The Wyoming Freedom Caucus doesn’t believe it’s done anything wrong in sending out controversial political mailers and text messages this election season.
On Friday, the campaign arm of the group submitted a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed against it in July by two state legislators accusing the group of sending out deliberately false mailers and text messages.
In their filing, the Wyoming Freedom political action committee argues that state Reps. Cody Wylie, R-Rock Springs, and J.T. Larson, R-Rock Springs, are attempting “to punish and censor criticism” of their voting records.
“At their worst, a reasonable person would take WY Freedom PAC’s statements as a prompt to investigate the legislative records of the plaintiffs, and there is nothing bad about that — to the contrary, it’s the very stuff of American democracy,” the motion says.
The Freedom PAC is represented by Washington, D.C., attorney Stephen Klein, who has previously challenged the size of buffer zones that restrict people from campaigning in front of polling places in Wyoming.
Klein argues that the rhetoric used in the mailers represent a common form of political speech deeply rooted in American history.
“The rhetoric at issue is quintessential free speech that should be answered only with speech, not litigation,” he said.
What’s It About?
In their lawsuit, the legislators, who are represented by Rep. Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs, accuse the PAC of defamation and false light, a legal privacy claim that involves an untrue or misleading portrayal of someone in public.
They are requesting both a jury trial and injunction for what they say are libelous statements made with malice.
The Freedom Caucus’ campaign messaging claimed Wylie and Larson had voted to keep former President Donald Trump off the election ballot.
This was in reference to certain House members’ support of a budget footnote made during the most recent legislative session that would have prevented Secretary of State Chuck Gray from using state money for out-of-state litigation without specific legislative authority.
Wylie and Larson both voted against removing the footnote at least once and never changed their stance.
Gray had filed two amicus briefs in opposition to efforts to remove Trump’s name from the Colorado election ballots last winter. Klein argues that the budget footnote would have prevented Gray from filing briefs like these, but that’s incorrect as Gray had previously said he used private money to pay for them.
Wylie and Larson said the reason they voted for the budget footnote had nothing to do with Trump, but rather retaining the sole right to file lawsuits with the governor’s office.
Klein argues this point is a matter of opinion and doesn’t rise to the level of definitive malice as the plaintiffs claim.
“Americans do not hate or despise a candidate simply because they do not vote for him or because they believe he voted a certain way on a public issue,” Klein writes.
He also argues that the mailers and text messages can’t be proven to be highly offensive as he believes some Republicans in Wyoming who oppose Trump would have supported the budget footnote if it really was meant to keep him off the ballot.
The PAC continued to send out these mailers after the lawsuit against them was filed, but Wylie and Larson still both won their contested Republican primary reelection bids.
The later mailers contained an image of Trump immediately after an assassination attempt was made on his life, and continued the claim that the lawmakers had “sided with the radical left” to remove him from the ballot.
No Defamation, No Malice
Klein argues that the mailer’s claims don’t rise to the level of defamation because they don’t prove hatred or contempt, ridicule or scorn against the lawmakers in an effort to ruin their reputation, such as would be caused by false accusations of criminal offenses, “loathsome diseases” or “serious sexual misconduct.”
He also argues that the plaintiffs conflate the standard of hatred or contempt with being viewed more negatively than in the past.
“Only in the most extreme circumstances — a detailed, false allegation of a candidate accepting a bribe, for instance — should the courts entertain defamation litigation over a political disagreement with public officials, and none of those circumstances are present here,” Klein writes.
Klein also dismisses the plaintiffs’ argument that they were shunned or avoided because of the mailers, pointing out that the lawmakers said they had to spend more money to counteract the mailers and had to meet with voters more often because of them, proving they were neither shunned nor avoided.
“The statements are not defamatory for the separate reason that they are imaginative expression or rhetorical hyperbole,” Klein writes.
Klein also requests the plaintiffs’ request for monetary damages and claims of false light invasion of privacy.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
