The Wyoming Freedom Caucus posted to social media Tuesday a 15-second audio clip of state Sen. Tara Nethercott calling for more lawyers “perhaps engaging in what we see as this lawfare, in order to defend the rule of law, in order to both protect the judicial branch and our democracy."
Multiple commenters cast doubt on whether the Cheyenne Republican and Senate Majority Floor Leader actually used the word “lawfare.”
It’s a colloquial word that neither the Associated Press, Black’s Law Dictionary nor Merriam-Webster define. The Cambridge Dictionary calls it “the use of legal action to cause problems for an opponent.”
Nethercott did use the word “lawfare,” while discussing fighting various Wyoming Freedom Caucus political tactics in court, the full meeting audio shows.
More than an hour in length, the audio captures a virtual and informal lunch-hour gathering of numerous Wyoming attorneys, hosted in January by Jackson-based attorney Bill Schwartz.
Schwartz told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday that because Wyoming attorneys are required to be part of the Wyoming State Bar, it’s a compelled association, and the bar can’t take political stances on issues.
“You would think that basic statements like ‘don’t call for violence against judges’ or ‘we believe in the rule of law,' ‘we believe in the independence of the judiciary’ — basic things that we’re all taught in high school — that that would not be deemed a political statement,” Schwartz said.
“But as you know, everything is political today,” he added. "Everything.”
Those Trends
Schwartz has been hosting a group of attorneys to speak out against political trends that, he said, are growing more appalling.
At the January gathering, Nethercott presented alongside two Republican colleagues: former House Speaker Tom Lubnau, who writes a regular column for Cowboy State Daily, and former House Speaker Pro Tempore Tim Stubson.
The audio shows Nethercott made the “lawfare” comment amid a broader context, not about making war on conservative values, but against what she, Lubnau and Stubson cast as unsavory campaign and political strategies.
Those include inaccurate campaign attacks dispatched via mailers, significant influence by out-of-state groups, and intense pressure on local county clerks.
For example, Lubnau gave a rundown of support for Freedom-Caucus aligned candidates by Make Liberty Win, a Virginia-based group and subsidiary of Texas-based group Young Americans for Liberty.
Make Liberty Win spent more money on Wyoming’s 2024 primary election than any other political organization, $371,260, and targeted around 40 state Legislature races around Wyoming.
The group also asserted both false and contested claims in that election.
“I think that it’s pretty clear that pooling resources to have legislative PACs running statewide campaigns on scientifically curated issues by political consultants is something that’s new to Wyoming,” said Lubnau. “And I think it took a lot of candidates by surprise.”
Lubnau also questioned what these groups want with Wyoming.
Not ‘Super Secret’
Stubson during his speech said that after a Jan. 6 ruling in which the Wyoming Supreme Court struck down two state abortion bans in light of the Wyoming Constitution’s promise of health care autonomy, judges will likely face campaigns to oust them at their retention elections.
Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Bridget Hill, who did not participate in the abortion decision, and Justice Robert Jarosh, who ruled with the majority that abortion is a fundamental health care right, face retention elections this year.
Stubson told his colleagues that members of the bar should work to shield judges from political un-retention movements so they can focus their rulings on the law.
Schwartz had said at the outset that the meeting that media were welcome to attend, but should consider speakers’ comments off the record and approach them individually for permission to use their comments.
Lubnau, Schwartz, and Stubson have granted permission for Cowboy State Daily to use their comments.
Wyoming House Appropriations Chair John Bear, R-Gillette, furnished the full recording for Cowboy State Daily.
Bear, who is also a former chair of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, said he doesn’t know the source of the recording.
“It was sent to us anonymously,” he said.
Stubson acknowledged in his own interview that it was a private meeting, but said it was intentionally unguarded.
“The meeting in general it wasn’t like a super-secret meeting or anything,” he said. “In fact, I think (Secretary of State) Chuck Gray’s dad was on the call. His chief of staff (Joe Rubino) was on the call.”
Secretary Gray was an early member of the Freedom Caucus while in the state House. His political efforts have aligned with the caucus’s.
“These were comments made open and above board,” said Stubson. “And I think if people would go and listen to the whole talk, they’d benefit from it.”
