National Post (National Edition)
Missouri governor admits to infidelity
But politician denies claims of extortion
JEFFERSON CITY, MO. • When Eric Greitens sought Missouri’s highest office, his resume seemed hard to top: former Navy SEAL, former Rhodes scholar and founder of a veterans’ charity. Most important, he said during the campaign, was his role as “a proud husband and father.”
On Thursday, the squarejawed 43-year-old was fighting allegations that he photographed a hairdresser naked while having an affair with her and threatened to publicize the image if she spoke about their relationship. A bipartisan group of state lawmakers quickly asked the attorney general to investigate, and even fellow Republicans described the matter as “shocking and concerning.”
Greitens acknowledged being “unfaithful” in his marriage before he was elected governor but denied taking any naked photos and threatening the woman to stay quiet.
The Republican governor and his wife released a statement late Wednesday after St. Louis television station KMOV reported that he had a sexual relationship with his former hairdresser in 2015. The station reported that the woman’s ex-husband alleged Greitens photographed her nude and threatened to publicize the images if she spoke about the affair.
“A few years ago, before Eric was elected governor, there was a time when he was unfaithful in our marriage,” the statement from Greitens and his wife, Sheena, said. “This was a deeply personal mistake. Eric took responsibility, and we dealt with this together honestly and privately.”
The couple married in 2011 and have two young sons.
Greitens rose to office in the same November 2016 election that brought U.S. President Donald Trump to power. Greitens cast himself as an outsider going up against a career politician, the state’s Democratic attorney general. He’s not up for re-election until 2020.
The television report aired after Greitens gave his State of the State address.
The woman involved did not comment on the record to the TV station, which did not name her. But her exhusband, who also was not named, provided an audio recording he made to KMOV in which the woman gives details about a sexual encounter she says she had with Greitens in March 2015 at his St. Louis home. The woman did not know her then-husband was recording their conversation.
The alleged March 2015 encounter came after Greitens opened a committee to explore a bid for governor but before he announced his candidacy. She said on the tape he invited her downstairs at his home because he wanted to show her “how to do a proper pull-up.”
She said: “I knew he was being sexual, and I still let him. And he used some sort of tape, I don’t know what it was, and taped my hands to these rings and then put a blindfold on me.”
She says she later realized he took a photo of her.
“I saw a flash through the blindfold and he said, ‘You’re never going to mention my name.”’
A bipartisan group of state senators signed a letter asking the state attorney general to investigate the blackmail allegations. Attorney General Josh Hawley’s office did not have an immediate response.
GOP leaders in the Missouri Senate described the allegations against Greitens as “shocking and concerning.”
Senate president Pro Tem Ron Richard, Majority Leader Mike Kehoe and Assistant Majority Leader Bob Onder released a joint statement Thursday urging Greitens to be “honest and forthright.”
The statement from Greitens and his wife did not address the affair specifically or the allegations, but in a separate statement late Wednesday Greitens’ attorney, Jim Bennett, said, “There was no blackmail and that claim is false.”
The hairdresser eventually sent Greitens an email asking him to stop booking appointments at the salon where she worked.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports the email was sent Oct. 20, 2015, three weeks after Greitens filed papers starting his 2016 gubernatorial campaign.
She asked Greitens to “please consider all who are involved and the circumstances around us.” She said returning to the salon “isn’t fair to me, nor anyone close to us” and that she needed to “move forward.”
The lawyer for the exhusband said the FBI has contacted him several times since October 2016 about the affair.
Attorney Al Watkins said Thursday that he does not know if the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation. But Watkins said the agency has spoken to him about the affair as well as allegations that Greitens threatened to blackmail his client’s ex-wife using compromising photos if she spoke about their liaisons.
He did not say if the exhusband has also heard from the FBI.
A spokeswoman for the FBI’s St. Louis office said the agency could not confirm or deny that it was investigating.