Wyoming attorney seeks criminal probe of election chief for handing DOJ voters’ data

A retired Wyoming attorney filed an official complaint Monday alleging that Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray (R) may have violated state election law when he handed over Wyoming voters’ personal data to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

Wyoming is one of 17 states that have complied with DOJ’s demands for full, unredacted state voter rolls, which include addresses, driver’s license numbers, and social security numbers.

Enter George Powers, who spent 40 years practicing law in the state. In a complaint to Attorney General Keith Kautz (R), he is alleging that Gray’s decision to hand that data over was illegal.

“When Secretary Gray released the unredacted [voter rolls] to DOJ, he willingly and knowingly released information that was confidential under Wyoming law,” Powers told Cowboy State Daily, a local Wyoming news outlet. “He released these confidential records in response to a mere request.”

Under state law, it’s a misdemeanor to release confidential voter information. And for election officials, it’s a felony to violate the state’s election code. Powers believes Gray did both.

He’s not the only one taking issue with the secretary of state’s actions. Julie Freese, the clerk of Fremont County, Wyoming, said she was “perturbed” at Gray.

“We have statutes that say we cannot give out the private information of anybody, and our secretary of state just gave it out without [a memorandum of understanding] or anything,” she said during the annual meeting of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in Chicago Tuesday.

“I think the problem was he never even told the clerks, and they are very, very angry in our state. Our citizens are very angry right now,” Freese added. “And I don’t blame them, because none of us were even told he was going to do that.”

Since last May, the DOJ has demanded private voter data from every state, part of the Trump administration’s aggressive pursuit of baseless allegations of mass voter fraud by noncitizens. 

A majority of states — including some GOP-led ones — refused to give in to the DOJ’s demands, leading the department to sue 30 states and Washington, D.C., for unfettered access to state voter rolls. 

So far, the Trump administration is 0 for 4 on voter roll cases, with the DOJ losing in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Oregon. 

Gray — a staunch ally of President Donald Trump — told Democracy Docket that Powers’ claims, “in coordination with media outlets like Democracy Docket is nothing more than Trump Derangement Syndrome, clothed in an attempt to use lawfare and the leftwing media to attack my actions on election integrity.”

Gray added that, in handing over Wyoming’s full, unredacted voter roll to the DOJ, he “maintained compliance with the law and these actions have been carried out in close consultation with the Attorney General.”

In his complaint, Powers asked for a district court judge to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Gray. Usually, the attorney general would conduct such an investigation. But Gray’s acknowledgment that he worked with Attorney General Kautz’s office could create a conflict of interest in a state investigation.

Kautz did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

This story has been updated with comments from Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray.

Additional reporting by Jacob Knutson