The staffer, whose name was redacted, heard a man shouting outside his office, according to a letter from Manger to Reps. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).
“Do you remember me? Do you remember me? It’s me. We’re going to leave something under your door,” the man shouted, the staffer told the police. The man also banged on the door to Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-Colo.) office, which is adjacent to Bowman’s office.
The staffer said he was very concerned. He locked his office door and called the USCP emergency number.
Officers rushed to the scene, inside the Rayburn House Office Building, and found seven individuals, including Jake Plunkett, senior producer and director for Colbert’s CBS show.
Two additional individuals returned to the area about 20 minutes later. They told officers they had been wandering around the building. None of the people had congressional press identifications, and there were no congressional staffers with them, which meant they were illegally inside the building.
Previously Warned
One of the officers who responded to the scene recognized the group. He had stopped them earlier in the day, Manger said.The officer said he was patrolling in the Cannon House Office Building and noticed the group trying to stop members to conduct interviews. The officer found the group lacked press credentials and had no staff members with them. He told them that the group couldn’t be inside without a staff escort and removed them from the building.
The group was escorted into yet another House office building, the Longworth House Office Building, by a staffer with Rep. Jake Auchincloss’s (D-Mass.) office, earlier in the day, an investigation found. The group was “improperly allowed to remain in the building after the staffer had left them,” according to Manger, and had apparently gone into a different building.
All of the buildings are connected to the U.S. Capitol.
Plunkett identified the group as working for Colbert, and Robert Smigel, another member of the group, said the group “was pretending to leave notes under the Member’s doors as part of the skits, but did not actually leave anything.”
The note was an invitation to a cocaine orgy, according to the interviews.
Because the group violated building regulations, they were taken into custody.
An investigation later found that the group was inside the buildings on June 15 but had a staff escort at all times. It also uncovered that Plunkett had also been told by the longtime head of the House Radio/TV Gallery that his attempts to secure press credentials were denied because the group didn’t meet the standards and that his group must not enter or remain in the buildings without an escort.
Plunkett and CBS didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Not Prosecuted
The group was arrested and charged with unlawful entry. Details of what happened were presented to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.Prosecutors announced this week that all charges were dropped.
“The Office would be required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these invited guests were guilty of the crime of unlawful entry because their escort chose to leave them unattended. We do not believe it is probable that the Office would be able to obtain and sustain convictions on these charges,” a spokesperson for the office told The Epoch Times in an email.
The USCP said that it respects the decision, but Manger commented separately on the move in his letter to Davis and Jordan.
“It is unfortunate that despite all of the evidence the Department presented, including that the group or its leader had been told several times that they could not be in the buildings without an escort, that the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to prosecute any members of the group for Unlawful Entry,” he said.
On Fox News on July 19, Jordan said that “this is the double standard that we see so often from the left and from this town.”
