A group of Wyoming lawyers sent a letter last week to Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for U.S. House Harriet Hageman expressing their “deep concern and disappointment” about her public comment last month that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. 

Hageman, a land attorney, beat out incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney by nearly 40 points in the closely watched Aug. 16 primary. 

At an Aug. 3 forum in Casper, Hageman said the election was “rigged to make sure that President Trump could not get reelected.” 

“What happened in 2020 is a travesty. It should never happen again. We need to make sure our elections are free and fair,” she said. 

The letter argues that Hageman should “know” that her comments “were both false and incendiary,” and that the statement violates the Wyoming State Bar’s rules of conduct, as well as the oath attorneys take when admitted to the bar. 

It was signed by 41 Wyoming lawyers including former attorney general Pat Crank, former Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Michael Golden, Wyoming State Bar President Christopher Hawks, President Elect Anna Reeves Olson and past president Kenneth Barbe II, and John Robinson, one of the attorneys challenging Wyoming’s abortion ban. 

Hageman’s statements “received wide publication, both in Wyoming and nationally,” the letter says. “Not only did they serve to undermine public confidence in the outcome of our last presidential election, but they were also contrary to at least the spirit, if not the letter, of the oath you and the rest of us swore upon our admission to the Wyoming bar, as well as other ethical duties and responsibilities owed by all of us as Wyoming lawyers.” 

The letter writers did not send the letter to the bar association, nor have they asked the group to discipline Hageman for her remarks. 

Hageman responded to the letter on her campaign website Thursday, saying it is “meant as a threat” against her for holding a different political opinion that’s “shared by a majority of Wyoming voters.” 

She said it “appears to be part of a larger national collusive effort by leftists and political insiders to target Republican lawyers who have concerns about the 2020 election ...” and that she suspects The 65 Project provided the template for the letter.

The 65 Project, named after the 65 lawsuits filed across swing states to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, is a bipartisan effort to “protect democracy” by “holding accountable” lawyers who “bring fraudulent lawsuits seeking to overturn legitimate election results” or “otherwise violate their professional responsibilities to undermine our democracy,” according to its website. 

Reeves Olson told the Star-Tribune that The 65 Project is “not involved in any way” with the letter. 

“We had to do a significant amount of research, but we drafted the whole thing,” she said. 

Crank also said in an email to the Star-Tribune that he has “no knowledge” of The 65 Project and doesn’t believe it was involved. 

“This letter was just a bunch of honorable Wyoming lawyers trying to influence a miscreant who is harming Wyoming and our country,” he said. 

The letter, which was sent Sept. 12, cites a joint statement by the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, which is made up of several federal agencies and non-governmental organizations involved in election security matters, stating that the 2020 presidential election was “the most secure in American history ...” 

It emphasizes that Trump’s attorney general William Barr said early on that the Department of Justice didn’t find evidence of fraud that would have changed the election’s outcome, and that the election results have been challenged in “over 60 lawsuits, numerous administrative review proceedings, and post-election audits,” none of which provided evidence that the election was fraudulent. 

“Despite this clear proof that the election was not ‘rigged’ and that no fraud occurred or in any way impacted the election results, Mr. Trump and his allies have continued to propagate the myth that the election was ‘stolen’ from him and that President Biden was not legitimately elected,” the letter continues. “Regretfully, this fiction has been lent credence by too many lawyers, in at least potential violation of their ethical duties owed under the codes of conduct in many states.” 

The letter points to the case of a personal lawyer to Trump and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was suspended from practicing in New York because of his claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and cites the New York appellate court that oversaw the decision.

“False statements intended to foment a loss of confidence in our elections and resulting loss of confidence in government generally damage the proper functioning of free society,” the court said. “When those false statements are made by an attorney, it also erodes the public’s confidence in the integrity of attorneys admitted to our bar and damages the profession’s role as a crucial source of reliable information.” 

The letter ends asking Hageman to “not make any further statements denying the lawfulness of the 2020 election, or of the legitimacy of President Biden’s authority” and to distance herself from “those that continue to perpetuate the dangerous myth of the ‘stolen election.’” 

