CHEYENNE—A conservative activist handing out campaign checks to Wyoming lawmakers on the House floor did not violate the Wyoming Constitution nor did the exchange constitute legislative misconduct, the House Special Investigative Committee concluded in its final report, which it released Wednesday night.
Despite those findings, “the committee recognizes that the conduct that occurred on the House floor was undesirable and must never occur again,” the report states. It offered multiple recommendations to prevent a recurrence, including rule changes and legislator training.
“Dissemination and receipt of campaign contributions on the floor of the House is highly unusual and perhaps unprecedented in the history of the state,” the report states.
Committee Chairman Art Washut, R-Casper, presented the report to the House three weeks to the day after the controversy first arose. He repeated some of the remarks he shared last week as the committee convened its first and only hearing.
“It is important to remember what these hearings are, and what they are not,” Washut said. “They are not a trial. It is not a criminal proceeding, a civil proceeding, or any other adversarial proceeding. It is a legislative fact-finding inquiry. The committee is not adjudicating guilt and is not functioning as a judicial tribunal. The procedural safeguards required in courts do not apply here.”
The House unanimously voted Feb. 12 to launch the investigative committee after news broke that Rebecca Bextel of Jackson handed out campaign checks from a Teton County donor to at least one Republican lawmaker on the House floor after lawmakers finished work on the session’s first day. Three other lawmakers have since confirmed they, too, accepted checks from Bextel on the floor.
A now widely circulated photograph taken by Rep. Karlee Provenza, D-Laramie, shows Bextel handing a check to Rep. Darin McCann, R-Rock Springs, with Rep. Marlene Brady, R-Green River, standing in the background with a check in her hand. After receiving a copy of the photograph, WyoFile and the Jackson Hole News&Guide substantiated what it appeared to show using security footage, interviews with lawmakers and a social media post by Bextel in which she said she had delivered “lawful campaign checks.”
A Democratic lawmaker from Jackson raised questions about the check passing two days later as the House discussed legislation that Bextel has advocated for. The following day, after the photograph was published, lawmakers voted to launch the investigation.
Ahead of the committee’s hearing, Washut asked that lawmakers pause the House inquiry while the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office completed its own criminal investigation. Washut, a former police officer, recommended the pause to avoid any conflict between the two inquiries. The House, however, overruled the suggestion, and the committee was forced to move forward with its investigation.
Following Washut’s presentation of the committee’s findings Wednesday, the House unanimously voted, with three lawmakers excused, to accept the report. While several lawmakers thanked the committee for its work, several members criticized the report and the legislators who brought the checks to the public’s attention.
The report “buried” its conclusion “that no rules and no laws were broken,” Rep. Tony Locke, R-Casper, said Wednesday night. Don Grasso, the Teton County donor, said Locke was one of 10 individuals he intended to receive a campaign check.
“I believe we absolutely need to do something in this House to make sure it is crystal clear these people are exonerated,” Locke said.
But that’s not the job of the lower chamber, Rep. J.D. Williams, R-Lusk, said.
“For the sake of the institution, I think it’s imperative that we don’t deflect. We have to own it,” Williams said. “There is an ongoing investigation. It’s not up to us to exonerate anyone.”
The report
The committee’s report details nine specific findings.
Rep. Nina Webber, R-Cody, for one, “escorted Rebecca Bextel onto the House Floor and pointed in the direction of the Representatives who would subsequently receive checks,” the report states.
“Campaign contribution checks were handed out on the Floor of the House on February 9, 2026 on or about 5:20 PM after the chamber had adjourned for the day and that Rebecca Bextel was the person who handed out those checks. Representatives Joe Webb, Marlene Brady, Darin McCann and Chris Kanpp [sp] each received one of those checks,” the report states.
“Those checks were from Don Grasso, and each was in the amount of $1,500. The checks to Joe Webb, Marlene Brady, and Darin McCann were made payable to the campaign accounts of the representatives,” the report continues. “The check given to Representative Chris Knapp was made payable to him. None of the checks bore a notation of purpose.”
And “were it not for the actions of Rebecca Bextel on the House floor, the subsequent disruptions of the House calendar and public uproar would not have occurred,” it states.
Evidence and testimony compiled by the committee did not reveal any violations of the Wyoming Constitution’s prohibitions against bribery of lawmakers, the report states. Nor did they “reveal an explicit” violation of legislative rules.
Existing legislative rules, according to the report, “recognize” the House floor as a “specially designated place unlike most others.”
“Campaign activity on the House Floor, even if de minimis or otherwise lawful, may attract heightened scrutiny because of the chamber’s institutional and historical significance,” the report states. “The chamber is the designated forum in which the House exercises its constitutional legislative authority.”
