Daily Darwin

[{"type":"text","text":"Oh good, a brand new sport..."}]

Collage Maker 10 Apr 2023 03 29 PM 3432

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Tuesday, April 11, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Oh good, a brand new sport...

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, April 11, 2023

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

Laramie County’s sheriff says the public records lawsuit two Freedom Caucus-aligned Cheyenne residents have filed against him is at least partly a political maneuver – and that his investigation of the February “CheckGate” controversy has “stirred the hornets’ nest.”

Colorado-based firm Lichter Immigration and its investigator Kevin Lewis 

 against Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak and his office June 30.

The lawsuit accuses Kozak’s office of wrongly withholding body camera video and information that a Mexican national, Mario Fabian Valenzuela Robles, needed for his ongoing immigration case.

The plaintiffs through their attorney Drake Hill filed a Thursday motion asking Laramie County District Court Judge Robin Cooley to hold Kozak in contempt of court. They allege Kozak’s office hasn’t obeyed Cooley’s order to turn over documents pertaining to Robles.

“The situation presented here creates the potential for the sheriff to face serious legal consequences, including contempt of court charges, as in this motion, fines, or removal from office,” the filing says.

[{"type":"text","text":"Kozak bristled at the filing and cast the case’s motivation as dubious."}]

He told Cowboy State Daily on Friday his office has turned over the body camera video, which he indicated was initially withheld to ensure it could be released according to the narrow provisions allowed in public records law.

As for other documents, Kozak said his counsel, Laramie County Attorney Mark Voss, had already conferred with the plaintiffs and worked out a time extension, since the search terms the plaintiffs requested returned around 7,700 generally irrelevant emails.

[{"type":"text","text":"The documents were originally due Aug. 5, court documents say."}]

“It’s confusing to us why this contempt motion was filed when there was an agreement we could go beyond the deadline date, when the search criteria was so large,” Kozak said Friday.

[{"type":"text","text":"Kozak took a stronger stance in a Saturday email."}]

“It is clear to me that the motive behind the motion and original court filing was, at least in part, to discredit the Sheriff’s Office for political reasons,” he wrote, adding that he hopes Cooley will “take appropriate action” if the plaintiffs’ filings were “misleading or unethical.”

“If the Court does not impose sanctions against the plaintiffs, I will consider filing a complaint with the Wyoming State Bar,” he added.

[{"type":"text","text":"Cooley has set a hearing for Oct. 16."}]

In response to Kozak's statements, Lewis said the sheriff is shifting blame. 

"Rather than trying to blame others, he should focus on doing his work and complying with the Court’s order," said Lewis in a Monday email. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The Presentation"}]

Kozak said several members of the Laramie County Conservative Coalition warned him that would happen, and they gave him a copy of an email notice of a meeting Wyoming Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ann Lucas, R-Cheyenne, dispatched.

Cowboy State Daily asked Kozak to extend the outlet’s interview invitation to the anonymous members. They declined, he said.

The email in question, which Kozak sent to Cowboy State Daily, shows a July 9 letter from Lucas previewing “a very interesting program for this coming Sunday” for the Laramie County Conservative Coalition.

“Cindy Hill and Kevin Lewis will discuss the recently filed lawsuit against Sheriff Brian Kozak,” the email says. The email also recounts details of the case from Cowboy State Daily’s reporting.

Cindy Hill is Drake Hill’s wife. She’s also the former state superintendent of public instruction, whom the Legislature tried, unconstitutionally, to remove from office, and who waged an unsuccessful defamation case against former legislator Tim Stubson.

“These allegations point to issues regarding civil rights,” says the email. “This subject is guaranteed to stimulate conversation. Don’t miss it.”

Cindy Hill did not respond by publication to a Monday-morning request for comment.

Kozak pointed to his decision to launch an investigation into “CheckGate.”

That was the Feb. 9 incident in which Teton County activist Rebecca Bextel, who’s now the Constitution Party nominee in the governor’s race, handed out campaign checks to Freedom Caucus members on the floor of the state House of Representatives – two days before they were set to vote on a bill she’d championed.

Multiple legislators and the entire Wyoming Senate condemned the act, but the House of Representatives cleared its involved members of bribery and misconduct after an in-house investigation.

[{"type":"text","text":"Kozak said his criminal investigation into the matter is still ongoing."}]

“The Sheriff’s Office’s recent search warrants in the CheckGate investigation have clearly stirred the hornets’ nest,” he said in his email. “There also appears to be a connection between Lewis and Hill through their involvement with Honor Wyoming and the Freedom Caucus, some members of which are reportedly subjects of the Checkgate investigation.”

