Embattled St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner let a noon deadline for her resignation pass without action, triggering an effort by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to remove her from office through the courts.

At a news conference Thursday with Gov. Mike Parson, Bailey said he would file a quo warranto petition – an action for removal from office – in St. Louis Circuit Court if Gardner decides to stay in office. He followed through on that promise shortly after noon.

“I initiated legal proceedings to remove her from office,” Bailey said. “That was filed at 12:01 p.m. today.”

Parson, who would appoint a replacement and had not previously weighed in, said he also thinks Gadner should resign.

“What I believe is that she is not doing what she needs to be doing as the prosecutor of St. Louis,” Parson said.

Gardner, who last year survived an effort to strip her of her law license, will hold a news conference of her own Thursday afternoon amidst intense pressure for her to quit because of the traumatic injuries to a Tennessee teen struck Saturday by a speeding car in downtown St. Louis.

Janae Edmonson was in St. Louis for a volleyball tournament when she was struck by a car allegedly driven by Daniel Riley, who was free on bond while awaiting trial for armed robbery. Both of her legs were amputated because of the injuries she suffered.

Bailey accused Gardner of neglecting her duties because Riley had been cited dozens of times for violating conditions of his bond. In response, Gardner issued a statement accusing the judge in Riley’s case of failing to recognize the danger he posed to the community.

The statement cited seven instances where Judge Bryan Hettenbach turned down requests to revoke Riley’s bond.

“Judges have the sole authority to determine bond conditions of a defendant,” the statement read. “Bond violations and decisions do not solely rest on the shoulders of prosecutors.”

Gardner, a Democrat and the city’s first Black prosecutor, is serving her second term as circuit attorney and would be up for re-election in 2024. But she is not under fire just from Bailey, Parson and other Republicans. Democratic leaders in the city, including St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones and several members of the city Board of Aldermen have criticized how Gardner has run her office. Some have joined the calls for her resignation.

“She must do some serious soul-searching about her future as circuit attorney because she has lost the trust of the people,” Jones wrote on Twitter.

In a news conference Thursday, several Democratic members of the Missouri House who represent St. Louis said they have lost confidence in Gardner.

“It would be in the best interest of the city — and this is my opinion, I’m not speaking for the caucus — for Kim Gardner to resign and let the city move on,” said state Rep. Steve Butz.

Rep. Donna Baringer said her constituents “have made it very clear that they want Kim Gardner to step down.” And state Rep. Rasheen Aldridge said the circuit attorney’s office “has truly lost the trust at home.”

Gardner’s fate could determine the path legislation to put control of local prosecutorial offices in the hands of the governor. The Missouri House has passed legislation allowing the governor to appoint a special prosecutor for five years if the number of homicide cases in any prosecuting attorney’s jurisdiction in the 12 months immediately preceding exceeds 35 cases per every 100,000 people.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, speaking at a news conference, said that if Gardner resigns, it would take away momentum for that legislation.

“I would think that bill at that point would not have the impetus behind it,” said Plocher, R-Des Peres.

Riley’s case could also bring a review of how judges handled his bond situation, Parson said.

“If the judges are failing, they should be called out for not doing their jobs also,” he said. “And we plan to look into that.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

A little over two months after surviving a challenge to his leadership, Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Michael Butler is resigning.

In an email to members of the Democratic State Committee on Thursday, Butler said he will step down effective Feb. 28 to devote more time to his business. Butler owns Open Concept, a bar in The Grove in the Forest Park neighborhood of St. Louis.

“My company, Open Concept LLC, has recently received a large financial investment, and requires more of my time,” Butler wrote in the email. “I very much appreciate the opportunity to have worked for and with such a great group of leaders, staff and volunteers.”

Butler, who is also the St. Louis Recorder of Deeds, is stepping down after a little more than two years as party chairman. His re-election in December marked the first time in almost a decade where the party retained its top leader for a second two-year term.

“I have greatly enjoyed working for the party for the past three years,” Butler wrote in his email. “I consider it an honor and one of the high points of my career to have been elected Chairman, not once but twice.”

In the run-up to the December vote, accusations flew on Twitter and other platforms that Butler was disrespectful to rural leaders, that he played favorites in primaries and didn’t do enough to help individual candidates get elected.

One of the candidates who challenged Butler, Shirley Mata of Clay County, an officer of UAW Local 249, was selected vice-chair of the party. Mata could not be reached Friday for reaction to Butler’s move.

An election for a new chairman has not been scheduled.

The Democratic Party is at one of its weakest moments in its history in the state. It holds no statewide offices, fewer than one-third of legislative seats and only two of eight congressional seats. While the Republican Party is flush with candidates jockeying for position ahead of the 2024 elections, no well-known Democrats have said they intend to run for governor or any of the other constitutional offices on next year’s ballot.

“The transition from me to the next chairman will be effortless and I offer my support in any way in the transition process,” Butler wrote. “I wish all the best to the next chairman and the party for its continued success.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

At 8:44 p.m. on Jan. 19, Rowden wrote that his “office has been inundated with calls & emails re: grade school kids being forced to sit through a drag show” at the annual Columbia Values Diversity breakfast that morning.

But in response to a Sunshine Law request filed by The Independent, Rowden’s office produced no emails received earlier than 9:04 a.m. Jan. 20 — more than 12 hours after his tweet. And that first email voiced support for having children experience the drag performance by Nclusion Plus.

“I have attended this event in the past. I’m sorry I missed this year’s exciting entertainment,” wrote Rebecca Shaw, who identified herself as a parent with two children in Columbia schools who did not attend.

In an interview, Rowden said the records produced in response to the Sunshine Law request do not reflect calls and messages he received through non-public channels prior to his Jan. 19 tweet.

There were calls to his personal phone, messages on campaign-related social media, emails to his campaign account and calls to his office that were answered directly by staff. Rowden said he does not believe those records are covered by the Sunshine Law’s requirements for disclosure.

Between 10 a.m., when he received the first call about the breakfast, and when he sent his tweet, Rowden said he received approximately 20 messages, including “six to 10” calls to his Capitol office.

“All were either upset about the event or more informative to make sure we knew about it,” Rowden said, later adding: “We got a lot of people who were up in arms. I wanted them to know I was aware of it and taking it seriously.”

Among the records obtained by The Independent are 23 emails from constituents in Boone County, which Rowden represents in the Senate.

Two that were critical of the district were from teachers, one retired and one working. The teacher currently working for the district did not attend the diversity breakfast but said she was told about it by students who did.

She was “completely upset and appalled” at what she heard, she wrote.

“I hope you represent angry parents and teachers (both taxpayers) and sue CPS,” the teacher wrote. “I’m so sick of how liberal CPS has become.”

The 21 other emails were almost evenly split between those upset about the performance and those upset with Rowden’s criticism. Among those 21 emails, nine were from parents who said they had children attending Columbia Public Schools.

Two were from parents who had children who actually attended the breakfast and offered mixed opinions. So did the two from people who gave addresses outside the Columbia district. The four recorded voice messages were from people who thought the performance was not appropriate for school children.

The Columbia Values Diversity breakfast is a city-government sponsored event timed to be held near the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Children from several schools, private and public, attended, including a group of 30 Columbia public schools middle school students and a handful of students from other schools by invitation.

To attend, parents had to sign a permission slip that indicated their child could expect “songs and performances” as part of the celebration of diversity without stating specifically what performance would occur.

Videos of the performance show nothing overtly sexual in the four songs in the show. The performers did circulate through the audience and accept tips.

Of the parents of a child who attended, Tara Arnett told Rowden her son is severely autistic. She emailed Rowden to discuss both the breakfast and her other bad experiences with the school district.

In an interview on Friday, Arnett said she would not have consented to having her son attend if she had known the drag performance would occur. Her son was invited by his principal to represent the diversity at his middle school, Arnett said, but the limited space meant she could not attend.

To accommodate his severe autism, she worked through several potential issues, including arranging to have him and his principal seated at a table at the edge of the event, in case it became too much for him.

No one mentioned that there would be a drag performance, she said.

“I don’t believe children should be taken to a drag performance without it being OK’d by parents,” Arnett said. “I am not saying the city should not put on a drag performance.”