In its recommendations, the committee urged the Legislature’s Management Council to do two things, including additional signage at the entry of the House floor “detailing expectations and guidance to visitors.”
Secondly, the committee suggested that the Management Council review the rules of neighboring legislatures “concerning political campaign activities during the legislative session and especially on the floor of the legislature and related ethical considerations to determine if further rule changes may be appropriate to ensure against similar conduct in the future.”
In the initial aftermath of the checks, both the House and Senate adopted rules banning campaign donations during the legislative session, in the Capitol and in spaces under the purview of legislative leadership year-round.
In its report, the committee suggested an additional rule change: “When a Representative escorts any member of the public onto the Floor of the House of Representatives, that member is personally responsible for the behavior of that person while on the Floor of the House of Representatives.”
And instead of drafting additional rules regarding the specific conduct described in the investigation, the committee recommended additional legislator training related to “the need to avoid appearances of impropriety and the rationale behind the existing rules that denote the Floor of the House of Representatives as a special place.”
How we got here
The Jackson Hole News&Guide identified the Teton County donor as Don Grasso during the controversy’s first week. He told a reporter he intended the checks for 10 individuals. In addition to Brady, McCann and Locke, Grasso said the intended recipients included Speaker of the House Chip Neiman, R-Hulett; Reps. John Bear, R-Gillette; Gary Brown, R-Cheyenne; Christopher Knapp, R-Gillette; Tony Locke, R-Casper; Joe Webb, R-Lyman; Sen. Bob Ide, R-Casper, and former lawmaker Mark Jennings of Sheridan. All 10 individuals have a tie to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
Before publication, McCann confirmed to a reporter that Bextel gave him a campaign check on the House floor. In a social media post, Webb was the second legislator to confirm he received a check.
Other lawmakers were less forthcoming about their involvement, including Brady, who initially told a reporter, “I can’t remember,” when asked what Bextel handed to her on the floor. Bear and Neiman, meanwhile, challenged Rep. Mike Yin, D-Jackson, when he broached the subject of the checks on the House floor.
At the time, the House was debating legislation to prohibit housing mitigation fees. Yin spoke in opposition to the bill, and without naming names, said it came from a “specific person in Teton County,” who wanted to revive legislation that failed last year.
Bextel, who says she is the “public face” of opposing such fees, has been a vocal opponent of Teton County charging real estate developers fees to help fund affordable housing programs.
On the floor, Bear called a point of order, arguing that Yin was “making accusations of an individual that cannot be substantiated.”
Neiman also objected, asking Yin if he could verify or substantiate his claims. Yin declined, citing the House rule against using props. At that point, however, both Neiman and Bear had accepted checks from Bextel, though they didn’t acknowledge that fact until Grasso identified them days later. Reps. Brady, Knapp, McCann and Webb had also accepted checks. None rose to the microphone that day to disclose their involvement to the public.
Instead, Cody Republican Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, asked the House to register a “protest” against Yin.
Distributing checks on the House floor “essentially would be bribery and unethical,” Rodriguez-Williams said.
The next day, Provenza brought a motion to form an investigative committee. The House unanimously backed the measure. The next week, Neiman publicly disclosed he had accepted a check from Bextel in the speaker’s office in the Capitol.
“I’ve been very tight lipped about how I was involved in this. I’ve tried to retain any information I had,” Neiman said. “I’ve been named specifically in this, and I’ve been waiting for my special committee, which I have great faith in and trust to take care of this in a transparent, fair and honest fashion.”
The motion to form the committee gave Neiman the sole responsibility of appointing the committee. Provenza has said she was unaware of the speaker’s involvement when she brought the motion.
“It’s really unfortunate that people involved, like the Speaker, did not come forward while we debated this motion so that we didn’t approve a process that would further make the public distrust,” Provenza previously told a reporter.
Neiman did not recuse himself from the responsibility of appointing the committee. He also sought to absolve himself and other check recipients ahead of the investigation.
“I’ll go to my grave knowing I didn’t do anything wrong. Not a thing,” he said on Feb. 18.
Bear told a reporter Feb. 16 that he had accepted a check from Bextel, but not on the floor. He told Cowboy State Daily the exchange happened on the third floor of the Capitol.
Committee hearing
At the investigative committee’s first and only hearing, Brady and Knapp said Bextel had handed them a campaign check on the House floor. Ahead of the hearing, Knapp declined to comment, and Brady did not give a definitive answer during two separate conversations with a reporter.
