Did U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert live-tweet Speaker Nancy Pelosi's whereabouts during the January 6, 2021, insurrection? Not exactly: Boebert tweeted when Pelosi was removed from the House chamber, but did not tweet where Pelosi was specifically located or headed in a building with 540 rooms and 850 doorways.
The claim appeared in this meme on multiple social media accounts, including an Instagram post (archived here) published on September 24, 2021. It featured a graphic with an image of Boebert and large text that read:
She gave a large tour of the Capitol days before the armed insurrection.
She declared it was 1776 the morning of the armed insurrection.
She live-tweeted Nancy Pelosi's whereabouts during the armed insurrection.*
Why the f*ck is Lauren Boebert still a member of Congress?
Although this fact check will briefly discuss the other claims in this post, it will primarily focus on the Pelosi statement.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook on September 28, 2021:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Sep 28 21:37:37 2021 UTC)
One asterisk in the post replaced letters in an obscenity. The other, at the end of the Pelosi statement, led to a note at the bottom of the graphic, printed in type approximately as tall as a period in the declarations above it. The note read:
*Boebert has defended her tweets about Speaker Pelosi, and said '[Democrats] accuse me of live-tweeting the Speaker's presence after she had been safely removed from the Capitol, as if I was revealing some big secret, when in fact this removal was also being broadcast on TV.' According to Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, lawmakers 'were specifically instructed by those protecting us not to tell anyone, including our family, where exactly we were, for reasons that remain obvious.'
Schatz's tweet (archived here), did state that Congress members were told not to tweet their whereabouts, but he would not have been located in the House chamber with Boebert after the joint session earlier in the day. Rep. Eric Swalwell, replied to Schartz's tweet in his own tweet (archived here) saying that the same instructions were given in the House chamber:
@laurenboebert was told by the Sergeant of Arms in the chamber to not make any social media posts. It was said repeatedly. She defied it because she is more closely aligned with the terrorists than the patriots.
Other representatives located in the House chamber during the insurrection tweeted about it that day: notably, Rep. Dan Kildee (tweet here) and Rep. David Trone, who was evacuated from the House chamber (tweet here) both discussed the experience. While their tweets do not prove that the instructions to avoid social media were given by security, the tweets were published less than an hour after Boebert's. More tweets from Congress members during the insurrection can be found here.
The insurrection occurred on the same day that Congress members met to count the votes of the Electoral College, formalizing the 2020 presidential election results. On the day of the insurrection, Boebert vocalized her distrust of the election results and said that her objection to the counting of the Arizona Electoral College votes was "based on the Constitution."
In the same statement referenced by the claim posted on Facebook, Boebert came after Democrats, who questioned her "Today is 1776" tweet (archived here), as 1776 is recognized as the founding year of the U.S. Seemingly referencing the tweet and her sentiments about the Electoral College votes in her statement, she said:
They act as though a reference to the founding of our country and the bravery of upholding our Constitutional oath is criminal, which says a whole lot more about them than it does about me or any other Republican.
Sen. Steve Cohen claimed that he saw Boebert giving a "large tour" of the Capitol building sometime between January 3, 2021, but before the insurrection on January 6. Cohen also said that he was not sure if the people Boebert was with were participants in the insurrection. Boebert refuted his claim and said that she was with her family at the Capitol after her swearing-in on January 3.