The other parent who wrote about her child attending, Molly Lyman, said her son thought the performance was “cool” but didn’t understand what a drag performance was.

“To him…they were just three performers who were really fun to watch!” Lyman wrote.

It was the first thing he told them about when he got home that day, she wrote.

“Parents getting so upset about this blows my mind,” Lyman wrote.

In an email to The Independent, Lyman said she wrote to Rowden in response to news reports about his critical tweet.

“I knew they were being inundated with emails condemning CPS and the Diversity Breakfast,” Lyman told The Independent, “and I knew some of the loudest and angriest people didn’t even have students there.”

A parent whose child did not attend the performance, Marisa Hagler, emailed Rowden accusing the district of deliberately withholding the fact that a drag show was planned from parents.

In an interview with The Independent on Friday, Hagler reiterated her accusation.

“Everybody, unless you have been living under a rock, knows how controversial drag shows have become and taking kids to them,” Hagler said.

Shaw, the first person to email Rowden’s office after his tweet, said she decided to write to her state senator after seeing news stories about his criticism of the event. She wanted him to know that the opposition was not universal, she said.

“There was a lot of push for people to be outraged about this,” Shaw said.

Nclusion Plus peformers Artemis Grey, KayCee and Faye King perform Thursday morning at the Columbia Values Diversity breakfast in Columbia (Photo courtesy Nclusion Plus).

Among those outraged were Gov. Mike Parson, who wrote on his Twitter account that Columbia school children “were subjected to adult performers” at the breakfast. “

This is unacceptable,” Parson wrote.

A Missouri House committee held a hearing on legislation last week that would define drag performances as adult entertainment and bar attendance by anyone under 18.

And Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who sent letters to Columbia city officials and Yearwood accusing them of violating laws protecting children from sexually explicit material, followed that up with a call for school officials who knew a drag performance would occur to resign or be fired.

Bailey wrote that the “adult themed drag show endangered children, represented an indoctrination program that runs counter to the educational mission of our schools, and deprived parents of an ability to knowingly consent to their children’s attendance at this event.”

Rowden has not joined the calls for resignations. He met Thursday afternoon with District Superintendent Brian Yearwood and Board of Education President David Seamon.

“I think we are moving in a good direction,” Rowden said. “It is not my desire or my goal to make more out of this than it needs to be. It is about parents who feel they are not being communicated with.”

Seamon and Yearwood did not make any specific commitments to Rowden, district spokeswoman Michelle Baumstark said.

“Respectful open dialogue and discourse at all levels is a good thing for everyone,” she said.

In a letter to Parson, Yearwood said the district was reviewing its processes so it could “effectively share the advance information we do have with our students and families” about outside events with district participation.

Prior to Rowden’s tweet, Baumstark said, the district heard from two parents who were upset with the performance their child attended and another parent who objected but did not have a child attend. After, she said, the district received numerous complaints, many from outside the district and some from outside Missouri.

Rowden said he would not, for now, talk about the specifics of the discussion.

“There are action steps I asked them to take,” Rowden said. “I don’t want to give details until I see if they do it or not.”

It is the lack of detail in the communication with parents before the breakfast, and how the district addressed criticism afterward, that he wants to fix.

“People misunderstood what the issue was,” Rowden said. “This has very little to do with drag, to me.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

The magic in “magic mushrooms” may be the ability to defeat post-traumatic stress disorder, and a St. Charles County Republican lawmaker wants to make them legal in a treatment setting.

State Rep. Tony Lovasco of O’Fallon isn’t a hippie. He says he’s never taken psilocybin mushrooms or smoked a joint.

“I’ve never even smoked a cigarette,” he said in an interview with The Independent. “I’m a pretty boring guy.”

But he’s convinced that a growing body of research – and increasing interest from federal regulators – means Missouri should make treatment with the psychoactive mushrooms legal for people over 21.

In addition to PTSD, Lovasco’s bill would allow psilocybin to be used by people with treatment-resistant depression or who have a terminal illness. The administration of the drug would be by medical professionals in a clinic, hospice or nursing home.

“These are very sympathetic people that, you know, are not the kind of folks that you would look at that are drug addicts, or people that are looking to find some loophole in the system to get high,” he said. “These are people who want treatment, they want to get better.”

Psilocybin and other hallucinogens are legal in a handful of locations in the United States.

Beginning this month, psilocybin is legal in Oregon in a therapeutic setting for people over 21. In December, police in Portland raided a shop that was selling mushrooms under the name of ‘Shroom House’.

In November, Colorado voters approved a ballot measure removing the criminal penalties for possession of psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs. The New Hampshire Supreme Court in 2020 overturned a conviction on the grounds of the right to use and possess psilocybin for religious purposes.

Lovasco’s bill defines psilocybin as “natural medicine.” In a bill he filed last year, that term had a much broader meaning. It allowed mescaline, ibogaine, and dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, the psychoactive chemical in the ayahuasca brew NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers consumed on trips to Peru in 2020 and 2022.

Lovasco said he hopes limiting the proposal to psilocybin will make it more palatable to his colleagues.

“For the purposes of getting people treatment, now, psilocybin is the most studied, the most proven, the safest, I think of the substances that I’ve been made aware of,” Lovasco said. “I think it’s the starting point that a lot of people are most comfortable with.”

Federal agencies are exploring when and how psychoactive substances can help treatment of mental health and substance abuse. In June, the chief of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration wrote to U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean that FDA approval of psilocybin to treat depression was likely within the next two years.

Faced with high rates of substance abuse and mental health issues “we must explore the potential of psychedelic-assisted therapies to address this crisis,” Miriam E. Delphin-Rittmon, assistant secretary for mental health and substance use, wrote to Dean.

More than 1,000 people take their own lives in Missouri every year, putting the state about 25% above the national average for suicides. The suicide rate among veterans in Missouri is nearly double the state rate and one of the highest in the country.

An interim committee led by state Rep. Dave Griffith, R-Jefferson City, found that one of the biggest obstacles to preventing veteran suicides is the reluctance to seek treatment. The committee is recommending a beefed-up 988 suicide and crisis hotline, asking for an additional $27 million for the program.

During one hearing over the summer, Griffith said Tuesday to the House Health and Mental Health Committee, a the wife and daughter of a Springfield police officer and National Guard colonel testified about his suicide.

“They knew that he had issues, but they didn’t really want to bring it forward because he was afraid about losing his job,” Griffith said.

There are numerous studies showing the effectiveness of psilocybin to treat addiction and last summer, a study showed that it had promise in controlling alcoholism.

When he first decided to work on the bill, Lovasco said, his purpose was to make it a liberty issue. The state’s high suicide rate, and the elevated rate among veterans, makes it a life-and-death issue.

Two years or longer for FDA approval is a long time to wait, he said.

“The folks that are coming back from war, that are in desperate need of care, a lot of them aren’t going to be around in three years,” Lovasco said. “We’ve got, what 20-something veterans per day committing suicide? That’s a tremendous amount of loss while we wait for the government to do some paperwork.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

On the Missouri campus where Winston Churchill warned in 1946 that the Soviet Union was cementing its hold on Eastern Europe behind an “Iron Curtain,” Kasparov said it is again time to confront the evil of authoritarianism.

Churchill’s speech, “The Sinews of Peace,” helped inspire President Harry Truman’s policies of containment and the creation of NATO. Kasparov, a long-time critic of Putin, said a “grand alliance” of democracies can show dictators that freedom, and not profits, will define their future relations.

In 2015, Kasparov wrote a book titled “Winter is Coming” warning that the weak international response to Russia’s invasion of the Crimea would embolden Putin.

“Today there is a clear and present danger,” Kasparov said. “Winter is here. It is still unclear if the free world is willing and able to meet this challenge.”

Kasparov, who left Russia in 2013 as his political activity made life there more and more uncertain, made his remarks as he gave the Enid and R. Crosby Kemper Lecture during the 39th International Churchill Conference sponsored by Westminster. He delivered his half-hour talk in the restored St. Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, Church, bombed in London by the Nazis in World War II and moved to Fulton to house the National Churchill Museum.

