Will ‘Colbert 7’ get January 6 treatment?
On Friday, seven staffers on the production team for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert were arrested while trespassing the Longworth House Office Building, an office building for House Representatives which is part of the Capitol complex. The crew were reportedly let in by Rep. Adam Schiff’s (D-CA) staff after earlier interviewing Schiff, Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), and Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) related to the January 6 Committee hearings.
The crew members were uninvited, had no passes and no escort. According to reports, the “Colbert 7” were “loud, disruptive” and “theatrical” and were banging on the doors of House Republicans. They were arrested by Capitol police near Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-CO) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) offices and charged with trespassing, the same charge levied at January 6 attendees.
On Thursday, physician, attorney and human rights activist Dr. Simone Gold was sentenced to 60 days in prison, one-year supervised leave and a $9,500 fine for trespassing on Capitol grounds on January 6th. Though she had committed no harassment, violence or vandalism, she was arrested on January 18, 2021 by over a dozen law enforcement officers with assault weapons breaking her door. She was labeled an insurrectionist and spent two nights in jail.
The CBS employees spent one night in jail and were released the next day. They are not expected to face prison time, though it is likely they will be slapped with a fine which will be paid by the network.
“We learned that last night producers for Stephen Colbert’s show on CBS committed insurrection at the United States Capitol,” Carlson began the segment. “The point of them being there was to harass sitting members of Congress — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert.”
“We’ll just get right to it: It’s likely that some members of Stephen Colbert’s team will be held in solitary confinement for a year and a half without being charged,” he said. “Why? Because this is an insurrection.”
“Joking aside,” Carlson continued, “how could they not be held for a year and half in solitary confinement without being charged? Because the precedent is in place. And how in the world can Adam Schiff, again, who spent the last year and a half eliminating the civil liberties of Trump voters on the basis of January 6, do the exact same thing and not face punishment?”
Two House Republicans, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Rodney Davis (R-IL) have officially requested from the US Capitol Police (USCP) Chief Thomas Manger all materials relating to the arrest of the CBS employees, according to The Epoch Times.
“Much has been made lately about unauthorized access to House office buildings, including debunked Democrat allegations that Republican members led so-called reconnaissance tours of the Capitol Complex in advance of January 6,” the Republicans wrote in a letter to the USCP. “Unlike the Democrat allegations of reconnaissance tours, however, the events on June 16 actually resulted in arrests for unlawful entry.”
