on the project.
While Boebert’s memoir didn’t exactly torch the bestseller charts, it performed fairly well, as books by famous people tend to do. Archived versions of the Amazon landing page from July show the book’s early sales took it to No. 3 in “political leader biographies,” and that it was at one point labeled a No. 1 new release in “culinary biographies and memoirs.” (For years, Boebert owned and operated an open-carry gun-themed restaurant called Shooters Grill; it closed the same month her book was published.)
It’s not the first unusual circumstance regarding Boebert’s literary revenue.
Last year, Forbes reported that the Boebert campaign may have run afoul of campaign finance rules when it posted online fundraising ads directing supporters to pre-order her book from retailers.
While candidates and officeholders frequently promote their own books as “donor mementos” in exchange for contributions, federal regulations require campaigns to buy those gifts in a way that won’t trigger royalties that benefit the candidate personally—such as making discount purchases from the publisher.
While the Boebert campaign did report a $36,000 payment to Post Hill in June of last year—about a month after the ads were placed—the campaign’s advertisement directed people to buy the book straight from retailers, linking out to landing pages at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Books-A-Million.
When The Daily Beast reported in 2021 that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)—another close Boebert ally—had used campaign funds to hawk his own book, nonpartisan watchdog Campaign Legal Center filed complaints with both the Federal Election Commission and the Senate Committee on Ethics.
It’s unclear if Boebert was taking a page out of Cruz’s book. If not, she did manage to get a few pages out of him, anyway: Cruz penned the introduction to her memoir.
Editor's Note: This story has been updated to include guidance issued by the Ethics Committee to Boebert's staff on Thursday.