Garry Kasparov delivers a speech on the consequences of Putin’s aggression towards Ukraine on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022 inside of the St. Mary Aldermanbury at the National Churchill Museum at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. Madeline Carter/Missouri Independent

As he began his speech, Kasparov recognized other dissidents who accompanied him and who are fighting for freedom in their home countries, including Syria, Venezuela and Iran.

In Iran, women have taken to the streets in protest of strict Islamic controls on their lives.

Russians should be in the streets protesting Putin, Kasparov said.

“If only Russian men were as brave as Iranian women,” he said.

Kasparov grew up under communism in the Soviet Union and became the youngest world chess champion in 1985 at the age of 22. He was the world’s highest rated player when he retired in 2005.

He became involved in politics after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

“It was a glorious day, a day of celebration and a huge step forward for global freedom,” Kasparov said. “The problem was the next day.”

Unlike Churchill and President Harry Truman, who brought Churchill to his home state for the 1946 speech, world leaders did not act to preserve the freedom won at the end of the Cold War, he said.

“In 1991, unlike in 1946, we had managers instead of leaders,” Kasparov said.

He’s been warning about the rise of Putin since 2001, Kasparov said. But Western Europe and the United States were more interested in accommodation, seeking profit in the revived Russian economy and ignoring the increasing repression.

In the 1930s, he noted, the appeasers of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in Britain and France were seeking peace at any cost.

“It was a brutal lesson to learn how high that cost was,” Kasparov said.

Now, he said, Ukraine is paying the price of appeasing Putin.

“The Ukrainians have reminded us what it looks like to fight for your land, your freedom, your family,” he said.

Speaking to reporters after the speech, Kasparov said U.S. administrations of both parties are to blame for not being tougher with Putin. But he said President Joe Biden’s administration is doing the right things to support Ukraine.

He is concerned that former President Donald Trump will win another term in 2024 and cut off support for Ukraine. Trump’s supporters in Congress vote against aid to Ukraine and his cheerleaders on Fox News, especially Tucker Carlson, are telling Trump supporters that Putin is justified in the war.

Garry Kasparov answered questions from the press outside of the St. Mary Aldermanbury at the National Churchill Museum at Westminster College in Fulton. Madeline Carter/Missouri Independent

“I couldn’t believe I would hear Russian propaganda talking points on American television,” Kasparov said. “I am still waiting for the true followers of Ronald Reagan to take their party back.”

Kasparov joins a distinguished list of international leaders who have used Westminster as their venue in honor of Churchill, including Reagan, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former Polish President Lech Walesa.

Kasparov made his homage to Churchill in the title of his speech, calling it “The New Sinews of Peace,” and made several references to the inspirational British war time leader.

Few people outside, and many inside, Britain held out hope for victory over Hitler after the defeat of France in 1940. But Churchill rallied his nation and held out until the Soviet Union and the United States were drawn into the war.

On June 4, 1940, in a speech to Parliament, Churchill promised that “we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be.”

In February, when Russia invaded Ukraine, many expected a quick defeat and the U.S. offered to fly President Volodymyr Zelensky to safety. Zelensky gave the modern equivalent of Churchill’s words, Kasparov said.

“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” Zelensky told the U.S., according to the embassy in Kyiv.

Churchill’s great-grandson Jack Churchill, who attended the speech, said he is “100%” in agreement with Kasparov on the need to confront Putin and for the democracies to band together as they did after the 1946 speech.

“I am very proud that my great-grandfather is an inspiration to the next generation of people fighting for freedom and democracy,” Churchill said.

It is vital that the U.S. not diminish its support for Ukraine, Kasparov said in his speech. The United States, the “arsenal of democracy” in World War II, has assumed that role for Ukraine.

“An America that does not defend liberty everywhere will see decay at home, a process that is already happening,” Kasparov said.

The weapons being provided in aid and the extra costs for consumers because the war has disrupted energy supplies is a bargain, Kasparov said.

“Who are we to complain about the price of gas,” he said, “when Ukranians are paying in blood for our sins?”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

The first two weeks of July saw an avalanche of spending in the Missouri Senate race, with new political action committees joining the fray and the two top-spending Democrats expanding the markets they are mining for votes.

Pre-primary reports to the Federal Election Commission, covering the period from July 1 to July 13, were due Thursday. Those reports, along with daily independent spending reports, show the total cost of the race is now almost $43 million.

The last round of reports, which covered the period through June 30, showed spending was just under $30 million as the month began.

Television advertising continues to consume the greatest share of spending. The Independent’s ad sale tracking shows spending on full-power stations at $16.4 million as of Friday, up about $1.7 million since last weekend.

One of the biggest non-television campaigns is being run by Americans for Prosperity Action, which has pumped $1.6 million into a get-out-the-vote campaign on behalf of Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is seeking the GOP nomination.

The biggest spender in the race continues to be Show Me Values PAC, which has used more than half of the $7.4 million it has spent on television ads attacking another GOP Senate contender, former Gov. Eric Greitens.

There are two PACs that have made ad buys promoting Greitens – Team PAC and Missouri First Action – spending about $2.2 million total, but neither has large sums remaining to match the opposition campaign.

Of the candidates – 21 on the Republican side and 11 in the Democratic primary – only three Republicans and two Democrats are buying broadcast television ads.

Schmitt, who is only buying time in St. Louis, is the only candidate who has reduced some of his purchases. Schmitt canceled $77,925 in ads and reduced other buys by $78,405, cutting his total purchase for the St. Louis market to $386,000.

An independent PAC, Save Missouri Values, has been buying time in support of Schmitt throughout the state, spending $2.9 million on TV time and $5.1 million overall.

Save Missouri Values, which like other PACs can accept unlimited donations, took in $443,000 in the first two weeks of the month and had nearly $2 million on hand as of July 13.

Schmitt’s campaign, which must abide by the $2,900 per person contribution limit like other candidate campaigns, raised $81,804 in the first two weeks of the month and spent $538,000. Schmitt’s campaign treasury had just over $1 million for the final push to the Aug. 2 primary.

U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler and state Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz are the other two GOP candidates purchasing air time. Hartzler has made a few recent purchases, bumping her total TV spending to $1.4 million, while Schatz, who put $2 million of his own money into his campaign, has not made a new ad buy since June.

Hartzler raised $83,415 in the first two weeks of the month, spent $443,000 and had $1.5 million in the bank. Schatz raised only $405 in the period covered by the reports, spent just over $10,000 and had $1.3 million on hand.

There have been no public polls of the Republican race since late June, when Trafalgar Group showed Hartzler, Schmitt and Greitens in a statistical dead heat.

On the Democratic side, Anheuser-Busch beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine is outspending rival Lucas Kunce by almost 5-1 on television ads. Fueled by $4 million from her personal fortune, Valentine has spent $1.9 million on TV ads.

Kunce, who has raised $4.7 million, the most of any candidate committee and mainly in small donations, has increased his ad spending to almost $400,000, but is also spending large sums on digital advertising and other media.

Valentine, who made her initial ad buys in St. Louis and Kansas City, has added the Springfield and Columbia markets, often buying ads at a station a day after Kunce.

The only PAC buying ads in the Democratic race is the MissourI Voices Action Fund, which was formed last fall. It has spent $75,000 in the St. Louis market targeting Valentine.

In the three hotly contested Congressional primaries, spending has also picked up in recent weeks and PAC spending is also ramping up.

In the 1st District, where incumbent U.S. Rep. Cori Bush is being challenged by state Sen. Steve Roberts in the Democratic primary, spending by the two campaigns has topped $2.2 million, the bulk of it from Bush.

But Roberts is outspending her on television, with $144,000 of ad purchases compared to $116,000 for Bush.

In the 4th District, where seven Republicans are vying for the nomination to replace Hartzler, PACs are stepping in with big spending as the primary approaches.

Mark Alford, a former Kansas City news anchor, has benefited from $271,000 in ads in the Kansas City market purchased by a PAC called American Dream Federal Action, which focuses on economic and national security issues.

Alford’s campaign also has the largest television ad purchase in the district.