‘Lawfare’
Four months after the virtual meeting, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus aired the 15-second clip of Nethercott calling for “lawfare,” and linked beneath it a Substack entry saying that “yes, (lawfare is) happening in Wyoming.”
The caucus’s entry references a mix of cases that the lawyers didn’t discuss or mention during their meeting, such as an ongoing controversy between concerned parents and Sweetwater County District No. 1; and a Laramie-based attorney’s recurring challenges against Secretary of State Chuck Gray.
The post also references a case that the lawyers did discuss.
That’s the defamation case Reps. Cody Wylie and JT Larson filed in 2024 against the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ campaign arm, the WY Freedom PAC.
That lawsuit stemmed from the PAC’s mailers and text blasts accusing Wylie and Larson of voting against keeping President Trump on the ballot.
No such vote has ever surfaced in the Wyoming Legislature.
Uinta County District Court Judge James Kaste dismissed that case last week.
The claims about Larson and Wylie were “ludicrous,” said Kaste at the time, but they didn’t clear the high legal bar of being defamation against a public figure.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ Substack called that case a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation” (SLAPP).
It questioned why a Freedom Caucus-backed anti-SLAPP bill, which Rep. Pepper Ottman, R-Riverton, brought while the WY Freedom PAC was still being sued, didn’t survive the state Senate this year.
The bill, House Bill 103, sought to let people who face litigation appeal mid-case to have a higher court review whether they deserve immunity for acting within their First Amendment rights.
It died when it failed to advance in the Senate.
But first on the House side, Rep. Martha Lawley, R-Worland, questioned the bill’s potential motives.
She asked why it lacked a clear blanket exemption for defamation since the First Amendment doesn’t protect defamation.
“The bottom line is, defamation is not covered by the First Amendment,” said Lawley. “So if this bill is about First Amendment protections, how can an exception for defamation gut the bill?
"It really raises in my mind to say, what are we trying to do here, hiding behind the First Amendment?”
Ottman, who read an introduction of the bill aloud to the House on Feb. 19, said the bill would have given people protection to speak in government proceedings, public forums and conduct geared toward influencing governmental action.
“This is an immunity from suit, it’s not just a defense,” said Ottman at the time.
The legislative Joint Judiciary Committee is slated to reconsider anti-SLAPP legislation May 12.
In Her Words
During the lawyers’ meeting, Stubson listed a few court cases that were then being waged against Freedom Caucus-aligned policies or maneuvers.
He referenced the Wylie and Larson defamation case.
He spoke of a case, now in the Wyoming Supreme Court, in which Schwartz is representing politically independent-minded plaintiffs who challenged a 2023 law barring people from changing their party registration after the candidate filing period opens.
Some call it the crossover voting ban.
And Stubson noted that the same attorney who’d represented Wylie and Larson, now-District Court Judge Clark Stith, had also filed a case against the Wyoming Republican Party for disregarding state law and letting non-elected party members vote in GOP county central committee matters.
The party has since countered, saying it has rights as a private group to dictate its own fate apart from state law.
Nethercott told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday interview via email that she knew of Wylie and Larson’s case and had read about the case Stith filed against the Wyoming Republican Party. But she didn’t know of a coordinated effort to wage such cases, she said.
“Lawfare means to me, and as applied in this context, was a call to my colleagues to join me in standing firmly for the Constitution, the rule of law, and the liberty of the people against any effort to weaken the freedoms our nation was founded upon,” said Nethercott.
“The Constitution depends not only on courts and statutes, but on citizens — especially legal professionals — who are willing to stand up, engage, and defend principles upon which this nation was built,” she added.
Nethercott said she didn’t know she was being recorded, but was aware that Gray’s dad and chief policy advisor were there.
Besides being Gray’s policy advisor, Rubino is married to Wyoming Freedom Caucus state director Jessie Rubino, and he’s also the nephew of U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, Nethercott noted.
The meeting was meant to bring lawyers together to give them a greater understanding of Wyoming’s political environment, she said.
Summarizing her speech to colleagues, Nethercott said the Constitution is “the supreme safeguard of our individual freedoms and the barrier that stands between the people and unchecked government power."
She said participating in the political process is not partisan by definition, but is an extension of attorneys’ duty to preserve public confidence in governmental institutions and the rule of law.
