Governor of Missouri steps down
GREITENS TRIED HARD TO STAY IN OFFICE AFTER HIS AFFAIR WITH HAIRDRESSER BECAME PUBLIC
Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, a sometimes brash political outsider whose unconventional resume as a Rhodes scholar and Navy SEAL officer made him a rising star in the Republican Party, resigned on Tuesday amid a widening investigation that arose from an affair with his former hairdresser.
The 44-year-old governor spent nearly six months fighting to stay in office after the affair became public in January in a television news report that aired immediately following his State of the State address.
The probes into his conduct by prosecutors and lawmakers began with allegations stemming from the affair and expanded to include questions about whether he violated campaign-finance laws.
Greitens said his resignation would take effect tomorrow.
“This ordeal has been designed to cause an incredible amount of strain on my family — millions of dollars of mounting legal bills, endless personal attacks designed to cause maximum damage to family and friends,” he said in a brief statement from his Jefferson City office, his voice breaking at times.
He said he could not “allow those forces to continue to cause pain and difficulty to the people that I love”.
Lawmakers pressuring Greitens to step down included many Republicans, who feared that his troubles could jeopardise the GOP’s chances of defeating incumbent Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill in a race considered essential to the party’s hopes of keeping control of the Senate.
The local St. Louis prosecutor’s office said it had reached a “fair and just resolution” on criminal charges against Greitens now that he’s leaving office. But the prosecutor said details would not be made public until Wednesday.
Charges
A St Louis grand jury indicted Greitens on February 22 on one felony count of invasion of privacy for allegedly taking and transmitting a photo of the woman without her consent at his home in 2015, before he was elected governor. The charge was dismissed during jury selection, but a special prosecutor from Kansas City is considering whether to refile charges and said her investigation is ongoing. In April, the St. Louis prosecutor, Kim Gardner, charged Greitens with another felony, alleging that he improperly used the donor list for a charity that he had founded to raise money for his 2016 campaign.