The School Freedom Fund, a conservative group opposed to critical race theory and COVID-19 restrictions in schools, is attacking Alford and promoting state Sen. Rick Brattin with a $1.1 million ad buy in the Kansas City market.

In the 7th District of southwest Missouri, former state Sen. Jay Wasson is the biggest spender, at just over $1 million, and he has the biggest ad buy, almost $350,000. But Wasson is also the target of one of the biggest PAC ad campaigns in the district, a $659,000 by Club For Growth Action that tries to label him as “Romney Republican wrong for Congress.”

The only other Republican with a six-figure TV buy in the 7th District is state Sen. Eric Burlison, whose campaign has spent $192,000 on ads. Burlison, along with state Sen. Mike Moon, are targets of a PAC called Conservative Americans, which has spent $470,000 to attack them on state budget votes and saying they “sided with defund the police liberals.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

Former Gov. Eric Greitens will give testimony next week for the first time about allegations of spousal and child abuse made by his ex-wife in a child custody case.

During a brief hearing Friday morning, Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider ordered both Eric Greitens and his ex-wife, Sheena Greitens, to appear for depositions in a closed courtroom. Whether a transcript of their testimony will become public is uncertain.

At times in the hearing, Schneider said she was frustrated because it has been eight months since Sheena Greitens filed a request to move the case to Texas and four months since Sheena Greitens filed an affidavit detailing her abuse charges.

“We just need to get it done,” Schneider said.

The hearing Friday was originally scheduled for both parties to testify and for their attorneys to present any final arguments and exhibits for Schneider to consider. But she agreed to allow the case to be submitted through exhibits and deposition testimony when court-appointed advocate Liz Magee on Monday raised concerns about the impact of publicity on the children.

Sheena Greitens’ attorney Helen Wade tried to set a deposition for Eric Greitens for this week but was unable to do so because his attorney, Gary Stamper, had a scheduling conflict.

During the hearing Friday, Stamper questioned whether depositions are needed at all. The allegations have become fodder for a $2.4 million ad campaign by Show Me Values, which is trying to defeat Eric Greitens in the GOP Senate primary.

“Now you can hear it 20 times a day, depending on where you get your news,” Stamper said.

Wade, however, said a deposition is essential to her case and Eric Greitens is trying to avoid being put under oath.

“I understand that Mr. Greitens does not want to give a deposition prior to the primary,” Wade said. “I understand, but we want this case to be over with.”

Sheena Greitens, right, looks at attorney Helen Wade Friday during a hearing in Columbia n the child custody case with her ex-husband, former Gov. Eric Greitens (pool photo by Don Shrubshell/ Columbia Daily Tribune).

Many of the allegations Sheena Greitens has made against her ex-husband involve his actions in 2018, when he resigned as governor amid criminal and impeachment investigations. She fled their home in June 2018, 10 days after he resigned, taking their children to her parents home out of fear he would harm the family.

He never testified about any of the issues raised in the criminal charges or impeachment hearings.

Sheena Greitens has accused him of physical abuse of their children, knocking her down and taking her phone, and threatening suicide. Sheena Greitens also said in sworn statements that he accused her of working with political enemies to leak those charges in 2018.

Through court filings and in public statements, Eric Greitens has denied the allegations, proclaimed his devotion to his sons and accused Sheena Greitens of lying and making the charges public in a conspiracy with political enemies including Karl Rove and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Greitens is attempting a political comeback in a crowded Republican field and how the public views his time as governor and the new abuse allegations could determine his fate at the polls. He is in a virtual tie with his chief rivals, U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, in the latest public poll, conducted late last month.

Stamper argued that everything Schneider needed could be supplied with exhibits and an affidavit from Eric Greitens. And he was concerned that even those materials would be made public.

“I sincerely question the scope of the inquiry since there are no rules of evidence in a deposition and I’m genuinely concerned about release, disclosure, collateral use,” he said.

Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider listens to arguments Friday during Eric and Sheena Greitens’ child custody hearing in Columbia (pool photo by Don Shrubshell/Columbia Daily Tribune).

As she listened to the attorneys, Schneider’s exasperation grew at the delays.

“It was set for today,” she said. “I am ready to hear the evidence.”

And at one point, she asked if Sheena Greitens was ready to testify and indicated it should happen immediately.

As they discussed the scope of the deposition, Schneider cautioned the attorneys not to get too broad in their questions.

“I have a very limited issue I am dealing with,” Schneider said.

The issue before Schneider is whether jurisdiction over child custody decisions should be moved to Texas, where Sheena Greitens lives now, or remain in Boone County, where their divorce was filed in 2020. Sheena Greitens filed a case in Texas asking the courts there to take jurisdiction, but the judge deferred that decision to Schneider.

Scheduling the deposition was the last matter. When Stamper said Eric Greitens was not available Wednesday, Wade shot back that he has plenty of time for other activities.

“Well, he was available to go to Finland over the Fourth of July for five days,” she said.

After Wade argued that an affidavit would not do because she needs to be able to question Eric Greitens, Stamper said his client would comply.

“Eric is not afraid of a deposition,” Stamper said. “He is anxious to be heard if it is necessary.”

Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s lawsuit blaming China for COVID-19 was dismissed Friday when a federal judge ruled his court has no jurisdiction over foreign governments.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Limbaugh, in a 38-page ruling, wrote that a federal law setting rules for when a sovereign foreign entity could be sued in U.S. courts doesn’t allow any part of the lawsuit filed by Schmitt in April 2020 to continue.

“All in all, the court has no choice but to dismiss this novel complaint for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,” Limbaugh wrote.

Schmitt’s office filed a notice of appeal immediately after Limbaugh made his ruling.

When Schmitt filed the lawsuit, he claimed China was responsible for allowing the novel coronavirus to cause a global pandemic by covering up the initial infections in Wuhan.

“The Chinese government lied to the world about the danger and contagious nature of COVID-19, silenced whistleblowers, and did little to stop the spread of the disease,” Schmitt said in a news release when the lawsuit was filed. “They must be held accountable for their actions.”

It took more than a year to get any of the nine defendants served with notice of the lawsuit and $12,000 to translate the complaint into Chinese.

The lawsuit was the first of its kind in the U.S. attempting to hold the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party liable for COVID-19, Chris Nuelle, a spokesman for Schmitt’s office, said in an email statement to The Independent.

“The office disagrees with the court’s decision to let China off the hook, and today promptly filed a notice of appeal in this case to continue Attorney General Schmitt’s efforts to hold China accountable – we look forward to prevailing on appeal,” Nuelle wrote. “Our fight continues on to make China pay.”

Schmitt, attorney general since 2019, is a candidate in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate and has touted the lawsuit as an example of his willingness to confront Chinese power if elected.

Soon after it was filed, legal experts predicted that it would fail.

Chimène Keitner, an international law professor at the University of California at Hastings College of Law, told the Washington Post in April 2020 that she did not “see any portion of this lawsuit succeeding under the law as it currently stands.”

Along with the Chinese government and the Communist Party, the lawsuit named three national Chinese government agencies, the governments of Hubei Province and Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“After the complaint was filed, plaintiff attempted Hague Convention service, but China posted notice on its web site that it was refusing service under Article 13 of the Convention, which allows signatories to refuse service that would violate sovereignty,” Limbaugh wrote.

The Hague Convention is an international agreement that creates a central agency in each signatory nation for accepting service of court papers on behalf of its citizens and entities. By refusing service, the government agencies are immune from being held liable, Limbaugh wrote.

The only remaining question, Limbaugh wrote, was whether Schmitt was correct in describing the Communist Party, the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences as non-government entities.

Schmitt’s complaint alleges that the Communist Party controls everything in China. While it is technically a separate legal entity in China, it has effective total control, making it part of the government, Limbaugh wrote.

Limbaugh listed the allegations – failure to contain the virus within China, lying about

transmissibility and delaying, censoring, or withholding critical information and noted it is “not the type of conduct by which a private party engages in ‘trade and traffic or commerce’ and thus it is not commercial activity.”

Schmitt’s argument that the actions of the institute and the academy fit commercial activity exceptions in the law, is not convincing, Limbaugh wrote. The alleged conduct has to have a “direct effect” on commercial activity, he wrote.

