TORPEDOES CIRCLING AROUND: Missouri case that toppled GOP governor boomerangs on Soros-backed prosecutor: St. Louis circuit attorney faces grand jury probe, chief investigator indicted in echoes of Trump-Russia collusion reversal in Washington.
St. Louis city’s first African-American chief prosecutor on a campaign funded heavily by the liberal mega-donor George Soros. Four years later, she finds herself under investigation and her chief investigator already indicted for a prosecution gone bad, one that forced Missouri’s Republican governor to resign in what some now believe may have been a political attack.
Gardner, a Democrat and the city’s circuit attorney, was forced in 2018 to withdraw her indictment accusing Gov. Eric Greitens of felony invasion of privacy for allegedly taking a picture of his scantily clad girlfriend and threatening to release it if she talked about their affair. Gardner’s office dropped the charge after admitting she did not have proof of the photo or its transmission.
Investigators now allege the Greitens prosecution, which forced the governor to resign less than two years into his tenure, was built on lies that included perjury and hiding exculpatory evidence that would have helped demonstrate Greitens’ innocence, court documents show.
Most significantly, testimony transcripts and court records obtained by Just the News show the woman Gardner built her case around, beautician Katrina Sneed, testified she was asked unsolicited by Gardner’s office to come forward as a witness and that she was actually reluctant to accuse Greitens because the entire story of a photo on his mobile phone may have been a dream.
We need to make examples of these political prosecutions. Jail time all around. Plus:
The magnitude of alleged holes and potential misconduct in the case that Gardner brought against Greitens have been laid bare in subsequent court filings, which include a seven-count felony indictment against Gardner’s chief investigator in the case, William Tisaby.
The new evidence has not only engulfed her office in controversy; it has also drawn comparisons in Washington to the Russia collusion allegations against President Trump that were leaked and investigated, only to be debunked after a nearly three-year drama.
“Ms. Gardner tampered with the integrity of the grand jury and our judicial system by feloniously causing an indictment of a man for whom she did not have the evidence,” said Dwight Warren, who worked for 40 years as a prosecutor in the St. Louis circuit attorney’s office before he was fired by Gardner in 2017. “If the system is to command the respect of its citizens, they need to trust their prosecutor to be fair.”
Well, we can’t extend that sort of trust now.