In response to a records request from the Colorado Times Recorder, the Garfield County, Colorado, Court stated through a spokesperson that it has no record of U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) restaurant — which closed this year — paying a debt assessed by Judge Jonathan Prototsky in 2017.
The debt was assessed as a lien on Boebert’s restaurant after Boebert and an employee, who’d been sued by a debt collector, both failed to appear at two hearings arranged by the court. Boebert received and ignored a summons to appear at one of the hearings, according to court documents (case #2015 C 030346).
After Boebert’s restaurant, Shooters Grill, refused to garnish the employee’s wages, Pototsky ordered that a lien of $2,578, which included the initial debt of the employee, plus attorney’s fees, court costs, and interest, be put in place.
Boebert owes the money to the Professional Finance Company, which is responsible for notifying the court when the debt is paid. So it’s possible that Shooters Grill has satisfied its debt, and Professional Finance Company simply has not notified the court.
However, the debtor (in this case, Shooters Grill) can contact the creditor (Professional Finance Company) to request that it file the proper paperwork to update the court.
Boebert’s office did not respond to an email asking if the Congresswoman’s restaurant has paid its debt. Likewise, Professional Finance Company failed to respond to a request to reveal whether Shooters Grill paid off the debt.
The situation has not changed since the Colorado Times Recorder first covered this story in October 2020.
Boebert’s failure to respond to the Garfield County Court in this garnishment case is part of a pattern, prior to her being elected to Congress, of disregarding orders by Colorado courts.
Just before she was elected to Congress in 2020, Boebert (R-CO) finished paying off the state of Colorado nearly $20,000 in back taxes owed by her restaurant, Shooters Grill, located in Rifle.
The debt took the form of eight tax liens assessed since 2016 for failing to pay unemployment insurance.
The debt resulting from the garnishment case, addressed in this article, resulted in a ninth lien, but unlike the other liens, it was called a judgment lien and was owed to a private party.
Also before she was elected, Boebert failed to appear for court hearings in two minor, easy-to-deal-with criminal matters, resulting first in arrest warrants and then two actual arrests.
Now Boebert mocks her arrest record, saying, “I even got a pretty mugshot out of it.”
