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, US Capitol Police said. The group of nine people associated with CBS’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” were arrested last month for ignoring escorted orders while inside the building, police said in a press statement. “Team members were told multiple times before entering the congressional buildings that they had to remain escorted inside the buildings and failed to do so,” the statement said. They were there to film a segment for the show featuring Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, a raunchy cigar-smoking puppet voiced and operated by comedian Robert Smigel who has appeared on late-night comedy shows for decades. “The United States Capitol Police have just been notified that the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is declining to prosecute the case,” police said. “We respect the decision made by the office,” the department added. The production team for Colbert’s show had scheduled interviews on Capitol Hill that were “authorized and prearranged through the congressional aides of the members interviewed,” Renata Luczak, vice president of entertainment communications for CBS, said in an email to NBC News a day later. arrested on June 16. That afternoon, police said they responded to a disturbance call at the Longworth House office building, where they found the group “unaccompanied and without congressional identification, in a sixth-floor hallway.” “The building was closed to visitors and these individuals were determined to be part of a group ordered by the USCP to vacate the building earlier in the day. They were charged with trespassing,” the department said in a June release. 17 statement. The arrests followed a public hearing by the House Select Committee investigating the riot on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, when a violent mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the building, disrupting the transfer of power from Trump to President Joe Biden. Some conservative critics, such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, have tried to draw comparisons between the late-night executives and rioters on Capitol Hill to suggest a double-dealing by law enforcement.
