Stephen Colbert staffers arrested for trespassing on Capitol Hill
Seven staffers from “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” were arrested for allegedly trespassing in a Capitol Hill building on Thursday night, authorities said.
The rogue employees were found at about 8:30 p.m. by US Capitol Police officers inside the Longworth House Office Building, which houses offices for members of the House of Representatives, the department told The Post in a statement.
The ‘Late Show’ associates were “unescorted and without Congressional ID” in a hallway on the sixth floor, USCP said.
The building was closed to the public at the time, and Capitol Police said they had asked the group to leave the grounds earlier in the day.
While there were seven arrests, a total of nine people were stopped by officers, including Robert Smigel, the voice behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the Associated Press reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Fox News reported that the same group had been escorted from the Jan. 6 committee hearing hours earlier because they lacked proper press credentials.
The “Late Show” staffers reportedly applied to get press credentials for the hearing, but were denied by the House Radio/TV Gallery because they are not considered “news,” according to the Fox News report.
All seven were each charged with unlawful entry, cops said.
CBS told The Post in a statement that a ‘Late Show’ production team was at the Capitol on Wednesday and Thursday to record interviews with House members for a segment of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
The station said that their interviews were “authorized and prearranged through Congressional aides of the members” they met with.
The crew had interviewed Reps. Adam Schiff, (D-Calif.), Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) and Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), according to Fox.
After they were booted from the building earlier in the day, they were let back inside sometime after 4 p.m. by an aide to Auchincloss who believed they had more interviews to conduct, Fox reported.
CBS said the staffers stayed in the building “to film stand-ups and other final comedy elements” in the hallway when Capitol Police detained them.
Sources told Fox News that the crew took videos and pictures around the offices of two Republican members of Congress, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
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