Seven employees of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert were arrested for allegedly breaking into a Capitol Hill building on Thursday night, authorities said. All seven have been charged with illegal entry.
Officers, including Robert Smigel, the voice behind the Triumphant Comic Dog Triumph, were found by U.S. Capitol Police Department (USCP) officers at the Longworth House office building, which houses offices for members of the House of Representatives.
The building was closed to the public at the time, and Capitol police said they had asked the group to leave earlier in the day. The group was “unaccompanied and without a congressional ID” in the sixth-floor corridor, the USCP said.
People identified themselves as connected to the late CBS show, a person familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.
“Their interviews at the Capitol were authorized and pre-arranged by congressional members of the interviewed members,” CBS said.
“After leaving the members’ offices in their last interview of the day, the production team was left to film stand-up comedy and other final comedy elements in the halls when they were detained by Capitol police,” the network added.
The raid comes amid heightened awareness of illegal or unauthorized access to congressional buildings and came after a third public hearing by a House committee investigating the Capitol Uprising on January 6.
Capitol police said they received a disturbance call at the Longworth House office building around 8:30 p.m.
“The building was closed to visitors and these individuals were identified as part of a group that was directed by the USCP to leave the building earlier in the day,” the Capitol police said in a statement.
A statement from the USCP said the case remained “an active criminal investigation and could lead to additional criminal charges”.
According to Fox News, which was the first to report the incident, Late Show officials reportedly applied for press accreditation for the hearing, but were turned down by the House Radio / TV Gallery because it was not considered “news.”
CBS told the New York Post that the production team was in the Capitol on Wednesday and Thursday to record interviews with House members for a segment of Colbert’s comic sketch for dogs. Democrats Adam Schiff, Stephanie Murphy and Jake Aucinclos have reportedly been interviewed by a cigar puppet.
They were reportedly escorted out of the building earlier in the day, but re-entered by an Auchincloss aide who said they needed more interviews.
The arrests were politically recontextualized on social media: “What did the J6 Committee know and when did it find out about the Colbert Uprising in the Capitol?” Said Molly Hemingway, editor of the Federalist.
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