On Tuesday, a shoe that had dangled for 18 months finally fell on Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens: Attorney General Josh Hawley said Greitens had committed "potentially criminal acts" by using a charity's donor list to solicit contributions to his 2016 gubernatorial campaign.
This allegation is not nearly as scandalous as taking a photograph of a semi-nude woman against her will, a charge for which Greitens faces trial in St. Louis. Nor is it as shocking as the woman's testimony to a Missouri House committee that led to Republican calls for Greitens' resignation or impeachment.
But what Hawley alleges is a potential felony and another reason for Greitens to summon the last scraps of his honor and resign.
Hawley, a Republican, referred the evidence to St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, a Democrat, for possible prosecution as a felony: tampering with a computer. Conviction could be an impeachable offense, Hawley said.
The attorney general is running for the U.S. Senate. This action helps distance him from the governor and minimize the political damage Greitens is creating.
The charity Hawley referred to is The Mission Continues of St. Louis, which provides opportunities for veterans to continue lives of service. Greitens founded it in 2007 and was its CEO until 2014. The charity, which is not suspected of wrongdoing, was the platform on which Greitens built his career as an author and motivational speaker.
In October 2016, an Associated Press investigation found an 85 percent correlation between names on the charity's donor list and $525,000 in early donations to Greitens' gubernatorial campaign. In all, the charity's donors gave the campaign $2 million.
Greitens' explanation was, "We were calling people who had become friends and gotten to know me over the course of seven years, who invested in The Mission Continues and got to know me as a leader."
Greitens is a smart man, but he didn't keep all those names and phone numbers in his head. The AP obtained a spreadsheet created by a charity employee in May 2014 showing all donors of $1,000 and up. Greitens left in July 2014 to prepare his gubernatorial bid. The next time the spreadsheet was time-stamped, it bore the name of an employee of the campaign's exploratory committee.
His campaign stated in April 2017 that the donor list had been given as an in-kind contribution, valued at $600 but never reported. However, the stories about when the list was obtained, and by whom, shifted.
The Missouri Ethics Commission fined the campaign a whopping $100. No further action was taken until Hawley started issuing subpoenas.
A statement from Greitens belittled Hawley and labeled Gardner as a "liberal prosecutor funded by George Soros."
It wasn't Hawley, Gardner or Soros who betrayed their own veterans' charity. For all his talk about being a Navy SEAL, you'd think Greitens would have learned something about honor.