“The court cannot conclude that the core misconduct had an immediate consequence – a ‘direct effect’ – in the United States,” Limbaugh wrote. “Many intervening events would necessarily have occurred before the mishandling and coverup resulted in COVID cases inside the United States.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

Sheena Greitens’ attorney, Helen Wade, on Tuesday filed a notice that she intended to take a sworn deposition from Eric Greitens, which would have been the first time he has testified under oath about anything since he was elected governor in 2016.

In response, Eric Greitens’ attorney, Gary Stamper, filed objections with the court, citing conflicts in two other cases for the July 13 deposition date. One conflict is a trial in a divorce case, before the same judge and with Wade as opposing counsel, scheduled to begin an hour before the deposition time.

Wade set the deposition time and date without an agreement from Stamper that he and his client would be available at that time, Stamper wrote in a filing with the court on Wednesday.

The Greitens case “ is no more important than any other case,” Stamper wrote in his objections.

Because of the conflict, “good cause exists” for an order to protect Stamper’s clients “from undue burden occasioned by Petitioner’s counsel personal preferences.”

Stamper declined to comment on the filing.

Wade could not be reached for comment on Stamper’s objections.

The case is set for a July 15 trial before Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider. Wade has said she intends to put Eric Greitens on the witness stand.

Sheena Greitens has made two sworn statements to the court alleging her ex-husband engaged in physical and psychological abuse in 2018 and that she had photos and other documents to prove it.

In response, Greitens has accused his former wife of lying and being manipulated by his Republican enemies who want to defeat him in the Aug. 2 Senate primary.

In June, Sheena Greitens gave an interview to The Independent and provided emails showing her concerns about actual and threatened violence during 2018, before and immediately after allegations of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations forced his resignation as governor.

Sheena Greitens said she agreed to the interview, and to release the emails, because of threats she received after his Senate campaign published a video depicting him toting a gun and hunting his political opponents.

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

It was 10 days since her husband, Eric Greitens, resigned as governor and Sheena Greitens was terrified.

In that period, she wrote to a family lawyer in a June 14, 2018, email, Eric Greitens had been violent twice to one of his sons, lost his temper repeatedly and refused to admit his actions were a source of the family’s problems.

He could go from calm to enraged “in a flash,” she wrote.

An example was his reaction to an email to their marriage counselor.

“I received an irate call from Eric, who suggested I had deliberately and maliciously sent accusations of child abuse to a) the St. Louis Circuit Attorney, b)special prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, and c)the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and that I was trying to stab him in the back, that I was ‘hateful and disgusting,’ nasty,’ ‘vicious,’ and a ‘lying bitch,’” she wrote. “This seemed to me to verge onto open paranoia.”

So she put the kids in the car, she said in an interview with The Independent, drove to the airport in St. Louis and called her husband to tell him she was going to visit her parents.

She says she fled because she didn’t know if he had access to a firearm and feared he would kill the family if he followed through on his threats to kill himself.

“That became a concern in June of 2018,” Sheena Greitens said. “That was why I left with the children. His anger was now being directed at me and the children and I could not guarantee their safety.”

That email, along with others from those weeks following Eric Greitens’ departure from office, were provided to The Independent this week by Sheena Greitens and her attorney.

She said there are two reasons she provided the emails and agreed break her silence with an interview about her marriage.

One is his repeated accusations by her ex-husband that she is lying in their ongoing child custody case in Boone County.

The other is that the fear she felt in those days was rekindled by the “RINO Hunt” video, posted to her ex-husband’s Senate campaign social media pages Monday depicting a SWAT-style raid.

In March, she filed an affidavit accusing Eric Greitens of child and spousal abuse in 2018 and 2019, and stating that in the months before his resignation, he became so unstable that his access to firearms had to be limited. Two weeks later, she filed a second sworn statement that she had emails and photos to back up her affidavit.

“The claim that this is the first time the concerns are being raised is just dishonest,” she said in the interview. “I have oriented my life around trying to address these concerns since 2018.”

Eric Greitens on Tuesday dismissed criticism of the video as “faux outrage” and added that “every normal person around the state of Missouri saw that is clearly a metaphor.”

Sheena Greitens said she received an email with graphically violent threats within hours after it appeared.

“All it takes is one abnormal person who takes this seriously to be a threat,” she said.

In a statement issued through Eric Greitens’ campaign, his attorney, Gary Stamper, said with the new material, Sheena Greitens is accusing mandatory reporters of child abuse of failing to follow the law.

“The mediator and therapist are both exceptional professionals who worked diligently to find an amicable solution in the best interest of the kids,” Stamper said. “It’s surprising and sad that Governor Greitens’ ex wife would accuse them of criminal activity.”

The statement notes that Eric Greitens has custody of his sons this summer and to follow the parenting plan agreed to in 2020 through May 2023. That plan calls for the boys to spend “every major holiday” and “most of their free time” while school is out with their father.

“We believe that the ex-wife’s continued and most recent efforts to drag their children into the press are not in their best interests,” Stamper said.

In an April 8 filing, Stamper wrote that Sheena Greitens had lied to the court, either in the affidavit by claiming the abuse allegations were raised with a court-appointed mediator or when she signed the divorce agreement in 2020 stating the couple had “disclosed all material facts” for determining a parenting plan.

“In fact, mother did not share this allegation of abuse with the mediator,” Stamper wrote. “If mother had reported abuse or suspected abuse to a mediator, said mediator was legally bound to report it. No such report was made.”

The court case

On Thursday, some of those fears were aired in a brief hearing before Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider in Columbia. Sheena Greitens’ attorney, Helen Wade, asked for a statement from Eric Greitens that he did not mean his supporters should hunt his family.

“I am disappointed that Eric isn’t here today because we were hoping that we would be able to get him to make a statement clearly denouncing the use of any sort of violence against my client,” Wade said

The issue before Schneider is whether jurisdiction over child custody decisions should be moved to Texas, where Sheena Greitens lives now, or remain in Boone County, where their divorce was filed in 2020.

The divorce came after a final separation in August 2018, Sheena Greitens said.

“I told the professionals who were involved, and when that didn’t address my concerns, in August 2018 I did the only other thing I knew to do, and started applying for jobs that would let the kids and I leave the state,” she said.

The case is coming to a head, with a July 15 trial date, while Eric Greitens is looking to make a political comeback in the Republican primary for the Senate seat held by Roy Blunt, who is retiring.

He has led most polls against a field that also includes Attorney General Eric Schmitt, U.S. Reps. Vicky Hartzler and Billy Long, state Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey and 15 other lesser-known candidates.

The case had received little public attention since the Greitens divorced. That changed when Sheena Greitens filed the affidavit with abuse allegations.

Eric Greitens responded with a Facebook video where he said the accusations were intended to distract the public from news one of the investigators of the 2018 criminal charges pleaded guilty to evidence tampering.

“In this very week, RINOS come out with a brand new set of allegations against me, which they claim are from four years ago,” he said.

And on April 5, Tim Parlatore, a Washington attorney hired by Eric Greitens, claimed his client had the documents and photos to prove Sheena Greitens lied in her sworn statements about the abuse.

“Sheena Greitens lied when she said ‘they were reported to multiple lawyers, therapists, and our mediator, in 2018 and afterward,’” Parlatore said in a statement issued April 5.

The documents she provided The Independent show that was wrong, she said.

“Eric knows full well that these concerns were reported, because he was copied on my emails and he sat in these discussions,” Sheena Greitens said. “This claim, that I never reported what happened, is something he’s knowingly misrepresented from the start.”

The emails, she said, prove that.

In the statement on behalf of Eric Greitens, Stamper said that during 2020, “the judge reviewed the ex-wife’s allegations, and found that they provided no basis for action, especially in light of records from the doctor, dentist, mediator, and therapist, all of which showed these allegations to be false.”

He said “overwhelming documentary evidence has been assembled corroborating one objective conclusion: Sheena Greitens manufactured and distributed lies to the press from Washington D.C.”

The emails

The documents provided to The Independent describe behavior that Sheena Greitens placed in several broad categories – violent and manipulative behavior towards her and their children; a “pattern of sucide threats and firearm confiscation”; and his “resistance to therapy/psychological help.”

