When The Daily Beast found an alleged Capitol rioter in a beaming, gun-toting selfie in front of Rep. Lauren Boebert’s restaurant, it wasn’t the only example of far-right militia fanboys looking to the Colorado member of Congress for inspiration. As she’s risen to national office on a platform of Wild West gun culture, Boebert has displayed a strange habit of hanging around militia members, posing for selfies with them, and proclaiming herself “the militia.”
The associations never caused much trouble for the freshman congresswoman in her rise to power. But ever since militia members, QAnon cultists, and other extremists stormed the Capitol, Boebert’s chumminess with the far right is coming into an uncomfortable focus. So who’s she been hanging out with?
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Three Percent discount: Robert Gieswein, who was seen in photos both before and during the riot allegedly clashing with police officers, wielding a baseball bat, and moving throughout the Capitol alongside other rioters, posted a photo of himself and three other men in front of Boebert’s bar, Shooters Grill, brandishing an assault rifle and flashing the hand sign for the Three Percenters, a far-right militia.
Though Gieswein’s picture was taken in November 2018, well before Boebert started her run for office, the photo was a sign that Boebert’s business had fans on the far right.
Those fans stuck by her when she traded her job as a restauranteur for a seat in Congress. The Colorado Times Recorder found a post in a since-deleted Three Percenter militia Facebook group which called for members to assist in providing “perimeter security” for the would-be congresswoman while she was campaigning in Pueblo, Colorado, in late July. The same post claimed that the group had been invited by Boebert’s campaign.
In December 2019, Three Percenters again appeared alongside Boebert when she attended a gun-rights rally in Denver. Boebert, who was then just beginning her candidacy to unseat incumbent Republican Scott Tipton, is visible in a picture published on Facebook which shows her smiling on the Colorado state capitol steps with at least three men flashing the Three Percenter sign.
Boebert didn’t answer questions from The Daily Beast about her thoughts on the militia movement but on Twitter over the summer, she was more succinct. “I am the militia. #2A #WeThePeople,” she wrote.
Origin story: According to an interview Boebert gave with Gunpowder Magazine, Edwards Wilks played a role in her education as a gun-rights enthusiast and open carrier. In the interview, Boebert claims that Shooters Grill didn’t start out as an open carry-themed restaurant until a man was killed in an altercation behind the Grill. At that point, she “sought out advice from a local business owner,” Wilks, who owned a gun store next to the restaurant.
“And that's when you explained to me Colorado’s open carry laws and then I purchased the [Taurus Judge handgun] and began to open carry and you began to educate me on how important it is to defend yourself, the right that we have to keep and bear arms,” she told Wilks in the video.
The Colorado Sun has twice identified Wilks, Boebert’s guide to the world of firearms, as a member of the far-right Oath Keepers militia.
Reached by email, Wilks appeared to dispute the Sun’s characterization of him as a member of the Oath Keepers. “They got that story wrong on two levels. What Oath Keepers is, and wrong about my affiliation therewith,” he wrote. “They were wrong on both accounts and refused to issue a retraction or correction.” The Daily Beast asked Wilks to clarify whether or not he is or has ever been a member of the group in a follow-up email but Wilks did not respond further.
Wilks wasn’t involved in the events at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.
But members of the Oath Keepers militia, which the Anti-Defamation League calls “a large but loosely organized collection of anti‐government extremists,” has featured in a host of extremist events, and a number of members were visible at the Capitol riot. Jon Schaffer, an Oath Keeper “lifetime member” from Indiana, is wanted by the FBI in connection with the Capitol attack, and Thomas Edward Caldwell, an Oath Keeper leader, is the first and so far only rioter to face conspiracy charges for his alleged role in the attack.
The organization’s founder, Stewart Rhodes, published open letters to Trump demanding he use the military to overturn the election before the Jan. 6 riot.
Counter-conspiracy: For all the real links between Boebert and militia groups, critics have also invented fake ones about her involvement with far-right extremists.
As social media users rushed to crowdsource identifications of rioters at the Capitol, some users falsely smeared Boebert’s mother as a participant in the violent insurrection and misidentified her as a woman seen calling out directions to rioters with a bullhorn.
In a statement, Boebert’s office pushed back on the false allegations against the congresswoman’s mother. “During the riots, the Congresswoman's mother was locked in a secure location, not in the U.S. Capitol, with her staff and never left their sight,” it read.
Others on social media have also insinuated without any evidence that Boebert gave tours to Trump supporters who later participated in the riots. The allegations feed off of claims by New York Democratic Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney when he referenced “a member showing people around.” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) also claimed to have seen Boebert lead a tour sometime between Jan. 3 and 6.
Lost in the fury over whether Boebert led a tour is the fact that there’s no evidence that anyone who participated in the riot ever took a tour of the Capitol, much less with Boebert. Rep. Cohen has also admitted that, despite his apparent spotting of the congresswoman leading a tour, he has no idea whether any tour recipients went on to riot.
Incitement: While there’s no evidence that Boebert assisted any rioters in the breach of the Capitol, there’s plenty of evidence that she engaged in the kind of incendiary rhetoric and conspiracy theories about the election that motivated rioters to try and take the transfer of power into their own hands.
In the days after the election, she demanded that election systems “have all related servers housed in America”—an apparent reference to the unfounded conspiracy theories about foreign involvement in the voting machine software.
Boebert’s name also appeared on the slate of speakers for the “Wild Protest” website, a site affiliated with the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington. The site, which took its name from an ominous Trump tweet threatening a “wild protest,” told attendees to “take to the US Capitol lawn and steps and tell Congress #DoNotCertify on #JAN6!”
And on the day of the riot, Boebert was one of 147 Republican lawmakers who objected to the vote tally which the rioters later sought to disrupt.
“Madam speaker, I have constituents outside this building right now. I promised to be their voice,” Boebert said in a fiery speech that day.
