Cockburn is no stranger to scandal — if anything he’s an expert in the field. With that cap on, he’s approaching the latest shocking allegations against gun-totin’, Biden-hecklin’ Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert with caution, as they don’t seem to pass the smell test.
A website, neutrally dubbed “FIRE BOEBERT,” published a document on Tuesday evening containing the audacious claims that Boebert was an “unlicensed paid escort with sugardaddymeet.com” and that she “had two abortions.”
If those allegations weren’t egregious enough, the site, which is run by a PAC called American Muckrakers, declares that Boebert was “hired by a wealthy male client in Aspen, Colorado, who was a Koch family member,” who then “introduced” her to Ted Cruz. The Texas senator “encouraged” Boebert to run for political office.”
Progressive groups leapt on the dossier as it trended on Twitter last night.
“BREAKING: BOEBERT WAS ALLEGEDLY UNLICENSED PAID ESCORT,” squealed a chyron on The Young Turks.
“If Lauren Boebert actually did have two abortions, I’m glad she had access to safe, legal abortion services,” tweeted Nina Turner, an Ohio state senator and former Bernie Sanders surrogate.
“The possibility that Lauren Boebert may have been a sex worker who had multiple abortions is irrelevant,” wrote BrooklynDad_Defiant. “But her rhetoric to revoke the rights of others to do the same AND her seditious acts make her dangerous. She should be removed.”
And, Cockburn’s favorite, courtesy of Occupy Democrats: “BREAKING: The American Muckrackers PAC alleges that Lauren Boebert used to be an ‘unlicensed, paid escort’ and met clients using a sugar daddy website — allegedly her escort work led to her having an abortion. The facts are still unconfirmed. RT IF YOU THINK THAT IT SOUNDS TRUE!”
Could there be a better standard for sharing unverified information than “RT if you think that it sounds true?” Defamation laws be damned!
Boebert issued a strong denial on Twitter last night — “Fact Check: Not true. Fake News. Four Pinocchios. Also… Y’all need Jesus!”
American Muckrakers claimed the scalp of Representative Madison Cawthorn last month by surfacing “compromising” pictures of the young MAGA congressman partying on a cruise and dry-humping a male friend. Cawthorn lost his primary.
So what proof does the PAC have to support its claims about Boebert? Well, the document contains a series of screenshots of text messages that came via a “source” purportedly “close to this matter who has requested anonymity for fear of reprisals.” That’s it: text message screenshots that we are asked to take at face value, despite no conspicuous effort on the part of the PAC to verify the claims within them.
The texts state that she had “one abortion in the Glenwood Springs at the Planned Parenthood office and another one in Grand Junction… she was stripping at the time also.”
“Can you access any medical records with Planned Parenthood?” the “source” asks.
The answer, of course, is “not legally.”
The “source” later claims to “have the photos from the actual site.” But the photos that they then send have all been previously published by Boebert, in an attempt to win a 2011 modeling contest on a site called Explore Talent, as you can see here, here and here. In the Muckrakers dossier, the Explore Talent watermark appears to have been cropped off each of the photographs.
It may be possible that Boebert used the same photos on a 2009 sugar baby profile as she did in a 2011 modeling contest — but is it likely?
Cockburn is no great supporter of the congresswoman — her core workout is far more interesting than her flirting with QAnon — but he finds himself compelled to raise his suspicions on her behalf here. The other texter, in their attempt to extract information from the “source,” insinuates, sans evidence, that Boebert “blackmailed” Cruz into supporting her and dubs her a “kniving little witch.” Not that he has an ax to grind, of course.
Is it too much to ask that a political hitjob has slightly more of a grounding in verifiable fact before political operatives send it viral?
