Fox News reports that U.S. Capitol police arrested staff members of CBS”s The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Thursday.
The seven staff members have been charged with illegal entry to the House office buildings after hours.
Not “news”
This whole situation started earlier in the day on Thursday when seven of Colbert’s staff members attempted to attend the House Jan. 6 committee’s hearing.
The problem, though, was that they didn’t have the credentials to do so. So, they were escorted out of the hearing.
The backstory here is that the staff members had attempted to get press credentials for the hearing, but they were rejected because they are not working within the category of “news.”
But, according to reports, as well as to The Late Show, they were at the House because they were invited to do interviews with members of the committee, which they did earlier in the day.
After being escorted out of the hearing, the seven staff members, however, didn’t just pack up and head home. Quite the contrary, in fact.
The arrests
According to reports, at some point after 4 p.m., these staff members were let back into the House office building by an aide to Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA). The aide was under the impression that the staff members had more interviews to do.
Instead, the staffers roamed the Capitol buildings for several hours, including after the complex was closed down to the public. It wasn’t until 8:30 p.m., after being notified of a disturbance, that U.S. Capitol police placed them under arrest.
As for what the staffers were doing during all of those unsupervised hours, at the very least, reports indicate that they took pictures and videos of the offices of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). Surely, though, this doesn’t account for all of the hours that they were alone.
The official position of The Late Show is that the staff members stayed at the Capitol to “film stand-ups,” which they were doing up until they were detained by police. Colbert, himself, has yet to comment on the situation.
The bottom line, though, is that this was a clear breach of security. Now, the question is whether Colbert’s staff members will be prosecuted, like those who participated in the Jan. 6 protests, or whether they will be let off the hook because they are Democrats. We’ll see.
