Lauren Boebert fails to file 2019 financial disclosure — sale of cargo plane remains a mystery

Last Friday was the deadline for members of the House of Representatives to file their 2020 financial disclosure reports to the Clerk of House. It passed without Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., the firebrand pro-gun conservative, filling on time. On Tuesday of this week, the congresswoman filed her 2020 disclosure, but a Salon investigation revealed that she has failed to file the mandated reports for previous years, including 2019.

With Boebert's financial dealings from both 2019 and 2020, for the most part, remaining unclear, one fascinating question has emerged: What happened to the plane? Specifically, to the red Aviat Husky, a two-seat light aircraft that Boebert either did or did not own at one point.

On Tuesday, Boebert filed her "new filer" disclosure form, a few days late, which detailed financial dealings for the 2020 calendar year. To begin with, the lawmaker's salary last year from Shooter's Grill, the gun-themed restaurant she owns with her husband, Jayson, in Rifle, Colorado, is listed as exactly $1. Jayson Boebert, however, brought home nearly half a million dollars working for the energy firm Terra Energy Productions in 2020 and is on track to earn $768,000 in 2021.

With Boebert earning an additional $174,000 as a member of Congress, the couple is on track to earn almost $1 million in 2021, placing them within the top 1% of earners in the United States, as well as in the upper echelon of the wealthy Colorado mountains, where they live. Tuesday's filing outlined that Boebert currently owns no stocks, bonds or income property and that her personal assets in a checking account were valued at less than $15,000 with Shooter's Grill valued between $50,000 and $100,000.

Boebert's congressional boss, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy earns $193,400 a year, and his wife has earned roughly $47,000 annually in a "work from home" position with the California Republican Party for the past seven years. Back-of-the-envelope math suggests the Boeberts will earn nearly four times as much as the McCarthys this year.

It's unclear why Boebert disclosed her husband's salary since she was not required to do so under House Ethics rules. In fact, doing so revealed that while Boebert has presented herself as a working-class entrepreneur who spent her childhood on welfare, she is now in one of America's highest-income brackets.

The only previous disclosure Boebert has filed with the House Ethics Committee covered the 2018 calendar year 2018 and showed that Shooters Grill, had a net operating loss of $242,347. Since then, the Boeberts' second restaurant, Smokehouse 1776, went out of business following a 2017 food poisoning incident at a local fair. Jayson Boebert's consulting company also became delinquent with the state of Colorado after failing to file a periodic report.

And then there's the plane

Boebert's 2018 filing did not include the sale that October of the single-engine Aviat Husky A-1 cargo plane (see photos here) owned by Shooter's Grill since June of 2016, when the restaurant was a limited liability entity. Both Boebert and her husband received student pilot licenses through the FAA in 2015, although neither was ever licensed to carry passengers.