Weston County Clerk to Judge: Toss the Subpoena Case — “the Investigation Was Illegal”

The original story by Maggie Mullen for WyoFile.

Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock is asking a judge to throw out the criminal case accusing her of blowing off a legislative subpoena — and her argument is basically: you can’t punish me for ignoring a subpoena that never should’ve existed in the first place.

In a motion filed Monday, Hadlock’s attorney Ryan Semerad told the court that the subpoena issued by the Wyoming Legislature’s Management Audit Committee was “void from the start,” meaning the entire prosecution should collapse.

“Through this prosecution, the State of Wyoming seeks to enforce a legislative subpoena issued to Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock,” the filing states. “But that subpoena was void from the start so this prosecution must fail as a matter of law.”

Hadlock pleaded not guilty in November in Natrona County Circuit Court to a misdemeanor charge of defying the subpoena.

This goes back to a September meeting in Casper, where the Management Audit Committee ordered Hadlock to appear and testify. The committee was digging into Hadlock’s role in the November 2024 election miscount in Weston County — the one that caused a jaw-dropping undercount for a state lawmaker running unopposed.

But Semerad says the committee didn’t have the authority to run that kind of probe in the first place.

“State law assigns all investigations into suspected violations of Wyoming’s Election Code to the Executive Department through the Wyoming Attorney General, the local county prosecuting attorney, or the county sheriff,” the motion says (emphasis in the filing).

In other words: if lawmakers suspected an Election Code violation, Semerad argues, that’s an executive-branch lane — not something the Management Audit Committee gets to turn into a public hearing.

Semerad also argues that even if the committee could look at the situation, it allegedly went about it the wrong way.

The committee’s audit work is supposed to be handled through the Legislative Service Office and kept strictly confidential, according to the filing. Instead, Semerad says, lawmakers launched a member-driven, public-facing investigation into whether Hadlock broke the law — and that’s not what the committee is designed to do.

“The [Management Audit Committee’s] member-directed and public investigation into allegations that Clerk Hadlock broke the law was illegal two times over,” the motion states.

Even if the committee did have the authority, Semerad claims Hadlock didn’t get a fair shot to respond.

He says the subpoena demanded she travel 165 miles for in-person testimony with only six days’ notice — including two weekend days — and that she wasn’t given a reasonable opportunity to get counsel and respond meaningfully.

“Even if the [committee] possessed any authority to act as it did, the [committee] violated Clerk Hadlock’s due process rights,” the filing argues.

Along with the motion to dismiss, Hadlock asked for a hearing, and also flagged that the court may want to send legal questions up to district court for clarification.

Hadlock landed in the political crosshairs after errors in the November 2024 general election caused a dramatic undercount of votes for House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, who was running unopposed in House District 1 (which includes Weston County).

Early results showed Neiman received just 166 votes, while 1,289 voters appeared to “undervote” — basically leaving that race blank. The numbers looked so strange they drew attention right away, including from Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who tried contacting Hadlock on election night. When she didn’t pick up, Gray asked the local sheriff’s office to check on her at home.

The problem eventually traced back to an error in Hadlock’s office involving misprinted ballots. A hand count corrected the miscount, but a post-election audit submitted by Hadlock raised additional concerns and kept the situation boiling.

Since then, multiple investigations have played out — including one by Gray that ended with him recommending Hadlock’s removal from office.

Meanwhile, Gov. Mark Gordon is now investigating Hadlock for a second time, after four constituents filed official complaints. Gordon previously investigated and concluded in May that Hadlock made “many serious mistakes” but that her actions didn’t rise to “misconduct or malfeasance” as he understood those terms.

Even then, state law doesn’t let the governor simply fire an elected county clerk. The process requires the governor to decide whether to recommend the attorney general seek removal in district court.

For now, the spotlight is on Hadlock’s subpoena case: whether the court agrees that the Legislature’s subpoena was invalid — and whether that alone is enough to wipe out the misdemeanor charge.

Hadlock’s side is betting the answer is yes. The state is betting the subpoena stands.