“So let me be really, really clear: I am scared at Eric’s recent behavior,” Sheena Greitens wrote in her June 7 email to a marriage counselor. “I am especially scared because I do not hear any acknowledgement from Eric that this behavior on his part has produced a negative emotional impact, or understanding of what that might be.”

In that first week after resignation, Eric Greitens was already planning his political resurrection, Sheena Greitens said in an interview, while she wanted to get out of the public eye, where she was never comfortable.

Sheena Greiens holds a doctorate from Harvard University and is a scholar in Asian, and especially Korean, affairs. In 2018 she was employed on the faculty of the University of Missouri and decided to seek another post.

“He blamed me for his resignation,” she said. “I had serious safety concerns. And I thought that, given the absolute public wreckage of our family life, that it would be better for the boys to grow up in a place where they weren’t viewed through the prism of their father’s scandals.

Eric Greitens began carrying a gun in January 2018, she wrote in the June 14 email, after KMOV first reported his 2015 sexual relationship with a hairdresser in a story reporting he had attempted to blackmail her with a nude photograph.

He had revealed the affair in late 2015, Sheena Greitens wrote.

That was also the first time he spoke about suicide.

He brought it up again after the KMOV story, she wrote, saying that he said “it would look like an accident to the kids and everyone.”

“He told me in January 2018, that he had taken the photo in question, but told me that there would be legal consequences for me if I ever disclosed that to anybody,” she said in the interview.

His behavior caused concerns among his staff in the governor’s office, she wrote, and in February, after he was indicted, his general counsel Lucinda Luetkemeyer, “requested that the governor’s security detail remove any access to firearms that he might have via their vehicles, because she was concerned about his stability in the aftermath of the indictment.”

In late May, she wrote, Greg Favre, deputy director of the Department of Public Safety and a close friend of Eric Greitens, was visiting them.

“I happened to go into the hall and see him removing the bag that Eric’s firearm was in, which Favre said he thought was best ‘out of an abundance of caution,’” she wrote.

Eric Greitens went to meet Greg Favre for a workout on June 10. She asked Farve in a text if he had returned the firearm but got no response.

Neither Luetkemeyer nor Favre could be reached for comment.

Phone records

Along with providing the 2018 emails, Sheena Greitens allowed Wade to show The Independent the phone records produced in response to a subpoena from Eric Greitens’ attorney, Gary Stamper.

Stamper initially sought records for phones owned by Karl Rove, former Greitens aide Austen Chambers, Sheena Greitens sister and one other unidentified person. When the subpoenas were filed, a Washington D.C. attorney, Tim Parlatore, held a news conference where he said the records would “show what happened to bring us to this point.”

The request for Rove’s records was dropped before it could be argued in court and Schneider granted only the subpoena for Sheena Greitens’ phone records for the period Feb. 1 to March 30. There are several February phone calls to Chambers and to her sister, and calls after the release of the March affidavit to her family.

Sheena Greitens is a frequent traveler to Washington for her post with the American Enterprise Institute.

“That communication is not about Eric,” Sheena Greitens said. “We would all really like to move on from the chaos that Eric caused in our family.”

The phone records also show calls with a handful of journalists and opinion writers. She was in Washington the week that President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping had a virtual meeting. The calls all related to her scholarship, Sheena Greitens said.

One of the calls was an appearance on St. Louis Public Radio.

The accusations of a conspiracy are another way to manipulate and demean her, she said.

“One of the things that’s frustrating about this,” Sheena Greitens said, “is that Eric has taken normal communications with my family and normal things like me going to my office in Washington, D.C., to do my job and tried to spin them into something sinister.”

This article has been updated with a statement from Eric Greitens’ attorney.

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

It was 10 days since her husband, Eric Greitens, resigned as governor and Sheena Greitens was terrified.

In that period, she wrote to a family lawyer in a June 14, 2018, email, Eric Greitens had been violent twice to one of his sons, lost his temper repeatedly and refused to admit his actions were a source of the family’s problems.

He could go from calm to enraged “in a flash,” she wrote.

An example was his reaction to an email to their marriage counselor.

“I received an irate call from Eric, who suggested I had deliberately and maliciously sent accusations of child abuse to a) the St. Louis Circuit Attorney, b)special prosecutor Jean Peters Baker, and c)the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and that I was trying to stab him in the back, that I was ‘hateful and disgusting,’ nasty,’ ‘vicious,’ and a ‘lying bitch,’” she wrote. “This seemed to me to verge onto open paranoia.”

So she put the kids in the car, she said in an interview with The Independent, drove to the airport in St. Louis and called her husband to tell him she was going to visit her parents.

She says she fled because she didn’t know if he had access to a firearm and feared he would kill the family if he followed through on his threats to kill himself.

“That became a concern in June of 2018,” Sheena Greitens said. “That was why I left with the children. His anger was now being directed at me and the children and I could not guarantee their safety.”

That email, along with others from those weeks following Eric Greitens’ departure from office, were provided to The Independent this week by Sheena Greitens and her attorney.

She said there are two reasons she provided the emails and agreed to break her silence with an interview about her marriage.

One is his repeated accusations by her ex-husband that she is lying in their ongoing child custody case in Boone County.

The other is that the fear she felt in those days was rekindled by the “RINO Hunt” video, posted to her ex-husband’s Senate campaign social media pages Monday depicting a SWAT-style raid.

In March, she filed an affidavit accusing Eric Greitens of child and spousal abuse in 2018 and 2019, and stating that in the months before his resignation, he became so unstable that his access to firearms had to be limited. Two weeks later, she filed a second sworn statement that she had emails and photos to back up her affidavit.

“The claim that this is the first time the concerns are being raised is just dishonest,” she said in the interview. “I have oriented my life around trying to address these concerns since 2018.”

Eric Greitens on Tuesday dismissed criticism of the video as “faux outrage” and added that “every normal person around the state of Missouri saw that is clearly a metaphor.”

Sheena Greitens said she received an email with graphically violent threats within hours after it appeared.

“All it takes is one abnormal person who takes this seriously to be a threat,” she said.

In a statement issued through Eric Greitens’ campaign, his attorney, Gary Stamper, said with the new material, Sheena Greitens is accusing mandatory reporters of child abuse of failing to follow the law.

“The mediator and therapist are both exceptional professionals who worked diligently to find an amicable solution in the best interest of the kids,” Stamper said. “It’s surprising and sad that Governor Greitens’ ex wife would accuse them of criminal activity.”

The statement notes that Eric Greitens has custody of his sons this summer and is required to follow the parenting plan agreed to in 2020 through May 2023. That plan calls for the boys to spend “every major holiday” and “most of their free time” while school is out with their father.

“We believe that the ex-wife’s continued and most recent efforts to drag their children into the press are not in their best interests,” Stamper said.

In an April 8 filing, Stamper wrote that Sheena Greitens had lied to the court, either in the affidavit by claiming the abuse allegations were raised with a court-appointed mediator or when she signed the divorce agreement in 2020 stating the couple had “disclosed all material facts” for determining a parenting plan.

“In fact, mother did not share this allegation of abuse with the mediator,” Stamper wrote. “If mother had reported abuse or suspected abuse to a mediator, said mediator was legally bound to report it. No such report was made.”

The court case

On Thursday, some of those fears were aired in a brief hearing before Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider in Columbia. Sheena Greitens’ attorney, Helen Wade, asked for a statement from Eric Greitens that he did not mean his supporters should hunt his family.

“I am disappointed that Eric isn’t here today because we were hoping that we would be able to get him to make a statement clearly denouncing the use of any sort of violence against my client,” Wade said

The issue before Schneider is whether jurisdiction over child custody decisions should be moved to Texas, where Sheena Greitens lives now, or remain in Boone County, where their divorce was filed in 2020.

The divorce came after a final separation in August 2018, Sheena Greitens said.

“I told the professionals who were involved, and when that didn’t address my concerns, in August 2018 I did the only other thing I knew to do, and started applying for jobs that would let the kids and I leave the state,” she said.

