Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Crew Won’t Be Charged After Arrest While Filming At Capitol

Federal prosecutors will not be pressing charges against any members of the production crew who were briefly detained while filming a segment for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in the U.S. Capitol building last month.

Some conservatives like Tucker Carlson attempted to drum up online rage at the left-leaning program for the minor arrest and drew strained comparisons to the January 6 riots, but there wasn’t much comparison given the comedy show crew were just filming bits with the hand-puppet character Triumph The Insult Comic Dog.

The reason they won’t be filing charges is, well, there was no reason to arrest the crew in the first place. According to The U.S. Attorney’s office, charges can not be filed because the group was reportedly invited to be there and had not been asked to leave by their Capitol escorts at the time of the arrests.

U.S. Capitol Police claimed that they encountered the crew “unescorted and without Congressional ID, in a sixth-floor hallway.” They also claimed “The building was closed to visitors, and these individuals were determined to be part of a group that had been directed by USCP to leave the building earlier in the day,” which seemingly contradicts how prosecutors interpreted events.

Stephen Colbert hasn’t released the footage of Triumph’s interviews from this now-infamous day of filming, but he expressed support for his staffers who went through the ordeal in a monologue after the arrests. If you’d like to see the puppet’s expert political correspondent work in action, here’s an older Late Show segment from when Triumph covered Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.