Lauren Boebert Faces Sworn Ethics Complaint Alleging Affairs with Staffers After Opposing Same-Sex Marriage

A sworn complaint filed with the House Ethics Committee alleges that Lauren Boebert had sexual relationships with three of her own congressional staffers and arranged a payment of about £147,500 ($200,000) to one of them.

The Colorado Republican has rejected the allegations outright, calling them utterly false, and one of the named aides has denied them as well. The complaint was filed on 17 September 2026 by David B. Wheeler of American Muckrakers, a political action committee, and none of its claims has been independently verified.

The committee has not said whether it will take the submission up, and no investigation has been announced.

What the Complaint Alleges

The complaint sets out a series of allegations about House rules on staff relationships. The Colorado Times Recorder reported that the filing, made under penalty of perjury, alleges Boebert engaged in sexual relationships with three House employees under her direct supervision.

The rule in question is specific. House Rule XXIII, clause 18(a), adopted in 2018, prohibits a member from engaging in a sexual relationship with an employee they supervise or with an employee of a committee on which they serve, subject to an exception for married couples. It applies even where a relationship is consensual, because of the power imbalance involved.

Three aides are named, two women and one man. The complaint identifies Clarice Navarro Ratzlaff, Boebert's district director from January 2021 to January 2025 and a former Colorado state representative, alongside Raven Finegan, described as her current district chief of staff, and Jeffrey Small, a former chief of staff. The allegations involving Navarro Ratzlaff form the central focus of the complaint.

The complaint also makes allegations concerning financial payments. It claims Navarro Ratzlaff received roughly £22,600 ($30,650) in year-end bonuses drawn from House funds and a £3,690 ($5,000) campaign payment recorded as fundraising consulting, and that a payment of about £147,500 ($200,000) was arranged in 2025 after she allegedly indicated she intended to file an ethics complaint of her own.

A payment description alone does not establish that any transaction was improper, and no criminal charge or official finding has followed from the complaint.

The Denials

Boebert's office rejected the allegations in full. A representative told TMZ that the congresswoman rejects these allegations as utterly false and that there is no truth to them whatsoever.

In separate comments, Boebert said she has never been in any inappropriate relationship and has never been sexually involved with any member of her staff. Navarro Ratzlaff has also publicly denied the allegations.

One further claim carries no supporting evidence at all. Reporting on the complaint describes an unverified allegation involving Boebert, Navarro Ratzlaff and the former congressman Matt Gaetz. No publicly available evidence has established that any such encounter occurred, and Gaetz responded by challenging anyone holding such material to release it.

The Complainant's Previous Dispute with Boebert

Wheeler has made claims about Boebert before. In June 2022 he launched a website asserting, among other things, that she had previously worked as a paid escort. The site carried an image of a woman who was not her, one of several errors Wheeler later acknowledged and described as sloppy, although he defended the underlying claim.

The dispute later led to litigation initiated by Wheeler. Boebert threatened to sue him over the claims but never filed, and in June 2023 Wheeler and American Muckrakers sued her in federal court, alleging defamation and other harms in connection with her public threats against him and the group's donors. The case was settled in June 2024 on confidential terms, an outcome that establishes nothing about whether the earlier allegations were true.

American Muckrakers operates as a political action committee rather than a news organisation, and has campaigned against Republican members of Congress. That does not determine whether the current allegations are accurate, but it is relevant to how the complaint reached the public.

The Political Context

The allegations land awkwardly against Boebert's record. She has built her political identity on social conservatism and family values, and voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which Congress passed in 2022 to repeal the federal definition of marriage as between a man and a woman and to require federal recognition of valid same-sex marriages.

There is no demonstrated connection between that vote and the conduct alleged in the complaint. The contrast is a matter of political context rather than evidence, and her opponents have drawn it while her office maintains that nothing in the filing is true.

Any next steps will depend on how the committee handles the submission. The Ethics Committee reviews complaints to determine whether there is credible evidence warranting further inquiry, and it has given no indication of its intentions.

Nothing in the complaint has been proven, and the people it names say it is false.