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Colorado congresswoman Lauren Boebert has earned a seat on one of the most coveted committees in the new Republican-led Congress despite her lack of support for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy during his rocky rise to the top post in the U.S. House.
On Tuesday, Boebert announced she had been appointed to the influential House Oversight Committee by members of the McCarthy-led House Steering Committee.
The appointment gives the outspoken Colorado Republican outsized influence on looming investigations into three-letter agencies like the CIA and FBI that McCarthy—whom Boebert vocally opposed for the speaker post—had hinted at in the lead-up to Republicans taking the majority this past November.
The appointment, which Boebert announced in a tweet, comes even after her public rebukes of McCarthy in the media as well as on the House floor in the days prior to the start of the 118th Congress, in which she voted for someone other than McCarthy more than a dozen times before finally yielding.
"Let's stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us, even having my favorite president [Donald Trump] call us and tell us we need to knock this off," she said of McCarthy's supporters during one heated juncture of the speaker vote.
"I think it actually needs to be reversed—the president needs to tell [Representative] Kevin McCarthy that 'sir, you do not have the votes and it's time to withdraw,'" Boebert added at the time.
That all appears to be water under the bridge, however, particularly after Boebert and other Republican holdouts managed to extract a number of public and private concessions from McCarthy to earn their vote.
"We changed the way bills will be passed," Boebert said in a news release at the time. "We changed the way the government will be funded. We changed the ways committees will be formed. We secured votes on term limits, the fair tax, the Texas Border Plan, and so much more."
It is not clear whether Boebert's position on the committee—which will likely lead investigations into the Biden administration's COVID-19 response after Trump as well as his handling of the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border—was part of that package of concessions, or whether it was a sign of reconciliation between the congresswoman and McCarthy.
Reached for comment, a Boebert spokesperson declined to respond to specific questions about the appointment, instead referring Newsweek to a release Boebert's office had put out upon the news of her appointment to the House Oversight Committee.
"As an advocate for transparency and reform, I will pursue the truth, conduct effective oversight, and fight to root out waste, fraud, and abuse throughout the federal government," Boebert said in the statement.
"I look forward to working with Chairman James Comer and supporting his mission to eliminate mismanagement in the federal government by investigating the border and fentanyl crises, COVID relief fraud, government collusion with big tech to censor Americans, the botched Afghanistan withdrawal, the energy crisis, COVID origins, and the Biden family's shady business schemes," Boebert added.
About the writer
Nick Reynolds is a senior politics reporter at Newsweek. A native of Central New York, he previously worked as a ... Read more