The case is coming to a head, with a July 15 trial date, while Eric Greitens is looking to make a political comeback in the Republican primary for the Senate seat held by Roy Blunt, who is retiring.

He has led most polls against a field that also includes Attorney General Eric Schmitt, U.S. Reps. Vicky Hartzler and Billy Long, state Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz, St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey and 15 other lesser-known candidates.

The case had received little public attention since the Greitens divorced. That changed when Sheena Greitens filed the affidavit with abuse allegations.

Eric Greitens responded with a Facebook video where he said the accusations were intended to distract the public from news one of the investigators of the 2018 criminal charges pleaded guilty to evidence tampering.

“In this very week, RINOS come out with a brand new set of allegations against me, which they claim are from four years ago,” he said.

And on April 5, Tim Parlatore, a Washington attorney hired by Eric Greitens, claimed his client had the documents and photos to prove Sheena Greitens lied in her sworn statements about the abuse.

“Sheena Greitens lied when she said ‘they were reported to multiple lawyers, therapists, and our mediator, in 2018 and afterward,’” Parlatore said in a statement issued April 5.

The documents she provided The Independent show that was wrong, she said.

“Eric knows full well that these concerns were reported, because he was copied on my emails and he sat in these discussions,” Sheena Greitens said. “This claim, that I never reported what happened, is something he’s knowingly misrepresented from the start.”

The emails, she said, prove that.

In the statement on behalf of Eric Greitens, Stamper said that during 2020, “the judge reviewed the ex-wife’s allegations, and found that they provided no basis for action, especially in light of records from the doctor, dentist, mediator, and therapist, all of which showed these allegations to be false.”

He said “overwhelming documentary evidence has been assembled corroborating one objective conclusion: Sheena Greitens manufactured and distributed lies to the press from Washington D.C.”

The emails

The documents provided to The Independent describe behavior that Sheena Greitens placed in several broad categories – violent and manipulative behavior towards her and their children; a “pattern of suicide threats and firearm confiscation”; and his “resistance to therapy/psychological help.”

“So let me be really, really clear: I am scared at Eric’s recent behavior,” Sheena Greitens wrote in her June 7 email to a marriage counselor. “I am especially scared because I do not hear any acknowledgement from Eric that this behavior on his part has produced a negative emotional impact, or understanding of what that might be.”

In that first week after resignation, Eric Greitens was already planning his political resurrection, Sheena Greitens said in an interview, while she wanted to get out of the public eye, where she was never comfortable.

Sheena Greiens holds a doctorate from Harvard University and is a scholar in Asian, and especially Korean, affairs. In 2018 she was employed on the faculty of the University of Missouri and decided to seek another post.

“He blamed me for his resignation,” she said. “I had serious safety concerns. And I thought that, given the absolute public wreckage of our family life, that it would be better for the boys to grow up in a place where they weren’t viewed through the prism of their father’s scandals.

Eric Greitens began carrying a gun in January 2018, she wrote in the June 14 email, after KMOV first reported his 2015 sexual relationship with a hairdresser in a story reporting he had attempted to blackmail her with a nude photograph.

He had revealed the affair in late 2015, Sheena Greitens wrote.

That was also the first time he spoke about suicide.

He brought it up again after the KMOV story, she wrote, saying that he said “it would look like an accident to the kids and everyone.”

“He told me in January 2018, that he had taken the photo in question, but told me that there would be legal consequences for me if I ever disclosed that to anybody,” she said in the interview.

His behavior caused concerns among his staff in the governor’s office, she wrote, and in February, after he was indicted, his general counsel Lucinda Luetkemeyer, “requested that the governor’s security detail remove any access to firearms that he might have via their vehicles, because she was concerned about his stability in the aftermath of the indictment.”

In late May, she wrote, Greg Favre, deputy director of the Department of Public Safety and a close friend of Eric Greitens, was visiting them.

“I happened to go into the hall and see him removing the bag that Eric’s firearm was in, which Favre said he thought was best ‘out of an abundance of caution,’” she wrote.

Eric Greitens went to meet Greg Favre for a workout on June 10. She asked Farve in a text if he had returned the firearm but got no response.

Neither Luetkemeyer nor Favre could be reached for comment.

Phone records

Along with providing the 2018 emails, Sheena Greitens allowed Wade to show The Independent the phone records produced in response to a subpoena from Eric Greitens’ attorney, Gary Stamper.

Stamper initially sought records for phones owned by Karl Rove, former Greitens aide Austen Chambers, Sheena Greitens sister and one other unidentified person. When the subpoenas were filed, a Washington D.C. attorney, Tim Parlatore, held a news conference where he said the records would “show what happened to bring us to this point.”

The request for Rove’s records was dropped before it could be argued in court and Schneider granted only the subpoena for Sheena Greitens’ phone records for the period Feb. 1 to March 30. There are several February phone calls to Chambers and to her sister, and calls after the release of the March affidavit to her family.

Sheena Greitens is a frequent traveler to Washington for her post with the American Enterprise Institute.

“That communication is not about Eric,” Sheena Greitens said. “We would all really like to move on from the chaos that Eric caused in our family.”

The phone records also show calls with a handful of journalists and opinion writers. She was in Washington the week that President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping had a virtual meeting. The calls all related to her scholarship, Sheena Greitens said.

One of the calls was an appearance on St. Louis Public Radio.

The accusations of a conspiracy are another way to manipulate and demean her, she said.

“One of the things that’s frustrating about this,” Sheena Greitens said, “is that Eric has taken normal communications with my family and normal things like me going to my office in Washington, D.C., to do my job and tried to spin them into something sinister.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

Sheena Greitens’ attorney thinks the governor’s office may have proof to bolster claims that her client’s ex-husband, Eric Greitens, was prone to violence.

As part of the couple’s child custody battle in Boone County court, attorney Helen Wade filed a records request with the governor’s office asking for documents regarding Eric Greitens losing access to firearms, or any that describe behavior by the former governor characterized as criminal, abusive or threatening.

According to the response she received from the governor’s office, her request generated nearly 13,000 records, which she is scheduled to receive Aug. 3 — the day after voters decide whether Eric Greitens should be the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate.

Many, if not most, of those records could be unrelated to Eric Greitens’ behavior during his short tenure as governor before resigning from office in June 2018 to settle a felony charge and avoid impeachment.

But Wade believes it is likely there are records detailing the reactions of staff and other observers to events described by Sheena Greitens in an affidavit – violence and intimidation against her and troubling actions in other circumstances.

“What I am looking for is evidence that would be admissible in a courtroom that would support Sheena’s position,” Wade said. “These are the behaviors that are in dispute. It appears that there are a number of records that fit that description.”

The Independent obtained Wade’s request and the response through a Sunshine Law request to Gov. Mike Parson’s office. Wade said she has paid the $1,304 estimated cost for the records search.

Parson’s office did not respond to a request to clarify how it determined when the records would be available.

“The fact that they are not available until the 3rd of August is problematic because I had hoped to have the case finished by then,” Wade said Tuesday in an interview with The Independent. “Obviously it is the day after the primary and many conclusions could be drawn from that. I am hoping it is not relevant and it is just a coincidence.”

In her request, Wade asked for:

• Records “regarding or referencing Eric Greitens access to firearms, removal or limitation on Eric Greitens access to firearms, or assignment of firearms to Eric Greitens from October 1 2016 through June 15 2018; and
• Records and/or communications “from Oct. 1, 2016 forwards regarding or referencing conduct by Eric Greitens which was characterized as actually or potentially concerning, criminal, abusive, threatening, creating or tending to create a liability or potential liability for the state of Missouri, inappropriate under then existing laws or policies, indicative of instability of mind or emotions, indicative of the exercise of questionable judgment or potential for self-harm or harm to others.”

“We have found 12,954 records that may be responsive to your request,” Dakota Julian, Parson’s custodian of records, wrote in the response. “Some may be closed or confidential.”

Eric Greitens’ campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the records being sought, the volume found so far or the date of the estimated delivery of the records. Attorney Gary Stamper, who represents Eric Greitens, declined to comment.

Greitens sees the primary as his chance at political redemption after being forced out of the governor’s office. He resisted calls to quit the campaign after Sheena Greitens’ affidavit reignited fears Republicans will lose the seat if he is nominated.