Kozak added, “It is unfortunate to see this type of political activity in Wyoming, especially when I am upholding conservative principals (sic).”

“However,” the sheriff continued, “it will not discourage me from doing my job. I will gladly take the criticism and political pressure if it allows my deputies to perform their duties without political influence.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Lucas in a Monday text message to Cowboy State Daily countered."}]

She wasn’t involved in CheckGate in any capacity and doesn’t see a connection between that investigation and “an education community meeting about immigration law and the Constitution.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“Calling this political isn’t accurate,” added Lucas. "}]

She said at the July 12 meeting in question Lewis walked meeting attendees through the case and the surrounding legal issues. Lucas also said she’s not involved in the legal case and attended the talk only for the education.

[{"type":"text","text":"Here Kozak volleyed back."}]

“Have you ever heard of a (litigant) doing that before – a public meeting on a case they’re representing an immigrant on?” asked the sheriff. “Seems a little weird.”

Lucas had said in her text that the group has invited Kozak to speak and he’s done so twice. He said he’s never gone to one of their events and never been invited.

[{"type":"text","text":"‘That’s A Lie’"}]

Lewis said in a Friday phone interview that the sheriff’s office did not secure an extension for handing over documents.

“That’s a lie, right,” said Lewis. “And Kozak’s counsel set the due date for compliance … So there’s no extension. No request for extension. No communication about extension.”

Lewis emphasized that a judge’s order should be taken seriously and said that Kozak has “simply ignored the deadline of the court order.”

As of Friday, Lewis said, plaintiffs were still waiting on documents from the sheriff’s office.

[{"type":"text","text":"Cowboy State Daily asked if this case has political implications."}]

“I’m not commenting about politics. I’m working for an attorney in Colorado,” said Lewis, before promptly saying he had to leave the call.

[{"type":"text","text":"Lewis expounded in a Monday email. "}]

"We had to sue (Kozak) for evidence and he waited until the day of an emergency hearing to provide only partial evidence," said Lewis. "Then we had to bring a motion for his contempt of the Court Order, and then he did not provide a complete response to what the Court has ordered." Lewis asserted that as of Monday, Kozak has not complied with the order. 

"The Sheriff’s excuses are ridiculous.  He was sued for not doing what he was clearly required to do under the law.  Now he has violated the Court’s Order, purely and simply," he said, adding that Kozak "invents motives."

Drake Hill, whom Cowboy State Daily emailed Friday and Monday, had referred the outlet to Lewis for comment. 

Kozak noted correctly that Drake Hill and Lewis are both linked with Honor Wyoming.

[{"type":"text","text":"Bextel is too."}]

The 2026 business filing for Honor Wyoming lists three directors: Carol Armstrong, Thomas James Anderson, and Blair Maus. They all list their addresses as the same location on Columbia Drive in Cheyenne – which Laramie County mapping records in turn list as Lewis’s property.

Drake Hill represented the group at a November meeting of the Wyoming Legislature’s Management Council.

Lewis was a lead staffer under Superintendent Hill, and Lewis and Drake Hill 

Bextel has worked as an organizer for Honor Wyoming, and in a 2024 Facebook post called herself an “active volunteer” for the group.

Bextel did not respond to a Monday-morning text message request for comment by publication.

[{"type":"text","text":"‘In That Direction’"}]

Lewis was an unpaid lobbyist for Honor Wyoming during the 2024 legislative session and registered with the Secretary of State’s Office for it. Lewis 

 that, given his past political activities, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that he’s involved with the group.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Everybody knows I lean in that direction,” he said with a laugh."}]

Honor Wyoming appears to equate Freedom Caucus-style policymaking with integrity. Its website contains a “Wyoming political integrity index” that it says is based on constitutional rights and major party platforms.  

Borrowing cowboy-style verbiage, the site ranks all 

 as “top hand” on the integrity index, including the three known Freedom Caucus members who received checks on the House floor Feb. 9.

Those were Republican Reps. Darin McCann (Rock Springs), Joe Webb (Lyman), and Christopher Knapp (Gillette).

The fourth check recipient, Rep. Marlene Brady, R-Green River, is at least aligned with the Freedom Caucus. Honor Wyoming also calls her a “top hand.”

House Speaker and Freedom Caucus member Chip Neiman has in past interviews rebutted implications of bribery – by noting that the delegates who received checks had already voted in favor in 2025 of a measure similar to the one embroiled in this case.

“You don’t have to pay me to do the right thing,” 

, who did not receive a campaign donation on the floor, but was handed one in his office.

