It’s time for Laramie County voters to get justice in the Manlove case

Leigh Anne Manlove, Laramie County DA

The people of Laramie County should be incensed by the utter contempt that the Wyoming State Bar has shown them. In November 2018, citizens voted by a 67 percent majority to make Leigh Anne Manlove their district attorney. It was a mandate to clean house. Since that day Wyoming’s deep state has used every underhanded tactic in the book to deny them her services.

Months before she took office, the effectual sabotage of her work was already underway. In Washington, the Sussman trial is exposing how the deep state obstructed and sabotaged President Donald Trump’s transition team after the 2016 election. Washington has nothing on Wyoming. 

Recent court filings document how outgoing district attorney, Jeremiah Sandburg, denied AG-Elect Manlove customary access to case files needed to prepare for a smooth transition. It also alleges that on January 7, 2019, Sandburg handed her the keys to an DA Office that was in utter disarray—with five unfilled attorney positions and unfiled paperwork littering the office.

Jeremiah Sandburg

One might think that such unprofessional conduct would merit attention from the Wyoming Bar. It got none. Instead, it unleased more than two years of sustained lawfare against the woman who spent her first year in office cleaning up the backlog and fully staffing her office.

Since the fall of 2020, Manlove has essentially worked two full-time jobs. In addition to her duties as elected district attorney, she has been forced to spend countless off-duty hours, and thousands of dollars out of her own pocket, responding to a barrage of legal filings, paperwork requirements, and spurious charges from Wyoming’s own deep state.

Supreme Court Justice, Robert Jackson (1892-1954) wrote: “While the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.” He has the power to “strike at citizens, not with mere individual strength, but with all the force of government itself.”

Such is certainly the case here. First, actors in the Wyoming Bar obviously colluded with multiple district judges to elicit a letter of complaint. The day after the letter was sent, they filed a dozen documents with the Wyoming Supreme Court (WSC) calling for the immediate suspension of Manlove’s license.

After the Court decisively rejected this petition, they immediately commenced secretive in-house proceedings that gobbled up Manlove’s time, money, and energy for two more years—retrying virtually the same charges in their own kangaroo court. In the justice system, that would be double jeopardy. But this is not the justice system.

Little America, Cheyenne

Manlove finally got a public hearing in February of this year—and was promptly billed $91,000 dollars for the privilege. Maoist China was infamous for executing political opponents and then sending their grieving families a bill for the bullet. Making Manlove pay for the meals and lodging of her persecutors gives away the game. The process is the punishment.  

You wouldn’t know much of this from the headlines. In the Tribune Eagle, practically every press release from the Wyoming Bar has been reported as established fact, while meticulous court filings from the Manlove side are given such slight reporting that readers have never heard her defense. The Cowboy State Daily is no better.

I have never met or spoken with Manlove. I do not reside in her jurisdiction. I have no skin in the game. It is purely by reading the documents filed before Wyoming’s Supreme Court that my sense of justice is offended. It is an injustice against a woman and her solitary attorney. And it is an injustice against the people of Laramie County who elected her to do the job. 

Residents of Laramie County who want to see for themselves how their vote is treated with contempt, need only go onto the Wyoming Supreme Court website and look up docket number D-20-0009. It speaks for itself. They will read, for instance, how Manlove is charged with wrongdoing for actions she took in consultation with the Natrona County DA. While he took the very same actions and even co-signed a letter with her explaining them, she is prosecuted, but he is not (May 9, Response, pp. 15-16). 

Now the good justices of the Wyoming Supreme Court are being asked—for a second time—to act as tools of the Bar. Wyoming can hope that they are not bamboozled by clout and bluster, but see the facts for what they are. While the Bar has damaged its own credibility by allowing the unhinged Manlove prosecution, the Wyoming Supreme Court can still preserve its own dignity.

One might even venture to hope that the Court will rule in such a way that it discourages future lawfare intended to thwart the will of voters. Justice requires no less.