Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) on Thursday responded to a Denver Post editorial from earlier this week when the newspaper called his comments about Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and the Capitol riot “intentionally misleading.”
In his op-ed response, also published in The Denver Post, Cohen criticized the paper’s editorial board for saying his comments were “sexist” and “elitist.”
“Nothing I said could be construed as either sexist or elitist but your editorial tars me with that brush,” Cohen wrote.
Cohen was responding to an editorial published Tuesday that carried the headline: “Attacks on Rep. Lauren Boebert that are sexist, elitist or based on rumors must stop.”
The editorial referred to comments made by Cohen in an interview with CNN, when he said he saw Boebert giving a tour in the Capitol just days before the Jan. 6 riot. The newspaper said his remarks to CNN were “intentionally misleading” and that his accusation of sedition was “on the very thinnest of evidence.”
“I said I saw Congresswoman Boebert lead a group, not ‘groups,’ in a tunnel near the Capitol, not in the Capitol, and I specifically said ‘now, whether they were people that were involved in the insurrection or not, I do not know.’ Immediately after that, I was asked: ‘Do you know that any people who were in that tour led by Boebert later attended the riot?’ My response: ‘I do not,’” Cohen wrote in his op-ed response.
Cohen also responded to Boebert’s letter to him regarding his comments.
“Multiple media reports have already ‘fact-checked’ the very statements you made today and declared them categorically false. Here are the real facts: you went on CNN today and repeated irresponsible lies in order to elevate your own political relevance and to further fuel the division of our country. Your actions are irresponsible and dangerous,” Boebert wrote in her letter to Cohen.
The Tennessee Democrat responded by writing: “Your assertion that my remarks raise ‘the specter of collusion’ with the insurrectionists is your pure fabrication. I said in the interview that her tour could have been entirely innocuous; it’s you who are raising specters.”
Boebert has said that Cohen’s comments about her have led to threats against her, her family and her staff.
Boebert has come under criticism for using the same kind of unfounded rhetoric about a stolen election that former President Trump repeated in the months after Election Day.
The Denver Post said that when Boebert was asked in interviews to clarify what she meant, she said her remarks referred to securing the election and people voting by mail.
“Her remarks on the House floor and her assertion that ‘Today is 1776’ on the morning of January 6 — before the insurrection — indicate why her calls for calm reflection and congressional camaraderie ring a bit hollow,” Cohen wrote.