Jayson Steven Boebert, the husband of Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., has complicated his wife's political career recently, after reports that the right-wing congresswoman failed to disclose Jayson's highly-paid work in the natural gas industry while she was serving on the House Natural Resources Committee, which directly oversees regulation of that business.
It appears that might not be the only thing about Jayson that Rep. Boebert doesn't want the public to know. In January 2004, when Jayson Boebert was 24, he was arrested for exposing himself to two young women at a Colorado bowling alley. His future wife Lauren Roberts (as she was then known), who was 17 at the time, was also present and was told she was no longer welcome at the bowling alley.
Jayson Boebert pled guilty to "public indecency and lewd exposure" after that incident, according to The New York Post, and was sentenced to four days in jail with a subsequent two years on probation.
Salon has obtained a witness statement written at the time by Erica Anne Coombs, one of the two young women involved in the bowling alley incident, who still lives in Lauren Boebert's congressional district. Coombs wrote that after harassing a third person identified as Nora, Jayson Boebert told Coombs and another young woman, identified as Trisha Walies, that he had a tattoo on his penis.
"Trish and I were standing at the snack bar, and she came up and looked at my tattoo on my back, and she pulled down her sock and said, 'look, my is fading,'" she wrote. (The word "tattoo" may have been omitted.) "Then Jayson said 'I have a tattoo on my dick.'"
"Trish and I said 'ya, whatever' and turned away to ignore him," Coombs continued. "Then Jayson came up behind us and pulled his penis out of his pants. His thumb was covering the head, and all I saw was the shaft. Trish and I turned away and went and told Larry." That refers to Larry McCown, the owner of Fireside Lane in Rifle, Colorado, who called the sheriff's department.
When Garfield County sheriff's deputies arrived, McCown told them that he had repeatedly asked Jayson Boebert to leave the bowling alley but that Boebert had "refused to leave and became belligerent." Boebert told deputies he had not exposed his penis, but had stuck his thumb through the fly of his pants as a prank. Trisha Walies disputed that in her account, writing: "I know that wasn't a thumb because thumbs aren't 6 inches long." Lauren Roberts told deputies she had not seen Jayson Boebert expose himself.
Not long after that incident, Jayson Boebert found himself in trouble with the law again after a domestic violence incident (which has already been widely publicized) involving Lauren Roberts, his then-girlfriend and future wife. In February 2004, Jayson Boebert was arrested and charged with harassing and physically assaulting Lauren, and was convicted on those charges in November. He "did unlawfully strike, shove or kick ... and subjected her to physical contact," a Garfield County court clerk spokesman told The New York Post in January of 2021. Lauren Roberts had her first child later that year; it is unclear whether she was pregnant at the time of the assault.
In March, Rep. Boebert voted against the Violence Against Women Act, saying she was opposed to the bill because it would secure abortion rights and tweeting, "This expired amendment should be thrown out like rotten milk."
Jayson and Lauren Boebert were married in June of 2007, after Jayson had concluded his probation for the lewd exposure conviction. Lauren Boebert has said that she and her husband have similar views on the role of government in citizens' lives because they both grew up on the welfare system.
In 2021, as Lauren Boebert was sworn in as a member of the 117th Congress, Jayson Boebert stood shoulder to shoulder with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Rep. Boebert's most recent financial disclosure forms suggest that Jayson stands to earn nearly $800,000 this year as a gas-drilling consultant for the firm Terra Energy. Those facts, and the apparent conflict of interest they represent, were not mentioned in Boebert's earlier disclosures.
Jayson Boebert did not return Salon's request for comment.
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