LISTEN: Gut-wrenching audio clip released of blackmail accusations against Missouri GOP governor
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Thursday released audio of a woman claiming that she had an extramarital affair with Missouri’s Republican Governor Eric Greitens, during which he allegedly took a photograph of her naked and blindfolded and threatened to share the image if she told others about their encounter.
Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, acknowledged the affair on Wednesday in a statement to News 4, though he denied blackmailing the woman through his attorney in a Twitter post Thursday.
The released audio is a recorded conversation between the woman and her now ex-husband, who told News 4 there’s “no worse person” than someone like Greitens.
“He took a picture of my wife naked as blackmail,” the ex-husband said. “There is no worse person. I think it’s as bad as it gets, It’s as bad as it gets when someone takes advantage of something.”
In the recording, the woman is heard telling her then-husband she had “I met Eric a year ago and I instantly had a big crush on him.”
“Tell me the truth,” her ex-husband implores. “The truth. Only the truth.”
“So on Saturday morning before my first client, I did go to his house,” she said.
“For the first time?” he asked.
“For the first time, ever,” she replied. “Like said, nothing, period, had ever happened or taken place until this snowball, this f*cking tornado just happened. I know I brought it on.”
Later in the audio, the woman said Greitens invited her downstairs to teach her “how to do a proper pull-up.”
“I knew that he was being sexual and I still let him,” she said. And he used some sort of tape, I don’t what it was, and taped my hands to these rings and then put a blindfold on me.”
“I didn’t even know,” she continued. “I feel like I didn’t even know. I was jut numb. I just stood there and didn’t f*cking know.”
“He stepped back, I saw a flash through the blindfold and he said, ‘you’re never going to mention my name,’ otherwise there will be pictures of me everywhere,” the woman alleged.
Listen to the audio below, via STL.com: