Report Details Sex Claims Against Missouri Governor

The Missouri governor’s grip on power turned extremely shaky Wednesday after a report released by the state’s Republican-controlled House said that he made unwanted sexual advances on his former mistress before he ran for office.

Calls for Gov. Eric Greitens to resign — even among fellow Republicans — intensified after the release of the detailed, salacious report. But in a blunt news conference before the report was released, Greitens, who took office in January 2017, insisted he was the victim of a political witch hunt. He said he would not step down.

“We fully expect that the report being released tonight will include lies and falsehoods,” he said from the state Capitol in Jefferson City. “I want to say again what I’ve said from the beginning. This is a political witch hunt.”

He added: “I will continue to serve the people of Missouri as their governor and to work for you every day. And they know, they need to know, that fake charges and falsehoods aren’t going to stop us.”

The damning report details several instances in which the woman, who was Greitens’s barber, said he spanked, slapped or grabbed her, and called her derogatory names during sexual encounters before he ran for office in 2015.

The woman went to his house in March 2015 at his request, the report said. He bound her to exercise equipment with tape and began kissing her around her stomach, the woman testified, according to the 24-page report. After she began crying and told him to stop, the governor helped her undo the tape, and then hugged her and tried to console her, the report said.

But then he took out his penis, the report said, and the woman told the investigative committee that although she was not scared, she felt that the only way she could leave his home was if she performed oral sex, even though she did not want to.

The investigative committee released its report even as the governor’s defense team tried feverishly to delay it. Defense lawyers argued that the report could taint a potential jury pool in the coming criminal trial, which is scheduled to start next month.

A public relations firm representing Greitens sent out statements Tuesday making the point that the judge in the criminal case had issued a gag order, even though the judge declined to prevent lawmakers from releasing their report.

The fact that the Republican-controlled Legislature went ahead with its report despite the governor’s objections is an indication of how strained his relationship is with members of his own party. The governor’s affair and the subsequent criminal case have been an embarrassment to state Republicans. Some consider it a damaging distraction that could hurt the party’s chances in the midterm elections this fall, which include a crucial U.S. Senate race against the longtime Democratic incumbent, Claire McCaskill.

Under Missouri law, the House committee was tasked with deciding whether to advance articles of impeachment against Greitens. A majority of the full House is needed to support impeachment for the process to continue in the Senate, which would select seven judges to conduct a trial.

No Missouri governor has ever been removed from office through impeachment. Greitens has said that he will not resign.

Chief among the tactics of Greitens’s defense team has been an effort to discredit the criminal investigation as politically motivated.

Greitens admitted in January that he had an extramarital affair before he became governor. He denied allegations, however, that he had taken a photo of his former lover and threatened to make it public if she told anyone about the affair. The allegations initially came from the woman’s former husband, who released to a St. Louis television station a secretly recorded audio of a conversation with his ex-wife in which she laid out the details.

The St. Louis circuit attorney, Kimberly M. Gardner, who is a Democrat, started an investigation and announced in February that a grand jury had indicted Greitens on a felony charge of invasion of privacy.

In a message posted to his Facebook page, Greitens called Gardner a “reckless liberal prosecutor who uses her office to score political points.”

Even some Republicans were not convinced that the case was purely political.

“If you get a grand jury to indict you, there’s probably some proof,” T.J. Berry, a state representative from Kansas City, said after the indictment was announced.

Yet Greitens’ defense team sought to hammer away at the credibility of the prosecution, questioning, for instance, whether a Harvard law professor hired by the prosecutor could legally fulfill that role because he had served as a defense lawyer in other cases, including the double murder trial of Aaron Hernandez, the tight end for the New England Patriots. The governor also asked that a judge decide his case, but that request was denied.

Most recently, defense lawyers cited portions of a deposition with Greitens’ former lover to claim that she said she might have dreamed that she saw the governor take a photograph of her on a phone.

That account led to a forceful rebuttal from the woman’s lawyer, Scott Simpson. He told The Riverfront Times that his client had consistently testified under oath that Greitens had taken a picture of her.

The escalating back and forth led the judge, Rex Burlison of St. Louis Circuit Court, to issue a gag order Tuesday, preventing the parties and others involved from discussing certain things publicly.

That order did not, however, extend to legislators and the report they released Wednesday.

Greitens said Wednesday that Missouri residents would know better than to follow tabloid trash gossip. He pledged to continue to serve the residents of Missouri.

“In 33 days, this will all come to an end because in the United States of America, you get your day in court,” he said defiantly.