A cardboard effigy of Butch Cassidy watched as two halves of Rep. Harriet Hageman’s 40-person townhall audience clashed Thursday at the Hot Springs County Museum in Thermopolis.
Immigration enforcement and two recent officer-involved killings in Minneapolis drove the consternation-filled questions and sporadic outbursts that peppered the event.
Hageman did not conclude the event early. Nobody threw a punch. Some people stormed out of the room. At least three people in police uniform, plus Thermopolis Police Chief Pat Cornwell flanked the gathering.
Thermopolis Mayor Adam Estenson and Shoshoni Mayor Joel Highsmith both stood in the back of the room.
“It appears to me, Harriet, that you’ve abdicated your responsibility to uphold your sworn oath to protect the constitution and the rule of law,” began Bruce Lawson, a bespectacled man in a black cowboy hat, “Recently we saw the murder and in my opinion execution of Alex Pretti… Seven of those agents got on top of him, and he was face down, and he was shot 10 times, Harriet.”
Lawson continued: “and you know what he was holding in his hands when he was shot?”
“I don’t know,” answered Hageman. “I’ve seen the videos. And I don’t know what happened there.”
“He was holding his cellphone and his sunglasses,” answered Lawson, who said U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “should be fired,” and President Donald Trump should be held accountable.
One woman called out “hear, hear!” Mild flurries of applause interjected.
One man across the room from Lawson groaned wearily and loudly.
Lawson chided Hageman at length. Other attendees yelled at Lawson for not asking a direct question and letting Hageman respond.
“Let her answer the question, please!” yelled one woman.
“Don’t interrupt me!” parried Lawson. Reaching his question, Lawson asked, “Why aren’t you calling for the removal of Kristi Noem?”
“Because I’m waiting for the investigation to be completed,” answered Hageman. “I disagree with your premise and I disagree with your rendition of facts.”
Lawson called Hageman a coward, rose on his cane and stormed out of the room as one man yelled after him, “Get the hell out!”
Another woman, who would later tell attendees they should use the term “undocumented” immigrant instead of “illegal” immigrant, chastised her fellow critics for yelling at Lawson.
“That’s not Thermopolis,” said the woman, who then delivered a speech on her history, her son’s career and her concerns over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Hageman responded, “I believe that if there are people here illegally, Donald Trump ran on the fact that he’s going to remove them – “
About seven people applauded.
“These operations are taking place across the country,” said Hageman. “Yet it is in one location that we have this mayhem, and why is that?”
Minnesota
Hageman attributed it to Minnesota’s governor and Minneapolis’ mayor’s unwillingness to work with immigration authorities. She said the numerous jurisdictions across the country that will hand jail detainees to ICE are helping to avoid dramatic street operations. She praised in particular Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak’s large trucker enforcement operation in November, which sent 40 people into immigration processes.
“I understand why people are upset. I’m upset, I don’t like what is happening in Minnesota,” said Hageman, later adding that Pretti and Renee Good’s deaths saddened her.
She said Pretti, who was armed going into the confrontation with multiple federal officers in which he died, had “a Second Amendment right to carry that gun.”
Pretti’s gun has forged a verbal war zone between many gun-rights advocates, and Trump loyalists on the political right.
That’s because Trump has said, “I don’t like it when somebody goes into a protest and he’s got a very powerful, fully loaded gun with two magazines loaded up with bullets also. That doesn’t play good either."
Noem’s comment on the gun was more charged: “I don’t know of any peaceful protestors that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign.”
Hageman continued, saying Pretti didn’t have the right “to get into a physical altercation” on scene.
An uproar erupted.
“You better watch those videos!” one woman shrieked.
“She’s talking,” a man volleyed.
Another man sitting near an antique piano told Hageman that the United States should stop admitting immigrants “for a period” and “especially put a magnifying glass on any immigrant who is a Muslim, because if you subscribe to the tenets of the Quran, you cannot honestly take the (loyalty promise in the) oath of naturalization.”
People on the other side of the room, closer to a stuffed moose head and cowboy skeleton in a neck kerchief, jeered the man.
Dan Powell of the Thermopolis Independent Record asked Hageman if it concerns her that the DHS is investigating itself.
Hageman said other entities will also investigate, and she believes the investigation should be full, fair and transparent; “but I am not going to pre-judge what happened there.”
Some attendees grilled Hageman over the sluggish release of the Epstein files.
Hageman said she’s voted twice for their release.
“So if the victims or someone else decides (the agency is) not following what the law is, you sue the agency,” she said, adding that a court held a hearing this week on that matter.
Hageman spoke with a man who lamented the Equal Access to Justice Act, which they both said has created a litigation money grab mechanism for environmentalist groups.
One woman asserted that politicians always lie and get away with it.
“Is it your position that the Biden administration never lied?” countered Hageman.
At least three women groaned audibly.
Our Question
Cowboy State Daily asked if Hageman has a solution for the lack of transparency among federal policing agencies working on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
Hageman said she has worked toward establishing “economic development” and “safety and security” in tribal country.
The transparency issue she attributed at least in part to the overlapping and differing jurisdictions at play in that area.
“It seems like too many things fall through the cracks,” she said.
On the state legislature side Tuesday, state Rep. Ivan Posey, D-Fort Washakie, who is also a former co-governor of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, posed that same question to Justin Kempf, FBI Supervisor for the western portion of Wyoming.
“The issue of people within the reservation is, sometimes we don’t get enough information,” said Posey. He noted that the Riverton and Lander police departments will publish an arrest and call log almost daily, while tribal members often don’t hear about crimes among them for months – until the U.S. Attorney’s sentencing newsletter is released.
Some murders and other fatalities on the reservation remain out of the news for weeks or months.
Kempf countered that while “information may not be as broadly dispersed publicly,” the agency tries to communicate with victims’ families.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
