Attending Donald Trump’s hush-money and election interference trial, Lauren Boebert is seen on May 16, 2024 in New York City. (Andrea Renault/STAR MAX/IPx 2024.)
Citing the First Amendment right to “engage in political speech,” a judge has ruled that Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado cannot dodge a defamation lawsuit filed against her by political activists critical of her during her 2022 reelection run.
The 55-page ruling handed down by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathryn Starnella on June 9 breathed new life into a civil case first brought against the lawmaker by plaintiffs David Wheeler, a political activist, and the political action committee he co-founded, American Muckrakers PAC. The group’s other founder is retired U.S. Air Force Col. Moe Davis.
The PAC tried to throw cold water on Boebert’s reelection bid in 2022 when it published a series of claims about her that seemingly ran contrary to the conservative political stance she takes publicly. For example, the group alleged sources had informed it that she had two abortions, used methamphetamine, once worked as a paid escort on a “sugar daddy” website and wrecked an ATV she was driving while her son was in the back seat and her sister-in-law, Tobi Hooper, was also a passenger.
The group claimed the wreck caused Hooper to become injured and that it had learned Boebert tried to cover up the wreck by failing to report it. Hooper allegedly gave Wheeler information by phone and text, according to Starnella’s order, and during one text chat, Hooper “sarcastically stated that her account was ‘totally made up’” — a statement Boebert later allegedly deliberately mischaracterized.
The PAC also alleged that Boebert used donor funds to pay her taxes as well as rent for a restaurant she owned.
Boebert has steadfastly denied all of the claims made by Wheeler and the PAC.
The claims were published on the PAC’s website on June 10, 2022, but as CNN noted roughly two weeks later on June 25, 2022, several of Wheeler’s allegations could not be corroborated independently and were deemed inaccurate due to discrepancies in dates or other details.
Nevertheless, Wheeler defended his sourcing — to a point.
To wit, when it came to the ATV incident, Wheeler acknowledged that when he initially reported that the wreck took place in 2020, he was wrong, and it actually happened in 2019. But he stood by his sourcing for the rest of that story.
Wheeler eventually conceded that he was wrong on other issues. For instance, when pressed about a photo that American Muckrakers PAC circulated of a woman laying on a bed in a tight dress, Wheeler and the group claimed it was Boebert’s picture from a “sugar daddy” dating site. But once CNN confirmed it was not Boebert and interviewed the actual woman in the photo, Wheeler admitted it wasn’t the lawmaker but said he thought “somehow our source mixed that up with something else.”
“I don’t know how she mixed it up,” Wheeler told the outlet in 2022.
The ruling explained that in the week after the PAC’s claims first started circulating, Boebert hit the right-wing media circuit promptly and Starnella noted how Boebert told Fox News host Sean Hannity she would soon move forward with a lawsuit against Wheeler and American Muckrakers because “there is no evidence to back up any of their claims.”
Referencing Hooper’s sarcastic message to Wheeler that her version of events was “made up,” Boebert — appearing to deliberately ignore the true meaning of Hooper’s text — also told Hannity: “This man was told by his source that one of his allegations was made-up before he released it. He knew it was false and he moved forward anyway.”
She told the Washington Examiner something similar on June 15, 2022, saying: “This is very damaging and that is why I’m going after this guy personally and his group with the full force of the law. I am not holding back, and I want to make sure that this never happens to anyone else again.”
Boebert appeared on Fox for an interview with Tomi Lahren, too, and called Wheeler and the PAC liars.
“They lied about me and they knew it was lies and that is absolutely illegal, it’s just like a bully on a playground, uh, when they can’t win they punch you in the face but uh I’m fighting back,” Boebert said, according to a transcript included in the June 9 ruling.
The lawmaker told another reporter at Fox that the law “on this type of defamation” was “clear” and that “this conduct will be subject to civil and criminal penalties.”
Six of Boebert’s allegedly defamatory responses to the PAC’s allegations were outlined and parsed in this week’s ruling from Starnella. Some were potentially defamatory, the judge found, others less so.
Starnella noted that for roughly a month in 2022, there were at least “42 unique news articles” where the congresswoman called the group’s credibility into question or said she was going to sue the plaintiffs for defamation or refer them for criminal prosecution.
During this time, “plaintiff Wheeler received numerous emails, text messages and verbal death threats,” the judge wrote.
Yet, despite her many media appearances, Boebert “never produced any evidence of Plaintiff Wheeler’s alleged criminality,” the judge wrote.
Instead, the “defendant’s alleged defamatory statements and threats of pursuing litigation or pushing criminal charges have caused significant reductions in donations to Plaintiff American Muckrakers PAC, Inc,” the ruling states.
Wheeler says Boebert’s “maliciously false statements” and threats to prosecute him chilled his free speech and tanked his PAC financially. Following Boebert’s alleged defamation of him in June, American Muckrakers saw a steep decline in donations, Wheeler claimed. Funds allegedly dropped from an average of over $20,000 a month between April and June 2022 to an average of $1,281 per month between July and September 2022.
“After Defendant expressed her intent to sue donors to Plaintiff American Muckrakers PAC, at least four named individual donors specifically cited their fear of liability as the reason they were ceasing donations,” the judge noted.
Ultimately, Boebert never sued any donors, though she did initiate proceedings for a temporary restraining order against Wheeler.
But, as the judge noted, she later “abandoned it when it came time to present evidence.”
“The fact that Defendant did not follow through with litigation also suggests that these threats were not made in good faith but with ill will,” Starnella wrote.
Nonetheless, Wheeler was still “deterred from reporting on Defendant under threat of contempt of court, and due to the Defendant’s allegations against [Wheeler], a co-founder of Plaintiff American Muckrakers PAC, Inc., resigned from the voluntary board and asked to be removed from its materials to avoid association with the Defendant’s allegations,” the ruling states.
Boebert tried and failed to have Wheeler’s lawsuit dismissed under Colorado’s nascent anti-SLAPP laws in August 2023. Anti-SLAPP laws are meant to protect the free speech of an average citizen from meritless lawsuits.
As such, Starnella wrote, “the court concludes without difficulty” that the statements by Wheeler and the Muckrakers are protected under Colorado’s anti-SLAPP law.
They were “framed as charges of hypocrisy” and were followed with calls on the state’s voters to elect someone who represents the people of Colorado better.
That commentary, though unsavory for the lawmaker, was still “made in a place open to the public or a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest and ‘communication[s] in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of … free speech in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest,” Starnella wrote.
The judge also noted that Boebert’s own claims about the PAC and Wheeler were “materially false.”
When she told Hannity, for example, that there was “no evidence to back up any of their claims,” that wasn’t quite true, the judge found.
“Plaintiffs have identified several sources they relied on in support of their press releases about Defendant,” the judge wrote, rattling off a short list of sources Wheeler used, including Boebert’s sister-in-law Tobi Hooper. “While this evidence may or may not have been reliable, it was evidence; therefore the ‘gist’ of Defendant [Boebert’s] statement is false.”
The judge concluded that while Boebert “has an interest in protecting her reputation, even through litigation, Plaintiffs’ donors and sponsors have a weightier interest in exercising their First Amendment right to engage in political speech (in the form of financial donations to political action committees) without fear of retaliation.”
Starnella concluded:
The Court finds no social value in allowing elected officials to silence speech they dislike by threatening gadfly journalists’ donors, who have not themselves engaged in any unlawful or tortious activity.
Neither a representative for Boebert nor an attorney for Wheeler immediately returned a request for comment to Law&Crime on Wednesday.
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