A girl takes a picture on the marquee for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” at the Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan, New York.
Andrew Kelly | Reuters
Federal prosecutors on Monday declined to prosecute a group of people associated with Stephen Colbert’s late-night talk show who were arrested on charges of trespassing into a congressional office building, Capitol Police said.
The group of nine people associated with CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” were arrested last month for ignoring instructions to remain with an escort while inside the building, police said in a statement.
“The members of the group were told several times before entering the congressional buildings that they should remain escorted by staff inside the buildings, but they did not,” the statement said.
They were there to film a segment for the show featuring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a vulgar, cigar-smoking hand puppet voiced and controlled by comedian Robert Smigel, who has appeared on late-night comedy shows for decades.
“The United States Capitol Police has just been informed that the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is declining to prosecute the case,” police said.
“We respect the decision made by this office,” the department added.
The production team for Colbert’s show had scheduled interviews on Capitol Hill that were “authorized and pre-arranged by congressional aides to the members being interviewed,” Renata Luczak, vice president of entertainment communications for CBS, said in an email to NBC News a day after the arrest of June 16.
That evening, police said they responded to a disturbance call at the Longworth House office building, where they found the group “unaccompanied and without Congressional ID, in a sixth-floor hallway.”
“The building was closed to visitors and these individuals were determined to be part of a group that was ordered by the USCP to leave the building earlier in the day. They were charged with trespassing,” the department said in a June 17 statement.
The arrests followed a public hearing by a special House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, when an angry mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building, disrupting the transition of power from Trump to President Joe Biden.
Some conservative critics, such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, have tried to draw comparisons between the night officers and the Capitol rioters to suggest a double standard in the treatment of law enforcement.
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