Missouri AG accuses Greitens of criminal wrongdoing

by Reid Wilson - 04/17/18 12:30 PM ET

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) said his office has uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Gov. Eric Greitens (R), adding to a pile of legal woes that threaten to end Greitens’s political career.

In a press conference in Jefferson City on Tuesday, Hawley said his office had uncovered evidence that Greitens improperly obtained a donor list from a charity he ran before seeking office, and used that list to raise money for his campaign.

“If proven, these acts could amount to the unauthorized taking and use of property,” Hawley said Tuesday. “Given the value of the list in question, it is a felony.”

Greitens, a retired Navy SEAL, obtained the donor list from his charity The Mission Continues, without the group’s knowledge, Hawley said. He alleged Greitens had engaged in computer tampering, an allegation that goes beyond state law governing charitable organizations and into the criminal code. {mosads}

Hawley said his office lacked the jurisdiction to charge Greitens, so he had referred the evidence, amounting to hundreds of thousands of documents, to the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office for possible prosecution.

The latest evidence and potential charges add to Greitens’s already perilous legal woes. The same circuit attorney in St. Louis has charged Greitens with a felony count of invading a woman’s privacy during a sexual encounter in 2015. A report issued last week by the state legislature found that encounter was violent and nonconsensual.

Hawley’s office has been investigating Greitens over the charity and its donor list since February. In March, Hawley served Greitens a subpoena related to the investigation. Both the St. Louis Circuit Attorney and the state legislature are also investigating Greitens’s involvement with the charity.

The Associated Press first reported in October 2016, just weeks before Election Day, that Greitens had used the donor list for fundraising purposes. He denied the report, but the St. Louis Post-Dispatch later unveiled emails showing the donor list making its way from the charity’s offices to the Greitens campaign.

Hawley, who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) this November, refused requests by Greitens’s lawyers to step away from the charity investigation. Those lawyers said Hawley had tainted the investigation by calling on Greitens to resign after the legislature released its report detailing the nonconsensual encounter between Greitens and the woman whose privacy he is accused of violating.

Tags Claire McCaskill Missouri