A sworn ethics complaint filed yesterday with the U.S. House Committee on Ethics alleges that Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) engaged in sexual relationships with three House employees under her direct supervision, in violation of the House rule adopted after the #MeToo reckoning that flatly prohibits members from sleeping with their own staff.
The complaint, filed by American Muckrakers’ David Wheeler under penalty of perjury, names three current and former senior aides, including Clarice Navarro, Boebert’s district director from January 2021 to January 2025. The centerpiece is the alleged relationship with Navarro, a former Colorado state representative and Trump USDA appointee who ran Boebert’s district operation for four years. The complaint also asserts that Boebert arranged a $200,000 payment to Navarro to prevent her from filing her own ethics complaint.
Reached via text, Navarro vehemently denied the allegations: “These allegations regarding me are entirely false, defamatory, and beyond ridiculous. There is absolutely no truth to any part of this claim.”
The Muckrakers’ release includes a quote from Navarro’s ex-husband, Jace Ratzlaff. “I assumed this would eventually surface,” says Ratzlaff. I’ll have no further comment on this topic.”
Reached by phone, Ratzlaff declined to elaborate, saying only “Divorce is painful. I have children. I’m three years post-divorce. This is not my issue.”
The complaint cites two Colorado Times Recorder stories, one from Oct. 26, 2022, and another from Jan.18, 2024. The October 2022 story reported on Boebert’s trip to Mar-a-Lago, during which she was accompanied by family members and friends, including Navarro, who was on her staff at the time. It includes photographs obtained by CTR that trip members had shared on Facebook. The December story covered the extended closures at Boebert’s in-district offices around holidays, and noted that Navarro-Ratzlaff answered the phone at the Pueblo office in early January of 2024. Neither story makes any claim about inappropriate relationships involving staff.
This isn’t the first time Wheeler has made claims about Boebert based on undisclosed sources. In June 2022, Wheeler launched a website stating, among other claims, that Boebert had previously worked as a paid escort. The site featured an image of a woman who was not her, one of several errors Wheeler later acknowledged and called “sloppy,” though he defended his underlying claim about her past. Boebert threatened to sue him over the claims, but never did. Instead, Wheeler filed a defamation lawsuit against her over her public threats of legal action. That lawsuit, which was also filed under oath and penalty of perjury and included the main claim about her paid escort work, was eventually settled with undisclosed terms.
Earlier this year Boebert issued a public invitation to help all congressional staffers from either party if they feel they are being mistreated by their bosses.
Boebert’s office did not reply to a request for comment on the ethics complaint. This article will be updated with any response received.
UPDATE: In a Sept. 20 press release, Boebert strongly denied the allegations: “A spokesperson for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said today there is zero truth to the allegations in a politically motivated September 17 filing to the House Ethics Committee. The Congresswoman rejects the claims as utterly false.”
Read the complaint in full below:
UPDATE: On Sunday, Boebert issued a news release stating, “Swearing to it does not make it a complaint,” the spokesperson said. “This was a political smear packaged as an ethics filing and published before anyone checked whether it even qualifies under the Committee’s rules.”
