Tucker said on his Twitter post: “Stephen Colbert’s producers just committed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.” Seven staff members of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” were arrested for allegedly breaking into a Capitol Hill building on June 16th, authorities announced.
The rogue employees were located around 8:30 p.m. by U.S. Capitol Police officers inside the Longworth House office building which has offices for members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the department reported to the Post in a statement.
The associates of “The Late Show” were “unescorted and lacking congressional identification” in a sixth-floor hallway, USCP said.
The building was then closed to the public and Capitol Police said they requested the group leave earlier in the day.
And while there were seven arrests, nine people in total were taken into custody by officers. Those included Robert Smigel, the voice behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the Associated Press said, citing a person familiar with the case.
Fox News has now reported that the same group was escorted from the January 6 committee hearing hours earlier because they did not have proper press credentials.
The staffers from “The Late Show” reportedly requested press credentials for the hearing, but they were declined by the House Radio/TV Gallery because they are not classified as “news,” according to the Fox News report.
All seven were individually charged with illegal entry, cops said.
CBS reported to the Post in a statement that a “Late Show” production crew was on Capitol Hill last week to tape interviews with House members for a segment of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
The station claimed their interviews were “authorized and arranged in advance by the congressional aides of the members” they were meeting with.
The crew had interviews with several Representatives, notably, Adam Schiff (D-CA), Stephanie Murphy (D-FL7), and Jake Auchincloss (D-MA-04), Fox reported.
After being kicked out of the building earlier in the day, they were released inside after 4 p.m. by an aide to Auchincloss who thought he had more interviews to conduct, Fox reported.
CBS reported that the staffers had remained in the building “filming stand-ups and other final comedy bits” in the hallway when Capitol Police arrested them.
Sources have told Fox News that the crew shot video and photos around the offices of two Republican members of Congress, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO).
Meanwhile, back in January, a government contractor was found not guilty of four offenses related to his entry into the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden concluded that prosecutors failed to establish that Matthew Martin, who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, committed crimes when he entered the Capitol for roughly 10 minutes.
According to McFadden, a Trump nominee, Martin had a reasonable assumption that numerous policemen permitted him and others to enter the Capitol via the Rotunda gates on January 6. According to the court, Martin’s actions were “about as minimal and non-serious” as everyone else’s in the Capitol that day, as reported.