If you haven’t heard of Eric Greitens, it’s either because you don’t live in Missouri or you haven’t been paying attention to the Manhattan Contrarian posts on politicized phony prosecutions. Prior MC posts dealing with Mr. Greitens’s situation appeared first on April 12, 2018, and then a couple of weeks ago on February 18, 2020. Today there is a piece by Christine Dolan and John Solomon at Just the News, with new facts that are truly unbelievable.

The subject of the April 2018 post was a collection of weak and/or completely phony prosecutions brought by Democratic prosecutors against Republican officeholders in politically swing situations, where the investigation or potential conviction had a likelihood to drive the Republican from office and thereby potentially move significant power to the Democrats. The subjects of that post other than Greitens were ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, ex-Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, ex-NYS Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, ex-Texas Governor Rick Perry, ex-Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, and another ex-NYS Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos. Another good example of the same phenomenon would be ex-Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin (although his situation was not a subject of my post). I was clear to say in that post, and I repeat here, that I do not contend that Republicans are pure on this issue; however, despite considerable looking, I have not been able to come up with a single example of a comparable situation with potential to swing political power from one party to the other where it was a Republican prosecutor pursuing a Democratic officeholder. As I did in both those prior posts, I invite readers to name an example of this counter-situation if they know of one. In almost two years since that 2018 post, no one has come up with a single example. And I can say with a good deal of confidence that there are no examples at the federal level, at least within the past multiple decades.

But let’s get to Greitens. Greitens was elected Governor of Missouri in November 2016. Although Missouri in recent years has become an increasingly red state, the prior Governor was a Democrat (Jay Nixon), and Greitens prevailed in a relatively close election (51-46), even though President Trump won the state by 19 points. After Greitens had been in office for just over a year (February 2018), he was charged by Democrat Circuit Attorney Kimberley Gardner of St. Louis with felony “invasion of privacy,” and shortly thereafter with campaign finance violations. The “invasion of privacy” charge related to Greitens’s allegedly taking a non-consensual picture of his scantily-clad girlfriend, Katrina Sneed. (Taking a non-consensual picture can be a felony in Missouri.) In my April 2018 post, I noted that Greitens’s defense team had filed papers quoting from a sworn deposition of Ms. Sneed where she admitted that she did not have a copy of the picture and was not even sure that she had seen Greitens with a cell phone or camera.

At that point it was looking like the case was extremely weak and was going to fall apart, but meanwhile the prosecution, let alone a constant drumbeat of stories in the press, threw Greitens’s administration into turmoil. Ultimately, Greitens resigned on June 1. At that point it was not so clear to an outsider that the prosecution had been completely meritless, although the prosecutor did agree to drop the charges in exchange for the resignation.

Which brings us to today’s Just the News story from Dolan and Solomon. With the passage of time, it now appears that the investigation has turned back against the investigators, who may be in some serious trouble:

Investigators now allege the Greitens prosecution, which forced the governor to resign less than two years into his tenure, was built on lies that included perjury and hiding exculpatory evidence that would have helped demonstrate Greitens' innocence, court documents show. . . . The magnitude of alleged holes and potential misconduct in the case that Gardner brought against Greitens have been laid bare in subsequent court filings, which include a seven-count felony indictment against Gardner's chief investigator in the case, William Tisaby.

Tisaby was a private investigator from Michigan who was brought into the matter by Gardner in a highly unusual move. (Normally the police investigate their own matters without private assistance.)

But is this just the example we have been searching for of partisan Republicans bringing an equally phony prosecution against a Democrat to try to swing political power? I can’t say definitively. But there are multiple reasons to think it is not. For starters, the indictment was brought by a special prosecutor, Gerard Carmody, who was appointed by a court after it emerged that Ms. Gardner had a clear conflict of interest. Gardner and her supporters have hurled many accusations against Carmody since his appointment (see for example, this piece from the St. Louis American), but not that he is a Republican (as far as I can find). Also, if you read the Tisaby indictment, it sure looks like they have the guy dead to rights. As just a couple of examples:

• The indictment alleges that Tisaby testified under oath that when he interviewed Katrina Sneed (with Gardner present), no videotape existed because the camera malfunctioned. Then the videotape turned up in Gardner’s office. The videotape contradicted the prosecution version of what Sneed had said in multiple material respects.

• Tisaby also testified multiple times under oath that he had made no notes of the interview. The videotape showed him taking notes. Then 20 pages of notes emerged, again flatly contradicting the Tisaby/Gardner version of events.

As of yet, Gardner herself has not been charged. However, we have this (from paragraph 51 of the Tisaby indictment):

Although Gardner was seated next to Tisaby at the Second Interview [of Sneed] (while he was taking notes), Gardner nonetheless had Tisaby reaffirm that no notes were taken at the interview.

Even though this story is not completely over, I can feel very comfortable at this point in saying that the Greitens prosecution was highly political and completely phony. Meanwhile, Greitens remains today in the political wilderness. When he resigned, his Lieutenant Governor — a guy named Mike Parson, also a Republican — took over, and is serving out the term that ends at the beginning of 2021. At first it may have appeared to Gardner and her supporters that the prosecution of Greitens would have a good chance of swinging the governorship back to the Democrats when the next election rolled around later this year. At this point, I would say that the initiative has backfired big time.