Before her time in Congress, the incendiary first-term Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) ran a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado called Shooters Grill — which doesn’t exactly seem poised to prepare someone for working in the federal government. Now, Colorado Newsline is reporting that Boebert owed nearly $20,000 in state tax liens at the beginning of 2020 over unemployment insurance premiums that her restaurant failed to pay to the state. She paid off these liens — which totaled $19,552.86, including interest and other fees — shortly before her official election to Congress in November 2020.
As Colorado Newsline summarizes, from August 2016 through the early part of 2020, Boebert’s restaurant “accumulated eight liens for nonpayment of unemployment insurance premiums, according to records from the Garfield County Clerk and Recorder’s office.” These liens were over failures to pay unemployment insurance premiums since all the way back in 2013, when the restaurant first opened. According to records, $553.50 of the owed amount was taken care of on February 13, 2020, and the remaining amount was dealt with on October 22 of the same year.
Shooters Grill has been involved in at least a couple of controversial public incidents. Last year, the restaurant temporarily lost its operating license after operating without regard for public health requirements imposed to help stem the spread of COVID-19. Within about a couple of weeks, the establishment regained its license with stipulations including a requirement to operate at only 50 percent capacity, in order to help cut down on virus transmission.
In another incident, in 2017, dozens of people suffered food poisoning after Boebert catered for a rodeo event in her town, which is called Rifle. Food at the event was the work of “an unlicensed temporary retail food establishment associated with Shooters Grill,” officials determined, and the meat that sparked the foodborne illnesses was “smoked at Smokehouse 1776, a retail food establishment located in downtown Rifle, Colorado across the street from Shooters Grill and owned by the same person,” meaning Boebert. Health inspectors stopped by Smokehouse 1776 shortly after receiving information about serious side effects from food at the rodeo, and they discovered that the establishment didn’t even have any “cold holding” or “hot holding” procedures to maintain the safety of the food products before their consumption. Boebert’s “Smokehouse 1776” is now closed.
