JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. _ Attorney General Josh Hawley announced Tuesday morning that his office has uncovered potential criminal wrongdoing by Gov. Eric Greitens, a fellow Republican.
Hawley said that during the course of an investigation into the charity Greitens founded, his office found evidence that Greitens allegedly obtained and transmitted the charity's donor list for political fundraising.
"And he did all of this without permission of the Mission Continues," Hawley said Tuesday.
"This is known as computer tampering. And given the value of the list in question it is a felony."
Hawley, a Republican, said that his office lacks the jurisdiction to prosecute the governor on this matter because the alleged crime was committed in St. Louis.
He said he obtained court permission to share all of the evidence with St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, which will enable her to make a decision on whether to charge the governor before the statute of limitations runs out.
Gardner's office is already prosecuting Greitens for allegedly invading a woman's privacy by taking her photo without her permission in 2015.
In February, Hawley launched an investigation into Greitens' use of the charity donor list belonging to The Mission Continues, a charity Greitens founded in 2007. The inquiry is part of the attorney general's role to enforce Missouri's consumer protection and charitable registration and reporting laws.
Greitens was served with a subpoena from Hawley's office last month.
Greitens' attorneys on Monday urged Hawley to recuse his office from the investigation of The Mission Continues. The governor contends that Hawley compromised the integrity of the investigation when he publicly called for Greitens to resign over allegations of sexual coercion and blackmail contained in a report released last week by a Missouri House committee.
Greitens is charged with one felony count of invasion of privacy stemming from allegations that he took a nude photo of a woman with whom he was having an affair and threatened to release it if she revealed the relationship. The woman testified to the House committee that the affair with Greitens included non-consensual sexual encounters and physical violence.
The governor has admitted to the affair but denies any criminal wrongdoing.
Issues surrounding the Greitens campaign's use of The Mission Continues's donor list have dogged the governor since shortly before the 2016 election.
When first confronted by the Associated Press in October 2016 with evidence that his campaign used its donor list to raise money, Greitens flatly denied it.
After a complaint was filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission, Greitens and his attorney signed a consent decree last year attesting that the list was given to his campaign in March 2015 as an in-kind donation from Daniel Laub, his campaign manager.
Yet The Mission Continues has been adamant that it did not _ and would not _ give Greitens' campaign or any campaign its donor list. Doing so could violate federal law and put the charity's tax-exempt status at risk. The charity has been equally unwavering in saying that it doesn't even know who Laub is.
And a report by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch earlier this year disputed Greitens' explanation. Emails the paper obtained show Greitens' former assistant sent The Mission Continues donor list to Laub and another campaign staffer two months earlier than what the governor attested to in the consent decree with the ethics commission.
Laub did not respond to a request for comment.
In addition to the donor list, Greitens is also accused of using the charity's email list for political purposes.
New York Times reporter Ben Casselman has said that after he donated to The Mission Continues in 2012, he began getting campaign-related emails from Greitens. His experience is similar to that of another source who provided The Star with emails showing he had signed up for email updates from The Mission Continues in 2010 and then began getting fundraising emails from the Greitens campaign in 2015.
The controversy began in 2016, when The AP obtained an Excel spreadsheet labeled "All donors $1K total and up _ as of 5-7-14."
The list included more than 500 names, along with email addresses and phone numbers, for individuals who had given at least $1,000 to the charity. Those included on the list had combined to give the charity roughly $4.7 million in contributions.
The list also included names and contact information for foundations that gave an additional $4 million and corporations that gave more than $20 million.
The spreadsheet's properties showed it was created by an employee of The Mission Continues on May 6, 2014, shortly before Greitens stepped down as CEO. It was last saved 10 months later, on March 24, 2015, by a member of Greitens' gubernatorial exploratory committee.
Greitens resigned as CEO but stayed on the charity's board of directors until August 2015.
The list was created during the transition period between Greitens' resignation and new leadership taking over, said Laura L'Esperance, a spokeswoman for The Mission Continues.
Greitens would have been given the list, L'Esperance said, as outgoing CEO to contact donors and reassure them that the charity was in good hands and introduce them to its new leaders. But it was made clear at the time that the donor list was not to be used for any other purpose, she said, and The Mission Continues never would have authorized its use for a political campaign.
"It's only approved purpose of the list was for this transition," she said. "We did not authorize any use of the list for anything other than the transition."
L'Esperance said donors' personal information is considered strictly confidential.
Donors who had previously given significant amounts to The Mission Continues gave Greitens nearly $2 million. Of the more than $525,000 that Greitens raised during an initial two-month period of his campaign in early 2015, the AP found that 85 percent came from donors who previously gave to The Mission Continues.
Also investigating Greitens regarding the charity are the St. Louis circuit attorney's office, which is prosecuting Greitens for felony invasion of privacy, and a Missouri House committee investigating the governor as a first step toward possible impeachment.
