The indictment said Greitens then
transmitted the photo in a way that allowed it to be viewed on a
computer, which prosecutors said made the crime a felony rather than a
misdemeanor.
The charge comes weeks after
Greitens acknowledged having an extramarital affair in 2015, but denied
reports that he blackmailed the woman or took a nude photo of her
without permission. A St. Louis television station had aired a report
with claims that Greitens, a married father of two, took a compromising
photograph of a woman with whom he was having an affair and then
threatened her with retribution if she revealed the relationship.
Greitens,
a former Navy SEAL and Rhodes scholar who has been governor for just
over a year, has resisted calls to resign, insisting that he did nothing
illegal. He has been touring the state touting his tax cut plans.
Greitens,
who was booked into a St. Louis jail Thursday afternoon and released on
his own recognizance, defended himself in a statement posted to social
media accounts, saying he “made a personal mistake” but “did not commit a
crime.”
“With today’s disappointing
and misguided political decision, my confidence in our prosecutorial
system is shaken, but not broken,” Greitens, 43, wrote on Facebook.
He suggested that the charges were the work of a “reckless liberal
prosecutor who uses her office to score political points,” an apparent
reference to Kimberly M. Gardner, the St. Louis prosecutor whose office
presented the case to the grand jury and who is a Democrat.
A
lawyer for Greitens, Edward L. Dowd Jr., said in a statement that the
charge was baseless and that he would be filing a motion to dismiss the
case.
Greitens showed no immediate signs
of quitting, but he was certain to face pressure to leave, and some
lawmakers said they were pushing for an investigation, which could be a
first step to seek impeachment.
Though
his fellow Republicans hold large majorities in the state legislature,
the governor has frequently clashed with members of his own party. State
Sen. Robert Schaaf, a Republican, said lawmakers should “move swiftly
to bring this to a resolution” and possibly impeachment if the governor
did not resign.
Republican leaders in the state House raised their own doubts about Greitens’ future.
“We
will carefully examine the facts contained in the indictment and answer
the question as to whether or not the governor can lead our state while
a felony case moves forward,” a joint statement from the
Republican leaders, including Todd Richardson, the speaker of the House;
Elijah Haahr, speaker pro tem; and Rob Vescovo, the majority floor
leader, said. “The people of Missouri deserve no less. We will begin the
process of tasking a group of legislators to investigate these serious
charges.”
Gardner said the statute of limitations for charges to be filed would have expired next month.
“As
I have stated before, it is essential for residents of the city of St.
Louis and our state to have confidence in their leaders,” Gardner said
Thursday in a statement. “They must know that the Office of the Circuit
Attorney will hold public officials accountable in the same manner as
any other resident of our city. Both parties and the people of St. Louis
deserve a thorough investigation of these allegations.”
Dowd
said the governor had offered to meet with Gardner, but that she
refused and “proceeded to file an indictment that has no facts.” Dowd
said his client would cooperate if a legislative committee investigates.
Last month, after the claims against Greitens became public, Greitens acknowledged an affair and asked for forgiveness.
“This was a deeply personal mistake,”
Greitens and his wife, Sheena, said in a joint statement. “Eric took
responsibility, and we dealt with this together honestly and privately.”
The
tawdry political drama is taking place in a state where Sen. Claire
McCaskill, a Democrat, is locked in what is expected to be one of the
most hard-fought Senate races in the country.
Greitens
was widely believed to have aspirations for higher office, perhaps even
the presidency, and had appeared in Iowa, Michigan and Virginia in
recent months in an apparent effort to burnish his national brand.
He
had been well known within military circles. In 2007, after coming home
from Iraq, Greitens started what became known as the veterans
empowerment movement when he founded The Mission Continues, a nonprofit
that sought to encourage veterans to take on new missions of service in
their communities. In 2013, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most
influential people in the world.
By Thursday night, lawmakers were raising pointed questions about Greitens’ future.
Ryan
Silvey, a former Republican state senator whom Greitens appointed to
the state’s Public Service Commission last month, said it would be
difficult for the governor to survive.
“He doesn’t really have a lot of deep relationships in the legislature to begin with,” Silvey said. “I
don’t see how he can effectively govern in the current situation. I
think that it would probably be best for the party and for the state if
he were to resign.”
It was hard to see the prosecution as political, he said, given the fact that the indictment came from a grand jury.
“With
it being a grand jury, that tells me evidence was presented to other
people who saw that an indictment would be reasonable,” he said.
Under
Missouri law, a member of the state House can file a resolution seeking
an investigation of the governor, which would then be referred to a
committee. That committee could then advance articles of impeachment to
the full House for a vote. And if a majority of House members supported
impeachment, the state Senate would select seven judges to conduct a
trial.
No Missouri governor has ever been removed from office through impeachment.
T.J.
Berry, a state representative from Kansas City, said he hoped the
state’s General Assembly would open its own investigation “to remove the
question of political taint” in Gardner’s prosecution.
While
Berry, a Republican, said that the allegations still needed to be
proven, the charges were not a good sign for the governor.
“If you get a grand jury to indict you, there’s probably some proof,” Berry said.
State
Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, a Democrat, said “there’s a very dark cloud over
the state of Missouri and I truly believe that the governor cannot lead”
while under felony indictment.
If
Greitens does not resign, “the people here in the state of Missouri need
to rise up and call for his impeachment,” Nasheed said. “This is a big
embarrassment to the state.”
Greitens,
who was permitted to travel throughout the United States as a provision
of his release, is scheduled to appear in court March 16.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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