An explosive sworn complaint filed with the House Ethics Committee alleges Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) carried on a sexual relationship with her district director in the office, in a car and in campaign-paid hotel rooms — and that roughly $200,000 changed hands when the staffer threatened to go to the committee.
The complaint says that after Clarice Navarro Ratzlaff left the office and told Boebert she intended to file an ethics complaint, a payment of about $200,000 followed in March 2025. Its author says he does not know where the money came from, and the passage describing how he verified the payment is redacted in the published version.
Navarro Ratzlaff is a former Colorado lawmaker who served as a U.S. Department of Agriculture official during the first Trump administration. She ran Boebert's district operation for four years.
The complaint was executed Sept. 17 by David B. Wheeler, president and co-founder of American Muckrakers, a political action committee that has targeted Boebert for years. He published it himself.
House Rule XXIII, clause 18(a) bars members from sexual relationships with any House employee under their supervision, with an exception only for spouses. Consent is not a defense, as the rule places the obligation on the member. The House adopted it in February 2018 after harassment scandals swept Capitol Hill, and the Ethics Committee cited the same provision in opening its 2019 investigation into then-Rep. Katie Hill.
The complaint alleges the relationship with Navarro Ratzlaff ran from 2021 through January 2025 while she worked under Boebert's supervision, with encounters during and after office hours, in the district office, in a vehicle for which she collected mileage reimbursements, and in hotel rooms paid for by Boebert's campaign committee. It makes similar allegations about two other aides.
The evidence for the relationships rests on unnamed sources described in notes not included in the published filing. For one of the other aides, the complaint also cites public photographs; that exhibit is a Google Images printout of Instagram posts, several of them birthday tributes from a staffer to her boss.
The filing's own analysis of House payroll data puts Navarro Ratzlaff's total compensation at about $450,000 over four years and identifies roughly $31,000 in what it calls implied year-end bonuses, calculated by comparing fourth-quarter pay against each year's third-quarter baseline. The complaint alleges those payments were made on account of the relationship rather than for work performed. Wheeler's own exhibit qualifies that, noting the fourth-quarter increases "are consistent with year-end bonuses, a routine and lawful House practice; a mid-quarter raise or retroactive adjustment could produce a similar pattern. Source records should be independently verified before publication."
Raw Story has not independently verified the payroll or campaign finance figures in the complaint.
Boebert has demanded transparency about payments members make to silence staffers.
Signing the Epstein files discharge petition last year, she told Raw Story that congressional settlements should be disclosed too, adding that she did not care "what letter is next to anybody's name." She asked why members who made such payments were still serving.
"What were they covering up? What were they paying off?" Boebert asked at the time.
Those settlements came from a congressional fund that has paid out more than $17 million since the late 1990s. The payment Wheeler alleges is not one of them.
Boebert's office and her campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Ethics Committee does not confirm or deny the existence of reviews.
Boebert's ex-husband rejected the allegations when Wheeler contacted him shortly before publication.
"I think it is all a fairy tale made up propaganda," Jayson Boebert said in a message Wheeler published. "I don't believe any of that. Bad sources."