Felony charge in privacy case dropped against Mo. governor
ST. LOUIS — The trial was to be a major test for Gov. Eric Greitens of Missouri, a former Navy SEAL once lauded as a rising star in the Republican Party and, perhaps someday, a contender for president.
Prosecutors said that, in 2015, Greitens had taken an explicit photo of his former hairdresser without her consent. For months, the accusation had dogged his young governorship and upended politics across Missouri.
Then on Monday, with jury selection already well underway, Greitens watched from a St. Louis courtroom as the case suddenly collapsed. Prosecutors abruptly announced that they were dropping their felony invasion-ofprivacy charge against him.
For Greitens, who has for weeks fought off demands that he resign, the announcement was a significant win. “This is a great victory, and it has been a long time coming,” Greitens, 44, said outside the courthouse. “This experience has been humbling, and I have emerged from it a changed man.”
Still, Greitens, only a year and a half into his first term in office, remains entangled in a legal and political thicket, and his future remains very much in doubt. A second felony charge, of tampering with computer data, awaits; prosecutors contend that he illegally obtained a donor list from a veterans’ charity he founded and used it for his 2016 campaign. And he faces a looming threat to his governorship from the Missouri General Assembly, which has scheduled a special session Friday that could lead to a vote on impeachment.
In dropping the invasion-of-privacy charge, prosecutors cited the defense team’s decision to call the St. Louis circuit attorney, Kimberly Gardner, as a witness in the case. The lawyers for Greitens had accused Gardner of condoning misconduct and lying by an investigator on the case, and apparently intended to question her on those issues.
But the case had troubles from the start.
Gardner, a Democrat, filed the felony charge in February, accusing Greitens of taking the explicit photo of his former hairdresser, with whom he has acknowledged having an affair. The woman, who has not been identified, was captured on a secretly recorded tape telling her then-husband that Greitens had blindfolded her, torn off her shirt and pants and taken a photo without her consent. Her ex-husband released the audio recording of the conversation to the news media over her objections.
Months after bringing the charge against Greitens, prosecutors still had not obtained such a photo, despite searches of the governor’s cellphone and electronic cloud accounts. The woman at the center of the case was a reluctant witness as well, declining all media interviews and pleading for privacy.