The committee did not seek the testimony of Bear, Brown, Locke or Neiman. That was on account of the motion’s specific language to examine checks distributed on the House floor, and not elsewhere, Washut said.
Bextel was the last of 14 witnesses to testify at the hearing. She covered a lot of ground in her testimony, denied any wrongdoing and said “the real scandal” is “we have Democrats masquerading as Republicans in our Wyoming Legislature.”
Her only intention, Bextel said, “was to expeditiously hand candidates checks.”
Bextel told the committee she had not planned ahead of time to hand out checks on the floor. (Grasso also told a reporter he had expected Bextel to mail the checks, not hand-deliver them.) But Washut noted that, according to Wyoming Highway Patrol Security footage, only about 10 seconds passed between Bextel walking onto the floor and handing out a check to Webb.
“If it wasn’t an intentional plan on your part, that’s an awfully brief amount of time,” Washut said. “Can you explain why, in just 10 seconds, you went from just coming on the floor for no particular reason, to handing out a check?”
“I have to train myself not to interrupt people,” Bextel responded. “I actually babble sometimes. My mind moves faster than my mouth can go. So I don’t know, I’m just a quick girl. That’s all I know how to say.”
At the hearing last week, Webber confirmed she had escorted Bextel onto the House floor on the night in question. She answered many of the committee’s other questions with the same answer: “I don’t recall.”
Webber criticized lawmakers for bringing the checks to the public’s attention via the media instead of using the Legislature’s own internal, confidential process, known as Joint Rule 22-1. Other lawmakers have made similar arguments.
Floor discussion
Many lawmakers, including Yin, thanked the committee Wednesday night.
“I didn’t make the motion. I didn’t make an accusation. I said what I said based on knowledge that I had, and I spoke only to that knowledge,” Yin said. “And so I very much appreciate what the committee did.”
Yin also pushed back on lawmakers accusing him and Provenza of violating Rule 22-1 by not using the internal, confidential process.
“I mean, those are accusations right there, that I or another person was unethical, but that’s not a complaint. They just spoke it on the floor. That’s because that’s what we are allowed to do,” Yin said.
Meanwhile, Rep. J.T. Larson, R-Rock Springs, raised concerns that Joint Rule 22-1 would not have worked well in this situation.
“The procedure, I don’t think really works in this scenario, because of who was involved, and who we found out was involved,” Larson said, apparently referring to Neiman, who as speaker receives complaints when they are filed.
Brown, along with Reps. Ann Lucas, R-Cheyenne, Jayme Lien, R-Casper and Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, were among the lawmakers to argue that the Legislature’s rules had been violated when Provenza went to the press or Yin spoke on the House floor, with information about the checks.
Lien took things a step further, asking why the committee didn’t investigate members of the press.
“Did the committee verify when and how the media was notified? Where is the text message to the media? And why haven’t we seen it? Did the committee review the accuser’s interview with the media as well? These are the questions that I don’t have answers to yet,” Lien said.
McCann, meanwhile, raised a more personal concern.
“All of you that didn’t have your name in the paper, it will be over,” McCann said. “But for the rest of my life, every time my name is Googled, this is going to come up.”
Moving forward, Knapp tearfully asked lawmakers to “treat each other with that elevated respect that this House deserves.”
Earlier in the week, Knapp said, he heard one lawmaker “offer a set of golf clubs for a vote.”
“Now I know that was a joke, and there was bantering back and forth. That’s the common respect and courtesy that I give those representatives,” Knapp said.
Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, the longest serving member of the House, said the events were unlike any he’d seen before.
“This was unique,” Harshman said. “And I think it kind of caught everybody off guard a little bit.”
Harshman watched the committee’s hearing over the weekend, he said, and what “bothered him the most” were the attacks on Legislative Service Office staff.
At the hearing, Bextel accused LSO’s director of “being in on” lawmakers seeking to “derail your budget session,” while Knapp told the committee to consider that LSO denied drafting an amendment to the motion to launch the investigative committee.
“Keep our staff out of that,” Harshman said. “There’s been too much of that going on.”
Harshman also urged the House to get back to its constitutional affairs.
“There’s been some other things going on in this floor during the 68th. There’s been some other articles submitted to the press attacking other members,” Harshman said. “I think we ought to just all calm down on that a little bit, actually work the bills and do all that, and get back to the people’s work.”
For his part, Neiman also encouraged the House to move forward, but without repeating his objections to lawmakers not coming to him in private first.
“I will say again, it could have been handled better,” Neiman said. “But that’s water under the bridge, and now it’s our responsibility to take this thing for we have it now and to make it work and to make it better.”
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