KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A special prosecutor will announce Friday whether she will re-file charge against former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens pertaining to an extramarital affair he had before he took office.
Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said she will make a statement and offer further details at 3 p.m. in Kansas City, spokesman Michael Mansur said.
Greitens, a 44-year-old former Navy SEAL officer, resigned June 1 amid investigations into whether he took a photo of his former lover without her permission while she was blindfolded and at least partially nude, and whether he illegally used a donor email list from a charity he founded to raise money for his campaign. Legislators were also discussing whether to seek his impeachment.
Baker was tasked with deciding whether to file the felony invasion of privacy charge stemming from the alleged photo after St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner unexpectedly dismissed the case. Greitens' attorneys argued that a private investigator Gardner hired to look into Greitens had committed perjury and withheld evidence. The judge last month granted their request to call Gardner as a witness, which Gardner said left her with no choice but to dismiss the charge and turn it over to a special prosecutor.
In exchange for Greitens' resignation, Gardner last week dropped the charge pertaining to the charity's email list.
Greitens' troubles began in January. On the night he delivered his State of the State, St. Louis station KMOV-TV reported that he had an affair in 2015 with his hairdresser. Greitens admitted to the affair shortly after the news broke.
Gardner launched an investigation, leading to the grand jury indictment a month later. Greitens denied criminal wrongdoing and blamed Gardner, a Democrat, calling her a "reckless liberal prosecutor."
The woman testified to a special Missouri House committee that Greitens bound her hands to exercise equipment, blindfolded her and removed her clothes before she saw a flash and heard what sounded like the click of a cellphone camera. She has said Greitens threatened to disseminate the photo if she spoke of their encounter but later told her he had deleted it.
Greitens' attorneys have said that St. Louis prosecutors had stopped searching for evidence of the compromising photo after failing to find it on Greitens' cellphone or in cloud storage. However, the former governor repeatedly declined to answer media questions about the photo.
The House committee's report released in April also included the woman's testimony alleging that Greitens had restrained, slapped, shoved, threatened and belittled her during a series of sexual encounters that at times left her crying and afraid. Greitens didn't testify before the committee.
EXTENDED COVERAGE:
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