It looks like Representative Lauren Boebert (Republican, Colorado) was just blowing smoke when her team denied that she was vaping and being disruptive at a performance of the Beetlejuice musical as new video appears to catch her in the act.
The conspiracy theorist lawmaker was booted from Denver’s Buell Theatre on Sunday night after multiple patrons complained about her behaviour.
She initially tried to downplay the incident, but the security footage shows what really went down.
Kyle Clark of 9News shared the highlights:
A pregnant woman who said she sat behind Boebert told the Denver Post that she asked the lawmaker ― who she didn’t recognise ― to stop vaping.
She refused, and later called the pregnant woman “a sad and miserable person.”
“These people in front of us were outrageous,” the woman, who was not named, told the newspaper. “I’ve never seen anyone act like that before.”
Boebert’s team earlier this week had claimed that the only thing she did wrong was take a photo during the performance. Boebert herself wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that she was “guilty” only of “laughing and singing too loud.”
9News also has an extended cut of the footage, which shows Boebert being disruptive at multiple points during the performance, raising her hands and being very animated even at points in the performance when everyone else was sitting calmly: