ST. LOUIS _ In a new court filing, attorneys for Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens claim the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's office has withheld evidence as part of a disclosure by the governor's former lover that she may have seen a camera or phone only in a dream or vision.
The woman was deposed Friday at the Carnahan Courthouse for more than eight hours. According to a defense motion filed Sunday to compel evidence allegedly withheld by prosecutors, the woman testified Friday that she could not say under oath that she saw a phone.
"I don't know if it's because I'm remembering it through a dream or I _ I'm not sure, but yes, I feel like I saw it after it happened, but I haven't spoken about it because of that," she said, according to the filing.
The filing claims the woman testified that she previously told prosecutors that her recollections may have been from a dream but that the state did not turn over her statements to the defense. The defense has previously claimed that she testified for grand jurors that she heard the sound of an iPhone camera but had not seen the device.
Defense lawyers also accused the Circuit Attorney's office of withholding a video interview with the woman conducted by William Don Tisaby, a private investigator hired to investigate the governor. The defense says prosecutors told them the video recording device used for the interview had malfunctioned.
Susan Ryan, a spokeswoman for Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, said the defense is "working hard to try this case in the media by attacking the credibility of the victim and the investigation." Ryan said the defense "cherry-picked bits and pieces" of Friday's deposition and said "there is nothing substantially new about the victim's testimony in the deposition, including the fact that the video camera had malfunctioned."
Prosecutors have complied with rules of discovery and will continue to do so, Ryan said.
"Week after week, the defense team continues to waste the court's time with their frivolous motions," she said, adding that the defense's hiring of a public relations firm shows "they are playing political games."
"This week's games are an effort to deflect public attention from other matters facing the governor," Ryan said.
Lawyers for Greitens have sought to convince members of the Missouri House of Representatives committee investigating the governor to delay the release of their report until after the criminal trial next month. But members said they still intend to release their findings on Wednesday.
The seven-member panel of five Republicans and two Democrats has been meeting behind closed doors since early last month, when the House voted unanimously to form the committee. The report could lead to impeachment proceedings.
Sunday's filing claims the woman admitted sending in June 2015 nude or partially nude images of herself to Greitens through FaceTime, Apple's visual calling application, which was not disclosed to a St. Louis grand jury or to the Missouri House committee. The filing also claimed the woman said she never viewed what happened as a crime, and that the "last thing on (her) mind" as recently as January was a potential prosecution.
Greitens was indicted in February on a felony charge of invasion of privacy. He is accused of taking a nude or semi-nude photo of the bound and blindfolded woman without her consent in March 2015, and then transmitting it.
The woman told her husband during a conversation he taped that Greitens threatened to release the picture if she ever disclosed the affair.
Greitens has admitted the affair but denied blackmailing her. His defense lawyers have maintained that no compromising photo exists and that there's no evidence it was transmitted.
