Boebert Paid Staffer $200K to Stay Quiet About Their Affair, Ethics Complaint Alleges

What the Complaint Actually Says

The ethics complaint was filed on September 17 by David Wheeler, an independent journalist and founder of the American Muckrakers political action committee. As the Guardian reports, Wheeler alleges Boebert committed at least seven violations of House ethics rules, and claims his organization has direct knowledge of the relationships through "text messages, bank records, court documents, and recorded conversations."

The most detailed allegation involves Clarice Navarro Ratzlaff, a Republican former Colorado state representative who later joined Boebert's congressional staff. Wheeler alleges the two had a four-year romantic and sexual relationship, that Ratzlaff eventually broke it off and threatened to file her own ethics complaint, and that Boebert responded by paying her $200,000 to go away quietly. The complaint also alleges Boebert fired Ratzlaff in September 2024 but kept her on the payroll as a "ghost employee" doing no actual work until January 2025.

The other two alleged relationships involve Raven Finegan, Boebert's district chief of staff, and Jeffrey Small, who served as her chief of staff from 2021 to 2025. The complaint documents substantial payments to all three: over $450,000 to Finegan through June 2026, nearly $780,000 to Small, and over $461,000 to Ratzlaff. Those are congressional salary figures, not automatically suspicious on their own, but the complaint packages them alongside the relationship allegations as part of a broader pattern.

The Rules She Would Have Broken

This is not a gray area in House rules. The code of official conduct explicitly prohibits members of Congress from engaging in sexual relationships with employees under their supervision. It doesn't matter if the relationship was consensual. Consent, the rules state plainly, is not a defense.

That's the part worth sitting with for a second. Congress, an institution not historically known for aggressively policing its own members' behavior, wrote a rule that says it doesn't matter if everyone involved was fine with it. If a member is sleeping with someone who works for them, that's a violation, full stop. The power imbalance is the problem. Boebert, if the allegations are true, would have been in violation for years across multiple relationships simultaneously.

Boebert's Defense, Such As It Is

Boebert's office issued a formal statement calling the allegations "utterly false." She also posted a video to social media in which she described Wheeler as a "sloppy, desperate, obsessive hack" and accused journalists who reported the story of falling for a "scam." She told Sources Say News directly: "I'm not a lesbian or bisexual, and I have never, ever been in any inappropriate relationship, nor have I ever been sexually involved with any staff."

Ratzlaff, for her part, texted the Colorado Reporter to say the allegations are "entirely false, defamatory, and beyond ridiculous." Her ex-husband Jace offered a rather different flavor of response. According to American Muckrakers, he told Wheeler: "I assumed this would eventually surface. I'll have no further comment on this topic." That is not a denial. That is the statement of a man who has made his peace with something.

Boebert's spokesperson also questioned whether the complaint was even procedurally valid, noting that a House member needs to certify it was filed in good faith before it formally qualifies. "This was a political smear packaged as an ethics filing," the spokesperson said. The Guardian notes it has reviewed the complaint but has not independently substantiated the allegations.

The Hypocrisy Angle Nobody Is Letting Slide

It would be one thing if Boebert had spent her congressional career minding her own business. She has not. In June of this year, she posted on X claiming Major League Baseball was "forcing" players to promote a LGBTQ+ agenda, offering no evidence for the claim. She has been publicly critical of same-sex relationships on multiple occasions throughout her time in office.

The allegations in this complaint, if true, would mean Boebert was conducting a multi-year relationship with a woman while simultaneously positioning herself as a culture warrior against the very concept of same-sex relationships. That specific combination is not new in American politics, but it never stops being remarkable. The people most loudly policing other people's private lives have a documented tendency to be running entirely different private lives of their own.

Boebert's Greatest Hits, a Reminder

This complaint lands on top of a pile that was already substantial. In September 2023, surveillance footage from a Denver theater caught Boebert and a male companion groping each other during a performance of Beetlejuice the Musical. She was escorted out by security. She initially denied vaping in the theater, then admitted she had been vaping when more footage surfaced, explaining she "genuinely did not recall vaping that evening."

In January 2024, police were called to a restaurant disturbance involving Boebert and her ex-husband. In June of this year, she ended a Fox News Digital interview by saying "fuck you" to a reporter who raised allegations about a relationship with fellow Republican congressman Thomas Massie, then walked off camera. And in August, her 21-year-old son Tyler appeared in a Colorado court on three counts of sexual exploitation of a child and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Lauren Boebert filed for divorce from her husband Jayson in May 2023, citing irreconcilable differences. Whatever those differences were, the public record suggests the Boebert household was not a quiet place.