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 filed a civil complaint 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
“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.
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
Connections
Kozak noted correctly that Drake Hill and Lewis are both linked with Honor Wyoming.
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 together operate Fidelity Registered Agents LLC.
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.
‘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 told Cowboy State Daily in 2024 that, given his past political activities, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that he’s involved with the group.
“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 known Freedom Caucus members 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,” said Neiman, 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 Freedom Caucus member 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.
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.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