According to state and federal campaign finance filings, Drake Hill has given campaign donations to 

 and former Rep. Ben Hornok, and to Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who is an early founder of the Freedom Caucus.

Lewis has given campaign donations to Lucas and to Gray, Wyoming campaign finance filings show.

[{"type":"text","text":"The County Attorney Says..."}]

Voss on Friday filed a verified report explaining to the court the steps the county has reportedly taken to answer Lewis’ and Lichter’s requests for documents, and saying that all relevant documents have been handed over.

“As counsel for the Defendants writes this verified report,” wrote Voss on behalf of the sheriff’s department, “the County has received yet another pleading from the Plaintiffs indicating a desire, again, that the Sheriff be held in contempt, presumably for not supplying some form of instant gratification in regard to their records requests.”

“As Plaintiffs have clearly set the tone for this interaction,” Voss continued, “counsel for the Defendants is more than willing to participate at their level.”

A first search of the agreed-upon search terms yielded the 7,700 largely irrelevant results in the countywide email system, says the report.

Some of the hits, for example, involved an unrelated divorce case involving a different attorney surnamed “Hill,” wrote Voss.

In the second and third attempts, the IT team used a different configuration of search terms that produced 1,107 hits, says the report. The IT department ground down further and produced around 200 emails, which the County Attorney’s Office must review for privileged material, the report adds.

Voss wrote that the sheriff’s office’s interaction with Robles, the immigrant Lewis is reportedly helping, was minimal and “entirely anodyne.” It was a traffic stop resulting in a handoff to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he wrote.

A deputy involved filed his report days after the encounter and at first conflated two similar traffic stops, wrote Voss.

Lewis and Lichter had initially related alleged statements by the Cheyenne Police Department that the initial report was a “complete fabrication.”  

Voss’s filing says the plaintiffs’ characterization of the report as false is in itself, “knowingly false and goes beyond hyperbole or invective.”

The report says Voss’s office is giving Hill all the shareable emails in the narrowed search, but had significant concerns about plaintiffs’ request for “all of the detentions associated with (ICE)” from April, due to the potential those might fall under privileged criminal history information.

Kozak checkgate 8 10 26

<title>Kozak Says Lawsuit Against Him Looks Like CheckGate Backlash | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak says the lawsuit two Cheyenne politicos are waging against him is at least partly political in nature, and tied to his investigation of the 'CheckGate' controversy. Recent search warrants have "stirred the hornets' nest," he said.

Kozak Says Lawsuit Against Him Looks Like CheckGate Backlash

Kerry Drake

Business & Tourism

The addition of Cheyenne to a proposed Colorado passenger rail project has longtime boosters in both states more confident than ever the service will happen.

The reasons for such optimism over bringing passenger rail service to Wyoming are two-fold. 

First, the Front Range Passenger Rail district is hopeful it can build an effective infrastructure, unlike inherent problems that doomed previous efforts.

Meanwhile, the economic case for Cheyenne officials and residents to go all in on the proposed Colorado rail system is stronger because the benefits to the capital city taking advantage of increasing Front Range population appear clear.

Still, while signs for FRPR success in Colorado are encouraging for starting in 2029, supporters say, both the district and Cheyenne officials agree expansion to the north won’t happen unless Wyoming develops a funding system to support it.

Wyoming and South Dakota are the only two contiguous states with no passenger rail service. Wyoming hasn’t had service since the Pioneer route was discontinued in 1997, though Amtrak serves Laramie, Rock Springs and Evanston with buses. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Never Say Never"}]

Never Say Never, a Cheyenne group determined to make it happen, has been meeting with FRPR officials for the past three years. It also is trying to solicit interest from state lawmakers, the Wyoming Department of Transportation and the City of Cheyenne.

One member of the group, Michael Rudolph of Cheyenne, was a NASA engineer who worked on the 2020 Mars rover project. His job was finding bugs in the software that directs the precise movements of the camera that serves as the eyes of the vehicle.

“If we can go 140 million miles to Mars, we ought to be able to go 45 miles from Cheyenne to Fort Collins,” quipped Steve Borin, a regional business developer and the founder of Never Say Never.

“Cheyenne is listed as a potential future extension, but Colorado has no political incentive to push north,” added Borin, a regional business developer. “Their taxpayers are not paying for Wyoming’s benefit.” 

Once the initial phase is up and running between Denver and Fort Collins, he said, Cheyenne must use its resources to join the FRPR district. 

