Lauren Boebert Officially Wins Reelection Bid

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) won her bid for reelection after a tight race decided by roughly 550 votes, a recount confirmed on Monday.

The final results in Colorado’s Congressional District 3 showed the incumbent received 50.06% of the votes, while her Democratic rival, Adam Frisch, received 49.89%. Tallies showed Boebert with 163,293 votes following a net loss of three, and Frisch with 163,839 votes after a net gain of one.

The initial results had been within Colorado’s margin for a mandatory recount, which is at or less than 0.5% difference between the top two candidates. But Frisch, a former Aspen City Council member, already conceded defeat last month, and Boebert declared victory.

“We have won this race,” Boebert said at the time. “With this victory and with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives we can focus on the issues that actually matter most, including getting inflation under control, increasing our domestic energy supply, securing our southern border and being a strong check on the White House.”

We won!

I am so thankful for all of your support and I am so proud to be your Representative! pic.twitter.com/4gnmflotiU

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) November 18, 2022

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced the certification of the 2022 general election results on Monday, also noting that a recount of the Colorado House District 43 race had be completed. Democrat Robert “Bob” Marshall was affirmed as the victor over Republican incumbent Kurt Huffman in that Douglas County race.

“The 2022 General Election was among the most accessible and successful in Colorado’s history. I am proud of our State’s elections and the voting access that we have added over the last four years,” Griswold said in a statement. “I commend the county election officials, election workers, and the employees of the Department of State for their hard work and dedication to delivering great elections for Colorado voters.”

Republicans had a weaker-than-expected performance in this year’s midterm elections. Though the GOP failed to win control of the Senate, it did regain control of the House.

Boebert, a firebrand backed by former President Donald Trump and a vocal supporter of the Second Amendment, won her first race in 2020 by a larger margin, defeating her Democrat opponent by six points in a year in which Colorado voted to elect Joe Biden.

Her district was redrawn in accordance with the 2020 Census, which political observers said made it even more red.

Criminal Charges Against Sam Bankman-Fried Revealed

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder and former CEO of FTX, is facing numerous federal felonies for alleged financial crimes related to the collapse of the company.

The disheveled 30-year-old was arrested Monday night by authorities in the Bahamas after they received word from U.S. officials that charges had been filed against Bankman-Fried and that the U.S. would soon seek extradition.

The New York Times reported that Bankman-Fried is facing charges of wire fraud, wire fraud conspiracy, securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy, and money laundering.

The charges are contained in a sealed indictment from the prosecutors for the Southern District of New York.

U.S. Attorney Damian Willams said in a statement, “Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. Government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY.”

“We expect to move to unseal the indictment in the morning and will have more to say at that time,” Williams added.

Reuters reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has also authorized charges against Bankman-Fried.

“The Securities and Exchange Commission has separately authorized charges relating to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s violations of our securities laws, which will be filed publicly tomorrow in the Southern District of New York,” SEC official Gurbir Grewal said in a statement.

FTX, which is headquartered in the Bahamas, was launched in 2019 and had accrued more than one million users by 2022. Users suddenly demanded $6 billion in withdrawals after an article published by CoinDesk revealed last month that the two arms of Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency empire, FTX and Alameda Research, had significant overlap on their balance sheets in the form of the cryptocurrency FTT, which FTX invented. Rival firm Binance, which had been planning to purchase FTX, announced that it would discharge all holdings in the coin and eventually reversed course on the acquisition.

After the company collapsed, Bankman-Fried went from boasting a $15.6 billion net worth to having “no material wealth” over the span of approximately two days.

Bankman-Fried was the second largest donor for Democrats this last election cycle, only behind megadonor George Soros, giving at least $38 million to leftist causes, PACs, and candidates, Fox News reported.

Politico reported that Bankman-Fried was a top resource to whom Democrats went when lawmakers began looking at ways to regulate cryptocurrencies because of “his willingness to write multimillion dollar checks to boost Democrats.”

Related: FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried: ‘I Didn’t Ever Try To Commit Fraud On Anyone’