“We hope that you will take our concerns to heart, and that all your actions in the days ahead will serve to uphold the Rule of Law and its cousin — Fact-based Truth — in accordance with the very highest standards of a Wyoming lawyer,” the letter says. 

But Hageman said in her statement that she’s still skeptical. 

“There remain serious questions about that election, including hundreds of millions of dollars spent by Mark Zuckerberg to commandeer local elections offices in Democrat precincts, and the fact that a Pennsylvania court ruled that their state’s mail-in voting law is unconstitutional,” she said in her statement. “As a constitutional attorney, I have spent my career fighting for the rights of others, and now a group of my fellow lawyers is trying to squelch my own First Amendment rights because they disagree with me. 

“And let’s be clear — this is not just an attack on me, it’s also aimed at conservative Wyomingites and anyone who supports President Trump,” she continued. “I’d like to say I’m surprised by this behavior, but it’s just what elites — and those who consider themselves elites — do.” 

As far as the First Amendment is concerned, Hageman’s comments are likely covered, said University of Utah law professor Bob Keiter, an expert on the Constitution. 

“The courts have been very protective of what they call political speech,” he said. 

Whether the state bar would recommend for Hageman to be disciplined is another question. 

Unlike Giuliani, Hageman wasn’t acting in her role as an attorney when she called the election rigged. She was speaking at a candidate forum. 

Usually, attorneys have to be admitted into their state bar association to practice law there, which involves taking that state’s oath of attorney. The Wyoming Supreme Court, which includes the bar, sets the standards for its members and is ultimately tasked with enforcing them. The state bar investigates complaints of misconduct and can make recommendations to the Supreme Court on whether or not it thinks public sanctions — like being censured, suspended or disbarred — should be applied. (Private disciplinary action by the bar is also an option, said Wyoming State Bar Executive Director Sharon Wilkinson.) 

Earlier this year, for example, the Wyoming State Bar charged a Teton County prosecutor with seven counts of professional misconduct for a murder trial that sentenced a man to life in prison. 

Those counts included “knowingly making false statements in court.” 

The Wyoming State Bar’s rules of conduct explicitly forbid members from engaging in “dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation” even when acting in a “nonprofessional capacity.” 

The rules are there to protect the bar’s image — as well as protect the integrity of the justice system, said David Adler, an Idaho-based constitutional scholar. 

Adler, who has been critical of Hageman and other election deniers seeking office, spoke at the Wyoming bar association’s annual meeting in Casper last week. 

Without those rules, “every attorney would have license to engage in deceitful statements and to engage in fraudulent statements and mislead the public,” he said. 

Crank, Wyoming’s former attorney general, said in an email to the Star-Tribune that he was “honored” to sign the letter, which had been sent to him by Casper attorney and signatory Bill Schwartz. 

“I think it is ridiculous, ignorant, and reprehensible at this stage to perpetuate the lie that an election was somehow stolen from Trump,” he wrote. “It is also dangerous because such claims ferment the deep anger that exists in this country and fans the flames of division and hate based on a preposterous lie.” 

Crank wrote that Wyoming county clerks “take election integrity far more seriously than Hageman or [GOP Secretary of State nominee Chuck] Gray and every day strive to (sic) insure we have the most accurate and fair elections in the country.” 

“They live election integrity and don’t bring it up only to advance their personal gain,” he said. “I have no doubt that if any County Clerk believed any vote was stolen from Trump, they would have told us immediately.” 

Casper attorney Craig Newman, one of the signatories of the letter, told the Star-Tribune on Wednesday that his reason for signing the letter was to remind Hageman that, as a lawyer, she has “special obligations and responsibilities and should not be making factually inaccurate and actually not true statements about an election.” 

He added that those reasons were “independent of any political leanings,” and that he didn’t participate in writing the letter. (A smaller group of about 10 of the signatories had a hand in actually drafting the letter, Reeves Olson told the Star-Tribune. She said that process started in early September.) 

Newman was in his 20s during the Watergate scandal. He doesn’t remember that event “causing the kind of vitriol and the sharp divisions” that the 2020 election did. “I don’t think it pervaded the public’s mind in this divisive way that the current problem has,” he said.