‘I didn’t want this,’ woman in Missouri governor’s affair says
She defends account of sexual misconduct
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The woman with whom Gov. Eric Greitens had an affair stood by her description of their encounters in a new interview with a St. Louis television station.
The interview with KSDK-TV did not name the woman or show her face. During the airing on the 10 p.m. news Monday, the woman expressed regret that she was part of a story that dominated Missouri’s political atmosphere since January.
“I didn’t want this,” the woman told KSDK. “I wasn’t out to get anyone. I really was just trying to live my life. “
Greitens’ relationship with his hairdresser in 2015 became common knowledge the evening of Jan. 10 when a different St. Louis broadcast outlet, KMOV-TV, reported Greitens admitted to cheating on his wife but denied blackmailing his hair stylist with a compromising photograph.
The woman’s recollections about her initial encounter with Greitens were provided to the news media after her exhusband secretly recorded her without permission and gave the tape to his attorney. The attorney has told the NewsLeader that the man relied on recordings like this to revisit conversations with his ex-wife if he got too emotional.
Subsequent investigation led to a Feb. 22 indictment against Greitens by a St. Louis grand jury on a felony charge of invasion of privacy.
The woman never filed a police report and didn’t want to talk about what happened to her, but she cooperated with prosecutors after charges were filed.
“The second that he denied the things that were the most hurtful, that were the most hurtful for me to now have to relive,” she told KSDK, “I just realized: now I have this decision. The only ethical thing I felt that I could do was to tell the truth.”
She told the TV station she had not been paid for her story “in any way, shape or form” and had not been coerced to come forward by any political operatives.
The case was prosecuted – with multiple missteps – by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office. After Greitens’ defense team convinced a judge that Gardner should have to testify, the circuit attorney dropped the charge. Gardner’s office announced earlier Monday that Jean Peters Baker, the Jackson County prosecutor, had agreed to take the case as a special prosecutor.
The woman had made few public comments since the affair broke. On Jan. 12, she issued a statement through a St. Charles law firm in which she requested privacy and said she was “extremely distraught that the information has been made public.”
Greitens faces a separate felony charge on suspicion of overseeing the transfer of donor data from the charity he founded to his gubernatorial campaign. He has denied criminal wrongdoing and has characterized efforts to investigate him as a “political witch hunt.”
A Missouri House committee comprising five Republicans and two Democrats reported details April 11 that went beyond the woman’s publicized comments about the affair after speaking to her in a closed-door meeting.
“Yes I do stand by them,” the woman told KSDK of her testimony to lawmakers. “They were hard to talk about – really, really, really hard to talk about, some of the things – but I absolutely stand by it.”
The woman described to the committee how she performed oral sex on Greitens while she cried on his basement floor.
Asked by KSDK whether she felt coerced by the governor, she said, “Ultimately, yes. I mean, looking back, it’s so hard. I see myself as so vulnerable.”
The same committee is now set to begin preliminary proceedings that could lead to Greitens’ impeachment. Missouri lawmakers have called themselves into a special session, which could last until mid-June, for the purpose of considering discipline for the governor.
A statement issued by a Greitens representative said: “This case was dismissed because there was no evidence to support the allegations. “Everyone involved has said they desire to move on.”