U.S. Capitol police have arrested members of the CBS program “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” who were filming a segment with a salty canine puppet with the voice of comedian Robert Smigel.
Capitol police said Friday they had detained seven people in a hallway of the Capitol building Thursday night, at a time when the building was closed to visitors. Police told people to leave the building early in the day.
CBS said that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the puppet that Mr. Smigel has expressed for years, he had been at the Capitol on Thursday with a production team when they were arrested by police. At the time of the arrest, the team had finished arranging interviews with members of Congress and were filming “final comedy elements” in the hallways of the building for an upcoming segment of “The Late Show.”
The seven people were later charged with illegal entry and are now being investigated in consultation with Matthew M. Graves, the U.S. District Attorney for Columbia, Capitol police said, adding. that more criminal charges may be filed. Unable to contact Mr.’s office immediately. Serious to comment on Friday night.
The arrests in the Longworth House office building came at a time when Congress is holding televised hearings on the January 6, 2021 attack on the same building, in which supporters of President Donald J. Trump went violently assault the Capitol complex.
The word of the arrests would surely provide fodder for experts, comedians and politicians.
Shortly after the news of the arrests became known on Friday night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson told viewers that Colbert’s producers had “just committed an insurrection” in the State Capitol building. United. “It’s exactly like what happened on January 6, so we’ll take a closer look at what the punishments are,” he said.
“Liz Cheney, call your office,” Carlson added, referring to the Wyoming Republican congresswoman and vice chair of the committee investigating last year’s attack. “We have another committee to take us.”
Mr. Smigel, the comedian who plays Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, could not be reached for comment Friday night. CBS declined to provide further information on the arrests, nor did it say when the segment would be aired with Mr. Canine’s puppet. Smigel.
Mr. Smigel is a former writer of “Saturday Night Live” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien,” and his puppet is an irreverent dog chewing cigars that sometimes wanders the corridors of American power. Days after the 2016 presidential election, Colbert introduced Triumph to his program as “an old friend and veteran of the election campaign, a true Mandarin of his business, and a toy rottweiler.”
In a special in the 2016 election earlier that year, Triumph had described himself as an “insult comic.”
“This is the wave of the future,” he told Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. “That’s what Trump is doing.”
In a February 2020 segment of Mr. Late Show. Colbert, Triumph visited the United States Capitol and joined a group of reporters around Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican from Utah.
“Hello, Mitt!” He said. “I am a dog journalist! Can I take you home on your roof? “(Mr. Romney did not answer.)
Later, when Triumph tried to enter a safe area of the Capitol building, a security guard told him he did not have access to it.
“I’m here to report on the significant waste of time in the House,” he said.