Secretary of State Chuck Gray, Secretary of state blames media for threatening voicemail

CHEYENNE — After receiving a threatening voicemail from an unidentified caller on Tuesday, Secretary of State Chuck Gray turned to Facebook to blame “the lying leftwing media.”

The call was motivated by an article from an unidentified source addressing Gray’s request for certain counties to retest their voting machines.

Earlier this week, Gray sent a letter to county clerks, saying that voting machine tests in certain counties weren’t compliant with state statute and requesting retests. Gray did not specify which counties the noncompliant tests had taken place in.

“This message is for Chuck Gray,” the caller said at the beginning of the recording, which was posted to Gray’s Facebook page. “I saw an article about you trying to do something with the election. I want you to listen to my voice, I want you to listen when I tell you that you’re playing with fire.”

The caller continued, saying, “I want you to know that if you start cheating, stealing, election denying this time around and s--- hits a fan in November, you’re gonna f- ing get it, Mr. Chuck Gray.”

The message continued with additional foul language, threatening Gray and calling him a “twerp” and a “f- ing twerp bitch.” The caller also said that he wanted Gray to think about his voice as he sleeps at night.

In addition to posting the full recording, Gray told his Facebook followers that he will never back down. He received several comments of support on the post.

“I will continue standing for the people of Wyoming by defending the truth and working for election integrity,” Gray wrote in his Facebook post.

When asked by the Wyoming Tribune Eagle on Thursday, he didn’t specify whether he’s received threats before, whether he currently fears for his safety or if he takes the caller’s threats seriously.

“I received this threatening message because of our work defending election integrity,” Gray told the WTE via email. “For months now, the media and insiders have been pushing claims that somehow conservatives lack civility without looking at any of their own behavior.”

Gray did not specify what he meant by “insiders,” although he did tell the WTE that he believed that articles published containing misinformation motivated the caller.

He specifically referenced an article published by Wyo-File.com, which originally reported that Gray requested a retest of every machine in the state. He actually requested a retest of machines that were not tested properly under Wyoming state law. The article has since been corrected.

“The message was clearly triggered by false reporting by publications such as WyoFile and their syndication partners (which has at times included the Wyoming Tribune Eagle) around the state,” Gray wrote.

The editorial staff of WyoFile changed the original lead on the story, which read, “With just over one week before the 2024 primary elections, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray has formally requested county clerks around the Equality State redo tests of voting machines” to include the word “several” before “county clerks.”

The staff also added “in the counties with tests that did not comply with state statute” to a paragraph in the story that now reads “Gray’s letter asked for retesting of ‘each’ voting system that will be used in next week’s primary in the counties with tests that did not comply with state statute, with the ‘each’ underlined, bolded and italicized.”

Making those changes took at most half an hour, Matthew Copeland, chief executive and editor of WyoFile, told the WTE on Thursday.

The article was published at roughly 6 p.m., and Gray apparently reached out to the publication at around 9 p.m. The article was up for three and a half hours before the changes were made, Copeland said.

An editor’s note is present in the article addressing the changes.

“The fundamental idea here that somehow omitting the term ‘several’ resulted in a threatening voicemail coming to the secretary is patently absurd,” Copeland told the WTE. “... If after years in politics and public discourse, including famously quite a bit of name-calling, the Secretary feels that the lack of the word ‘several’ in a lead about his call of action toward the county clerks resulted in an unhinged call, I frankly just don’t see the evidence there.”

The caller threatening Gray did not name any publication in the recording.

Though the caller has not been identified, Gray told the WTE via email that the media and the “radical left” have some responsibility for the incident.

“This is how the radical left, the media and insiders now operate,” Gray told the WTE via email. “The false reports from the media have also included false claims that somehow I’m deputized with being the arbiter of truth in election mailers, which is a false media claim counter to the Constitution and the Election Code.”

At the end of July, Gray was pressed by lawmakers on the issue of political mailers. With the upcoming election, mailers containing misleading or false information about candidates have been circulating in the state.

At the end of a Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivision Committee meeting in July, lawmakers began to debate the need to address the mailers, according to reports from local news outlets, including the WTE. Eventually, Gray was included in the conversation and was pressed about whether his office, which oversees elections, would investigate the situation.

Gray did not specify what outlets allegedly reported this incident falsely, nor did he specify what aspects of the reporting on the mailers and his responsibility to the mailers was false.

WTE Managing Editor Brian Martin said he believes that comment was in reference to an editorial from the WTE Editorial Board in last Saturday’s edition. Since editorials are opinion pieces, not news stories, Gray was not granted his email request for a correction, Martin said.

Gray was invited to write a guest op-ed in response to the opinion piece, Martin said, but he has so far not taken the WTE up on the offer.

Gray did express frustration with how the correction to the voting machines story was handled.

“The media now operates by printing these incorrect stories to incite people like this individual and then keep them up online for as long as possible until someone points out all of their lies,” Gray wrote. “But I will NEVER back down! I will continue standing for the people of Wyoming by defending the truth and working for election integrity. Continuing to stand for the people of Wyoming is what I will always do.”

When asked about the corrections and how corrections are handled, Copeland maintained that his staff had not been sarcastic, as Gray says they were.

Gray reached out via email and text message to two different staff members, once noting that the fact that Laramie County had already agreed to test wasn’t included and once requesting changes be made to the article.

The reporter told Gray via text that he would have originally included that information if Gray had responded to questions earlier; then the corrections were made.

“The Secretary did not respond to the question. He’s withholding information and then scolding (the reporter) for not having that information,” Copeland said.

Gray reported the threatening voicemail incident to the authorities, thanking the Wyoming Highway Patrol, Federal Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement for their work on the case.

This story was published on August 16, 2024.