August 24, 2021 08:46 AM UTC

Rural Colorado United To Boeberts: Release Your Tax Returns

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• by: Colorado Pols

A press release from the activist group Rural Colorado United is calling for freshman GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert to release her tax returns from 2018 to the present, after a still-mysterious disclosure by Boebert late last week of almost $1 million in compensation paid to Rep. Boebert’s spouse by a Texas-based oil and gas company:

After news reports revealed that Rep. Lauren Boebert submitted false financial disclosures omitting nearly one million dollars of income allegedly paid to Boebert’s husband in 2019 and 2020, the Western Slope civic organizing group Rural Colorado United is calling on Boebert to immediately release her federal tax returns from 2018 to the present, and other documentation of this previously undisclosed income.

“Lauren Boebert’s failure to disclose almost a million dollars paid to her husband by an oil and gas company while she was running for office as a regular working mom is a shameful breach of the public trust,” said Hon. Bri Buentello of Rural Colorado United. “The whole purpose of financial disclosure is to give voters the opportunity to know who a candidate is beholden to. It’s outrageous that Jayson Boebert was being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year by the oil and gas industry, many times what Rep. Boebert earns serving in Congress, while the residents of the Third Congressional District were kept in the dark.”

And here’s where RCU drills down (pun intended) to the big question raised by Boebert’s belated disclosure of all this wealth that rained down, allegedly at the same time they were unable to make their unemployment insurance payments for the Shooters’ Grill and questionably reimbursing themselves huge sums for mileage expenses:

“The failure to properly disclose this income over the past two years while Boebert ran and serves in Congress raises questions about the timing of the payments to Jayson Boebert, and what specific work he performed for Terra Energy Productions to earn this million-dollar payout,” said Hon. Bri Buentello. “Given Rep. Lauren Boebert’s position on the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee, this shady arrangement and the failure to disclose it up to now could be the tip of an iceberg of corruption. The people of CD-3 deserve to know if our representative in Congress has been purchased by a Texas oil company. We need to know when exactly Jayson Boebert was paid this million dollars, and for what work, in order to have any confidence that Boebert is telling the truth.”

“We’re calling on the Boeberts to immediately release their full unredacted federal tax returns from 2018 to the present,” said Buentello, “but that’s not all. Lauren Boebert must fully cooperate with any investigation that results from this belated disclosure of her husband’s newfound wealth. ‘No-show jobs’ and other corrupt payoffs by special interests are for The Sopranos, not Western Colorado.”

To be clear, it did come out since this release last Friday that Jayson Boebert has been a contractor for Terra Energy Partners since 2017. The problem is that nobody in an equivalent position to Jayson Boebert makes the kind of money Boebert claims he was paid in 2019 and 2020. What’s more, Jayson Boebert’s income is reported to have actually increased from $460,000 in 2019 to $478,000 in 2020, even as drilling came to a virtual halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In short, nothing about this belated disclosure of big bucks paid to the Boebert family’s sole proprietorship makes sense based on what we know about the Boeberts’ financial history at that time, or the type of work Jayson Boebert is engaged in. What would make sense, however, would be Terra Energy Partners feeling motivated to put an end to the Boeberts’ financial problems, you know, retroactively now that Lauren Boebert is in Congress.

If that’s not what Boebert wants the voters of CD-3 believing, tax returns showing this money was actually paid in the years the disclosure claims it was paid would be a good place to start. If Jayson Boebert really did make $460,000 in 2019 and $478,000 in 2020, before Lauren Boebert was elected to Congress, drilling rig workers across the state want to know how he did it so they can too.

At this point, the criminal scenario is the only one that adds up.