Lawyers, she continued, “must participate in the civic and political process because we understand firsthand the importance of constitutional limits, due process, judicial integrity, and the practical consequences of legislation and public policy.”
‘Lawfare Isn’t Neighborly’
Schwartz defended Nethercott in stronger words.
He and Stubson both said she didn’t appear to mean “lawfare” in an underhanded way.
“It’s just sickening that they would attack somebody like Tara Nethercott in this way, who’s just done so much good work for our state and has taken so much abuse from them,” said Schwartz, referencing the numerous advertisements and posts from the WFC-aligned faction of the Republican Party, which have targeted Nethercott over the years.
“I hope she’s not too discouraged by it, but certainly it is hurtful, and not in keeping with the way Wyomingites have historically treated each other,” he said.
Bear countered that in a Wednesday text message after Cowboy State Daily sent an email inquiry to him and to Jessie Rubino.
“Lawfare isn’t neighborly,” said Bear. “It’s ironic for someone to claim civic virtue when the entire (lawyer’s group) call was dedicated to undermining our system through infiltrating the Republican primary and weaponizing the legal system against conservatives.”
The primary election is Aug. 18.
Many Wyoming politicos have long theorized that Democrat-minded voters register as Republicans to nominate more moderate GOP candidates in the primary election.
Wyoming’s political registration sits at about 11% Democratic, while statewide Democratic candidates Kamala Harris (presidential), Scott Morrow (U.S. Senate) and Kyle “El” Cameron (U.S. House) all won more than 22% of the state’s 2024 general election vote.
Bear noted that the call was open to the public.
“The WYFC would be happy to publish the entire recording. The people of Wyoming deserve to know what’s going on in these quasi-Bar Association meetings,” he added.
The caucus’ Substack gives another definition for lawfare: using legal proceedings “to intimidate, punish, or otherwise harass political opponents by weaponizing the legal system for strategic or ideological ends.”
Bear referenced a Wednesday column by Lubnau, where he wrote that by running the 15-second audio clip, the Freedom Caucus “appears to argue using our court system to defend the rule of law, our court system and our system of government is a bad thing. It’s not.”
Lubnau also noted that the Wyoming Republican Party, whose leadership generally aligns with the WFC, is taking aggressive legal steps right now as well, which Lubnau called lawfare.
Bear cast this as deflection.
“Lawfare has a definition and lawyers know what it is,” he said. “They’re spinning because lawfare is unAmerican and is unpopular.”
Four Months Later
The caucus released the snippet of Nethercott talking four months after the fact because of what Bear called an “increase in attorneys in Wyoming taking up an anti-grass-roots attack on the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.”
Fred Harrison, a pro-life thought leader and attorney who also writes a column for Cowboy State Daily, has been outspoken in his critiques of Wyoming’s judiciary and how it handled charged issues like abortion and the Legislature’s school funding model.
“Having successfully ruined the state’s finances, the Court has now seized control of life and death,” wrote Harrison in a March letter that appeared in multiple newspapers.
The court imported the “rigged, judge-made standard of ‘strict scrutiny’” to guarantee a fundamental right to abortion, Harrison added.
A group of 110 lawyers and judges, including Schwartz, rebuked Harrison in a counter-letter, saying the courts have ruled according to the Wyoming Constitution, not by “seizing control.”
The answer to the abortion ruling isn’t to “weaken or threaten our excellent Wyoming judiciary,” the letter says, but to insist the Legislature uphold the law and constitution, or propose amendments to change the Wyoming Constitution.
The Wyoming Senate rejected an effort this year to propose a constitutional amendment that would have let the Legislature restrict abortion.
Critics said it was poorly worded. No one tried bringing another constitutional amendment to address abortion.
Bear in his text message also responded to a statement Lubnau had made in the call, that the WY Freedom PAC’s method of running a statewide campaign on myriad issues for a slate of candidates was novel in Wyoming.
“It has been done before, over and over,” said Bear, pointing to the Wyoming Hope PAC, Americans for Prosperity, and Gov. Mark Gordon’s PAC the Prosperity and Commerce PAC, which garnered controversy in 2024.
Though Wyoming’s iteration is run by multi-generational Wyomingite and former state Rep. Tyler Lindholm, Americans for Prosperity is based in Viriginia.
Wyoming Hope and Prosperity and Commerce are both based in Wyoming.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
