Which Harriet Hageman will show up at your city’s town hall?

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I’m convinced that even though Wyoming sent one Harriet Hageman to Washington, there are actually two.

One is known for the intense way she grills people at congressional hearings, disparaging them if they dare say anything critical of President Donald Trump or his policies. Hageman typically hounds witnesses for not immediately and directly answering her questions.

But the other Hageman who holds town halls in the Equality State is pretty sensitive if she’s accused of anything improper. She may openly mock her foes, appear indignant, or, as Hageman did at a Jan. 27 town hall at Casper College, cut the event a little short, gather her papers and walk off the stage.

She’s a typical bully — Hageman loves to dish it out but can’t take it. Now seeking to replace the retiring U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis, we’ll be seeing a lot more of her through the Nov. 3 general election.

But at town halls, where Hageman has promised to host events annually in all 23 counties? Her news releases state that she’s kept this vow, but it can’t be a pleasant task, especially if there’s a chance an audience didn’t show up to hear Hageman bestow accolades upon herself and instead wants to discuss critical issues facing Americans.

Hageman made national headlines last March when she was heckled and booed by angry constituents at a packed Laramie town hall after she defended Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. She responded to the taunts by laughing and clapping.

“You guys are going to have a heart attack if you don’t calm down,” Hageman said. “I’m sorry, you’re hysterical.” She cancelled live town halls and held virtual ones for the next month.

Back on stage in Casper recently, Hageman spent a half hour in front of a sparse crowd talking about her accomplishments and how she helped advance sexual predator legislation and anti-abortion measures. 

When she took questions, a Casper College student asked her why she hadn’t decried the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, at the hands of federal immigration agents. 

“Why don’t you tell me what you’d like me to say about it?” Hageman said. The student suggested that condemning the violence and consoling the families of the victims would be appropriate, but she did neither.

Allyse Taylor of Casper implored Hageman to demand transparency in the investigations of the Minnesota killings.

“They are killing American citizens in the streets, and you are doing nothing. You are not saying a single solitary thing to support constituents or to support the American people,” Taylor said. “As a constitutional lawyer, you should be infuriated. You should be incensed. Why are you not?”

Hageman said she needed to see the results of the investigations, then walked out a side door to a chorus of boos.

Things weren’t much better in Thermopolis two days later. Resident Bruce Lawson asked about the killing of Pretti: “Seven of those agents got on top of him, and he was face down, and he was shot 10 times, Harriet.” Lawson said Pretti was holding a cell phone, not “brandishing” a gun, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed.

Lawson wanted to know why Hageman wasn’t calling for Noem to be fired. She said she was waiting for the investigation to be completed, then added, “I disagree with your premise and I disagree with your rendition of facts.” Lawson called her a “coward” and left.

ABC News reported on Jan. 26, two days after the fatal shooting, a forensic audio analysis of videos determined 10 shots were fired in less than five seconds. A video analysis showed that after agents pepper sprayed Pretti, he was held down by at least five agents while another punched him. After one reached for Pretti’s waist and removed a gun — a weapon he had a legal permit to carry — the shots rang out and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Some of Hageman’s defenders said her questioners should have been more civil and let her respond without cutting her off. Let’s look at a few examples of Hageman grilling congressional witnesses from a Forbes compilation of videos to see how civil she was:

On May 23, 2024, Hageman badgered Steven Dettelbach, then-head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, by asking him six times about how often he discussed closing the southern border with then-President Joe Biden. She raised her voice and interrupted him repeatedly before Dettelbach explained that the border is the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security, not his agency.

“You don’t care about crime in this country if you don’t care about what’s going on at the southern border,” Hageman shot back.

On June 4, 2024, Hageman asked then-U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland if he was above reproach. Garland replied he is not above criticism, and that she’s totally free to criticize him.

“Yes, as American citizens we can criticize you and all of our other federal employees, can’t we?” Hageman said. 

“Absolutely,” Garland agreed.

“Because you seem to whine quite a bit today about being attacked or people challenging things you did,” Wyoming’s inquisitor pressed.

Hageman’s beef was about an undercover video of the Department of Justice working with the IRS to purportedly use artificial intelligence to surveil Americans’ bank accounts “in a clearly unconstitutional manner.” Hageman said it was a serious violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unlawful search and seizure since “there is no probable cause and no search warrants are being obtained.”

I have no idea if what she alleged was a real problem. But Hageman must put blinders on when the issue is the Department of Homeland Security allegedly telling ICE agents in an internal memo they can enter homes without a judicial warrant.

A month before she decided to run for the U.S. Senate, a campaign website for her U.S. House reelection declared Hageman “has developed a reputation for standing up to federal overreach… and challenging unconstitutional acts by both federal and state agencies.”

I can’t conceive of greater government overreach than federal officers fatally shooting U.S. citizens and Trump’s administration trying to whitewash it and blame the victims for their own deaths. 

In a fact-free Truth Social rant, the president called Good a “professional agitator” who was “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.”

Noem described Pretti as a “domestic terrorist,” and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called the slain man “a would-be assassin.”

Hageman eventually said the deaths in Minneapolis were “a terrible tragedy,” but she wouldn’t condemn federal agents, the perpetrators of the violence, nor call for ICE or U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to do anything differently.

Hageman’s town hall in Buffalo on Jan. 30 was described as “peaceful” by the Buffalo Bulletin, and she thanked the small crowd for the “respectful” way people asked questions.

Yes, by all means, when we’re trying to find out what Wyoming’s lone representative in the U.S. House thinks about senseless killings by federal immigration agents, let’s be careful not to offend Hageman’s sensibilities. She’s got a lot to think about while she raises money and campaigns for the Senate, and many more witnesses on Capitol Hill that she needs to publicly skewer in defense of Trump.