“If we don’t, all we’re going to get is a bus ticket to the border,” Borin said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Colorado Project Optimism"}]

James Flattum of the FRPR district is clearly hopeful. 

“I think there’s a strong consensus that a future connection to Cheyenne is full of potential,” he said. “When you look at the distance between Fort Collins to Cheyenne, it’s really reachable.”

Another positive aspect, he added, is that north of the Denver suburb of Westminster all of the existing track to be utilized is owned by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad.

“We have such a strong working relationship with them,” Flattum said. 

Oddly, the downturn of Wyoming’s coal production and moving it by train is working in Cheyenne’s favor.

“What has changed in the world over the last 20 years is there are significantly fewer coal trains running on this alignment,” Flattum explained. “BNSF’s strategy is to send those trains on a different alignment to Nebraska from Denver.”

A major milestone was reached in the FRPR’s plans, he added, when the group recently released its delivery plan, a document intended to show the full picture of its short- and long-term vision.

“We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got a ‘spine’ in Colorado that really connects our core centers and this kind of first act that we’re contemplating,” Flattum said. “And the more successful we are in securing a reliable and frequent service here in Colorado, the easier and quicker it’s going to be for us to expand to Wyoming, and south to Trinidad, Colorado, and perhaps Albuquerque, New Mexico.”  

Flattum said FRPR is taking an incremental approach to keep costs low, starting with three trains a day between Fort Collins and Denver over the next three years using revenues voters approved in 2024.

The FRPR Board will make a decision by the end of August whether to pursue a sales-tax initiative for Colorado’s general election in November.

“We’d be able to fund up to 10 trains a day between Fort Collins and Denver, and then eight trains a day to Pueblo with a 0.333% sales tax,” Flattum said. 

That is expected to generate about $295 million annually.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bedroom Community?"}]

The Front Range continues to grow and housing costs also are rising fast. Fort Collins is considerably more expensive than Cheyenne.

“As Denver's metro expands northward, Cheyenne becomes an increasingly attractive bedroom community — if the commute is solved,” Borin said. “Without rail, it stays out of reach for anyone working in Fort Collins.”

According to a Never Say Never fact sheet, the cross-border commuter market already exists at a meaningful scale:

• Approximately 7,100 Colorado residents commute into Wyoming for work — nearly three times the number going the other way.

• About 1,600 workers from Larimer and Weld counties (Fort Collins/Greeley) commute specifically to Laramie County each day by car.

• Roughly 20% of Cheyenne's workforce commutes from outside the city, including northern Colorado.

Borin said a University of Wyoming economist has noted that Wyoming's economy would be stronger if those Colorado commuters lived in Wyoming.

“They’d spend their paychecks on Wyoming mortgages and groceries instead of Colorado ones,” Borin said.

Never Say Never claims that by spending between $300 million to $400 million on infrastructure, Wyoming would get about $1.4 billion back over the next three decades in tax revenue and economic activity.

“The mechanism is not a subsidy,” Borin said. “It's removing the coordination barrier — cross-state planning, zoning authority — that only the government can remove, then letting market forces do the rest.”

Borin maintained that “the window to act cheaply is now.” He estimated land near a future Cheyenne station can be acquired today for $10,000 to $20,000 per acre. After a rail announcement, he predicted, it will cost five to 10 times more. 

“A $2 million to $4 million land acquisition today is the most asymmetric public investment Wyoming could make — small downside, very large upside, and it keeps all of its options,” he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Loving The Depot"}]

Flattum said the FRPR is impressed with Cheyenne’s preservation of its historic Union Pacific Depot. He said it’s an example of how forward-thinking Cheyenne is.

“Whenever we come up and visit, the depot gives us a huge amount of inspiration,” the FRPR official said. “How cool would it be if we can work together to bring trains back to this station?

“Really, all you’re going to have to do is build a connector track to get to the station facility,” Flattum added. “If Cheyenne specifically wants in, whatever is going to be possible under Wyoming law and Wyoming politics, if they pass funding as well, we do have a very realistic path in terms of engineering and project execution.”

He described expansion to Wyoming as "very doable, but it’s really going to have to come down to voters in the Cheyenne metro area — do they fundamentally want it?”

Kerry Drake can be reached at: Kerry@CowboyStateDaily.com

Passenger Rail Colorado Amtrak 5 5 24

<title>Colorado-Wyoming Passenger Rail Can Happen If Cheyenne Provides Funding Support | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Leaders of a project to provide passenger rail service between Colorado and Wyoming say it can happen if Cheyenne does its part with funding support approved by voters. “If we can go to Mars, we can go 45 miles from Cheyenne to Fort Collins,” said one supporter.

