A Cheyenne lawyer wants a special prosecutor to take on a complaint filed with the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office against Secretary of State Chuck Gray for sharing sensitive voter data with the federal government. 

In a complaint sent Monday to Wyoming Attorney General Keith Kautz, private attorney George Powers alleges that Gray “knowingly and willfully violated his statutory duty to maintain the personally identifiable information in [Wyoming’s voter roll list,] as required by [state law.]”

Pointing to a “clear and immediate conflict of interest,” Powers asked Kautz to refer the complaint “and any further investigation and prosecution … to an independent, disinterested officer, such as a district court judge, for the appointment of a qualified, independent special prosecutor.” 

Gray maintains Powers’ complaint is nothing more than an attempt to undermine his office’s work.

“The radical Left and the media will stop at nothing to undermine our work to ensure election integrity and security, and George Powers latest diatribe in coordination with media outlets like WyoFile is nothing more than Trump Derangement Syndrome, clothed in an attempt to use lawfare and the leftwing media to attack my actions on election integrity,” he said in a Tuesday statement.

In August, Gray gave the U.S. Department of Justice the driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers of every registered Wyoming voter — a move that later drew criticism from Wyoming Democrats and the League of Women Voters. Gray has stood by the decision, maintaining it was made in consultation with the Wyoming Attorney General’s office. 

The federal government’s request for election records was not unique to Wyoming, but rather part of a nationwide effort by the Trump administration to obtain states’ voter rolls. Wyoming was the first state to comply, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning think tank. The organization has tracked states’ responses, which have mostly included either providing publicly available versions of their voter registration lists — i.e., data sets without sensitive information — or altogether declining to provide such records. 

While the Trump administration has argued its efforts are intended to keep elections secure, critics have pointed to the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly tasks states, not the federal government, with conducting elections. 

Gray addressed Powers’ complaint on social media Monday and sent a similar message to WyoFile when asked for comment. 

“I stand by my work with the Trump Administration to advance election integrity. I have worked to maintain compliance with the law and these actions have been carried out in close consultation with the Attorney General,” Gray wrote in a Facebook post. “As the chief election official of the state of Wyoming, I fully support the Trump Administration’s work to advance election integrity, and will continue to advance election integrity.”

Gray also accused Powers of “attempting to use his law license to threaten and intimidate” his office for its “work on election integrity.” 

Powers told WyoFile that as of midday Tuesday he had not received a response from the attorney general. Powers is a retired attorney, who, according to his biography, focused primarily on civil trial and appellate litigation in Wyoming with a focus on medical malpractice, insurance claims and railroad litigation. In 2024, he was plaintiff in a successful public records lawsuit against the Wyoming Department of Education

How we got here

The Justice Department first asked Gray in a June 2025 letter to “Please send us Wyoming’s current statewide voter registration list.”

“Please include both active and inactive voters,” according to the letter, signed by Maureen Riordan, acting chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section. 

Records indicate Gray first exported a publicly available voter registry list in July. However, it did not meet the Justice Department’s demands, according to an Aug. 14 letter from the DOJ, wherein the agency asked Gray for additional information. 

“The electronic copy of the statewide [voter registry list] must contain all fields, including the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number of the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number.” (Emphasis in the letter.)

Such information was needed to assess Wyoming’s compliance with federal law, the letter stated. Two weeks later, Gray complied, according to an Aug. 28 letter. 

“Upon review of the provisions cited in your letter, and discussion of the applicable provisions of the Civil Rights Act with the Wyoming Attorney General, we agree that disclosure of the requested records is proper under the Civil Rights Act,” Gray wrote. “With your assurances that the federal privacy protections, including the application of Section 304 of the Civil Rights Act, apply to these records, we anticipate that the Department of Justice will maintain the confidentiality of these records in accordance with Wyoming law.”

The complaint 

At the center of Powers’ complaint is a Wyoming law that specifies the confidentiality of certain election records. 

According to the statute, “election records containing social security numbers, portions of social security numbers, driver’s license numbers, birth dates, telephone numbers, tribal identification card numbers, e-mail addresses and other personally identifiable information other than names, gender, addresses, unique identifying numbers generated by the state and party affiliations are not public records and shall be kept confidential.” 

Powers argues that Gray may have broken this law by sharing confidential records with the federal government. 

“When Secretary Gray authorized and directed the officers and staff of the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office to release an unredacted [voter registry list] to the DOJ, he knew that the [list] contained personally identifiable information about the registered voters of Wyoming, which was confidential and not public records,” Powers wrote. 

Powers also pushed back on Gray’s assertion that the Justice Department’s request for confidential voter information was lawful under federal election law, including the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act. 

More specifically, Powers wrote, Wyoming is exempt from the National Voter Registration Act, while the Help America Vote Act does not contain any provision that would require a state to disclose confidential information contained in its voter rolls. 

In its correspondence with Gray, the Justice Department argued the Civil Rights Act of 1960 empowered the federal government to “an electronic copy of Wyoming’s complete and current” voter registration list.”

Powers challenged that argument as well. 

“The DOJ had no authority or other legal basis permitting it to use the CRA to bootstrap its demand for confidential voter information for an alleged investigation of non-existent claims under completely different statutes, such as the HAVA or NVRA,” Powers wrote. 

That should have been clear to Gray, Powers argues. 

“When confronted by such a contrived misuse of the law, Secretary Gray’s duty under Wyoming law could not have been clearer,” Powers wrote. “All he had to do was to follow the state law which he was sworn to uphold.” 

‘Close consultation’

The complaint also questions to what extent Gray consulted the Wyoming Attorney General before releasing the records to the federal government. 

Powers, according to the complaint, submitted a public records request earlier this year asking for records “addressing or assessing whether the transfer of voter information records containing personally identifiable information in response to the USDOJ request would constitute a violation of [state law,] including any legal opinions that may have been obtained, if the [Wyoming Attorney General’s office] considered or relief upon any such opinion in making its decision.”

However, Powers wrote, his request “has produced scant documentation about any alleged ‘close consultation’” with the attorney general’s office. 

Instead, Powers wrote, Gray has “produced a handful of redacted email communications to schedule a telephone call between” himself, his staff “and members of the attorney general’s office,” and made “veiled references to an email from Attorney General Kautz that he has described only as an ‘ancillary’ communication.” 

“Secretary Gray has withheld all substantive information relating any questions or answers that may have been exchanged in these communications on a claim of attorney-client privilege,” Powers wrote in the complaint. 

State law specifies that “complaints that the secretary of state violated the election code shall be filed with the attorney general for investigation and prosecution.” But Powers is asking the attorney general to recuse his office from handling the complaint. 

Regardless of Powers’ question regarding that office’s involvement in Gray’s decision, the complaint states, “the likelihood that the Attorney General and the [Wyoming Attorney General’s office] may have previously undertaken Secretary Gray’s representation in connection with the DOJ’s requests, coupled with the possibility that they may have to testify as witnesses in the event of an investigation or prosecution, creates an unavoidable conflict of interest.”

The Wyoming Attorney General’s Office did not respond to WyoFile’s request by publication time.