Colorado-Wyoming Passenger Rail Can Happen If Cheyenne Provides Funding Support

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Wyoming Life

Sunday morning, I threw some clothes in a bag and headed east, Sturgis-bound.

For hundreds of miles, Wyoming unspooled beneath a great blue sky, the prairie rolling toward the horizon through cattle, sagebrush and long stretches of nothing at all, until the earth began to rise and the plains folded themselves into the dark, pine-covered ridges of Meade County.

[{"type":"text","text":"Motorcycles seemed to materialize out of thin air."}]

One became three. Three became 20. Packs merged with packs until the highway itself appeared to be migrating toward Sturgis, chrome flashing in the sun and the low thump of exhaust echoing off rocky bluffs.

I left the interstate for an old highway where limestone walls rose around the road, waterfalls spilled from cliffs and disappeared into the trees, and the air seemed to change as the prairie vanished behind me.

[{"type":"text","text":"I had crossed into the primal kingdom of the Black Hills."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"A crow cawed from somewhere above, and a shiver ran down my back."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Too late to turn back now."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Pantydropper"}]

For most of the year, Sturgis is a South Dakota town of close to 7,000 people. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Then August comes."}]

, transforming the place into a temporary city of chrome, leather and humanity, with Main Street as its pulsing center. I was told about half-million people were there Sunday.

Somewhere near the entrance, a 66-year-old Louisiana man was waiting to show me the ropes.

Manny Myers was sitting in a low-slung, tricked-out trike customized down to the smallest details, his gray beard hanging down his chest in two long braids and not one but three packs of Marlboro Blacks riding in the pocket of his sleeveless orange shirt.

The Pantydropper — the name of this wild beast — was painted with ghost flames and built around a 350 V8 car engine sitting obscenely exposed in front of us.

The name is a nod to the toll, but "You get a free ride," he told me with a smirk, because he knows my aunt.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It goes zero to 100 in a second,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"This was not reassuring."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Biker, Not An Enthusiast"}]

Manny has been coming to Sturgis for 50 years. His first rally was when he was 16, after hitchhiking from California, but his love affair with motorcycles began more than a decade before that.

[{"type":"text","text":"He was 5 when his father got a Honda 305 and began taking him for rides."}]

Manny remembers there wasn't much talking, just his father in front of him, the road rolling beneath them and Mother Nature whispering into his little ear.

[{"type":"text","text":"One day, Manny looked at his father."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Dad, are we bikers?\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"No, son,\" his father told him. \"We're enthusiasts.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Five-year-old Manny thought about that for a minute."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"You might be an enthusiast, Dad, but I'm a biker.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Sixty-one years later, not much has changed."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"We climbed aboard."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Winding Turns"}]

Manny took the wheel first, steering us away from Sturgis and onto the old highways that twist through the Black Hills.

The Pantydropper was impossible to ignore. The exposed V8 growled in front of us as Manny worked the turns, his two gray braids lifting in the wind and a Marlboro Black burning between his lips. 

Motorcycles were everywhere, traveling alone and in packs, and riders waved as they passed.

[{"type":"text","text":"Manny waved right back."}]

For a while, I was content to sit beside him and watch the world go by, the road winding between walls of pine and rock as he handled the trike with ease.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then, without warning, he pulled onto the shoulder and scooched over."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Your turn.\""}]

The mini ape-hanger handlebars felt awkward in my hands, and The Pantydropper was harder to steer than I expected, requiring actual muscle to wrestle around the curves.

[{"type":"text","text":"But it had a windshield and seatbelts, so I hit the gas."}]

I was terrified, but I didn't want to let my new friend down, and "bikers don't like pussies," he had told me earlier, so there was that.

We passed the Boars Nest, where people crowded an outdoor deck strung with star-spangled bunting and flags.

Then we zipped around another corner and there, rising unexpectedly from the trees, was a 60-foot stone bust of Abraham Lincoln.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Great Emancipator stared at us solemnly."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The trees became a blur."}]

Beside me, Manny smoked his cigarette, totally unconcerned that a reporter he had met only hours earlier was now piloting his baby through the Black Hills.

Laughing like little kids, our hair whipping wildly in the wind, I began to understand.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Ah, Shit'"}]

Climbing into a three-wheeler called "The Pantydropper" with a 50-year Sturgis veteran who boasted "it goes zero to 100 in a second," ended up with me at the wheel and the flashing lights of a South Dakota patrol car behind us.

Daily Darwin: Tuesday, April 11, 2023

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