Greitens and 20 other Republicans are competing in the Aug. 2 primary for the GOP nomination to replace U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, who is retiring after almost 50 years in public life. His chief rivals are U.S. Reps. Vicky Hartzler of Harrisonville and Billy Long of Springfield, St. Louis attorney Mark McCloskey, state Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz of Franklin County and Attorney General Eric Schmitt.

The winner will face the candidate nominated from the 11-person field of Democrats.

The Greitens divorced in 2020. Litigation resumed in 2021 when Sheena Greitens filed to move oversight of the child custody agreement from Boone County to Texas, where she lived after taking a post on the faculty of the University of Texas.

The renewed litigation did not generate much public attention until March, when Sheena Greitens filed an affidavit accusing her ex-husband of spousal and child abuse in 2018 and 2019.

The charges in Sheena Greitens’ affidavit were set to be aired in a hearing May 27, but it was canceled after the couple entered mediation. If they cannot resolve their differences, Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider set a trial for July 15.

During the period covered by Wade’s Sunshine request, Sheena Greitens alleged Eric Greitens knocked her down and confiscated her cell phone, wallet and keys during an argument so she would be “unable to call for help or extricate myself and our children from our home.”

And in the spring and early summer of 2018, Sheena Greitens said, her ex-husband repeatedly threatened to commit suicide unless she showed “specific public political support” for him. As a result, she and others were so concerned they limited his access to firearms on at least three occasions that year.

In responses to the court, Eric Greitens’ attorney Gary Stamper has denied the abuse occurred and sought phone records in an effort to show she worked with his political enemies to damage his campaign. Grietens, in press statements and on social media, has blamed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former presidential adviser Karl Rove of conspiring against him.

Along with the nearly 13,000 potentially responsive records, the process of the governor’s office could turn up many more. The standard language in each response states that additional records may turn up after staff is asked to check if they are in possession of responsive physical documents or text messages and requests are forwarded to other state departments.

One such document has already been filed as an exhibit in the court case to back up the statements Sheena Greitens made in her affidavit. Then-state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed asked for additional security in the Capitol Building in a letter sent April 18, 2018, to Drew Juden, then director of the Department of Public Safety, and copied to the Capitol Police Department.

Nasheed reported “unconfirmed rumors circulating the Capitol involving an incident at the Greitens’ Innsbrook home involving troubling behavior, the presence of firearms and a member of the Governor’s cabinet.”

In response, Juden wrote that he had asked the Warren County Sheriff’s Department, where the home is located, and the Missouri State Highway Patrol, which provides protection for governors, about the alleged incidents. They reported they had no information “similar to that which you provided,” Juden wrote.

Sunshine Law experts told The Independent that while the number is large, the search terms are broad enough to include comments received by the governor’s office about Greitens’ public behavior.

He offended many by using high-caliber and automatic firearms in his campaign commercials, noted David Roland, director of litigation for the libertarian Freedom Center of Missouri.

“It is possible that citizens were sending in emails criticizing that or making fun of him for that,” he said.

When he took office, the former governor angered Second Amendment advocates by barring people from carrying concealed weapons into the Capitol Building. The policy was reversed a month later. And he enraged several lawmakers around the same time in 2017 with behavior described as intimidating and insulting.

The potentially responsive records are also large just because of the number of search terms and the broad scope of the request, said Jean Maneke, who advises the Missouri Press Association on Sunshine law.

“I am not a bit surprised,” Maneke said, “that there are potentially 13,000 records.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

Phone records show Sheena Greitens didn’t talk to Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell “or any person working for these men” in the weeks before she made explosive allegations of child and spousal abuse against Eric Greitens, her attorney said Tuesday.

Sheena Greitens’ call logs and text messages for the period Feb. 1 through March 22 were subpoenaed by her ex-husband in an effort to show she lied about the abuse to undermine his campaign for U.S. Senate.

Helen Wade, Sheena Greitens’ attorney, wrote in a statement to The Independent that the subpoenaed records were turned over last week. The information contained, Wade wrote, contradict Eric Greitens’ assertions that his ex-wife conspired with his political enemies to lie in an affidavit made public on March 21.

“The records subpoenaed by Eric Greitens refute his repeated public statements accusing Dr. Sheena Greitens of coordinating with political operatives in the preparation and filing of her affidavit, and of leaking that affidavit to the press,” Wade wrote.

The affidavit, and the subpoena, are part of the ongoing child custody dispute between the Greitens, who were divorced in 2020. They are due to be in court Friday in Columbia, when Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider will hear arguments over whether the case should be handled in Texas courts, where Sheena Greitens now lives, or remain in Boone County.

Eric Greitens resigned the Missouri governor’s office in June 2018. He launched a campaign for Missouri’s open U.S. Senate seat last year.

Eric Greitens’ attorney Gary Stamper, wrote in an email that his review has uncovered contacts that Wade and Sheena Greitens will have to justify in court.

“I have repeatedly said that ‘a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes,’” Stamper wrote. “The denial proffered by Dr. Greitens’ attorney ignores one, or more, easily identifiable calls.”

Stamper declined to give details on the calls he has identified but said he would question Sheena Greitens about them if she takes the stand Friday.

The Associated Press published the first story about the March 21 affidavit shortly after it showed up on the updated docket of the case in the online court filing system known as Casenet.

“Contrary to what has been repeatedly asserted by Eric Greitens, his attorneys and his political campaign, the records show absolutely no contact between Dr. Sheena Greitens and Karl Rove, Mitch McConnell, or any person working for these men,” Wade said in her email to The Independent. “These records further reflect no contact between Dr. Sheena Greitens and the Associated Press, which rebuts the allegations made by Mr. Greitens, his attorneys and his political campaign that she provided her affidavit to the AP prior to it becoming available to the public on March 21, 2022 at 9:26 a.m.”

The immediate issue Friday is whether Schneider will send the case to Texas. If either Sheena Greitens or Eric Greitens testify, it will be the first time they have been questioned about the allegations and it would be the first time Eric Greitens has made any statement under oath about them.

All of Sheena Greitens’ accusations have been made in sworn statements. She could face perjury charges if she has lied.

Sheena Greitens has been seeking to move the case since last year, after Eric Greitens launched the Senate campaign intended to be his political comeback.

The case is in Boone County Circuit Court because Sheena Greitens lived in Columbia at the time she filed for divorce because she was on the faculty of the University of Missouri. A scholar who specializes in studying North Korea, she is now an associate professor at the University of Texas’ LBJ School of Public Affairs.

Eric Greitens was elected governor in 2016 and resigned June 1, 2018, amid allegations of violent sexual misconduct and an investigation of his campaign finances.

A Missouri House committee was considering whether to recommend his impeachment. Greitens agreed to resign as part of a plea deal with the St. Louis prosecutor to dismiss a felony charge stemming from allegations he stole from a veterans charity.

In the affidavit filed March 21, Sheena Greitens alleged Eric Greitens knocked her down and confiscated her cell phone, wallet and keys during a 2018 argument so she would be “unable to call for help or extricate myself and our children from our home.”

As his political problems increased in the first half of 2018, Sheena Greitens said in the affidavit, her ex-husband repeatedly threatened to commit suicide unless she showed “specific public political support” for him. As a result, she and others were so concerned they limited his access to firearms on at least three occasions that year.

“I started sleeping in my children’s room simply to try to keep them safe,” Sheena Greitens said in the affidavit.

In November 2019, the affidavit states, one of their sons came home from a visit with Eric Greitens with a swollen face, bleeding gums and loose tooth and said his father had hit him. The affidavit states Greitens said it was an accident while roughhousing. The tooth later had to be surgically removed.

In statements to the media, on social media accounts and in campaign fundraising appeals, Eric Greitens accused his wife of conspiring with his political enemies.

“I want to tell you directly, Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell,” Greitens said in a video tweeted March 25. “Hear me now. You are disgusting cowards. And we are coming for you.”

And friendly conservative sites published stories crowing about Greitens’ victory over his foes when Schneider agreed to allow the subpoena for Sheena Greitens phone records. “BUSTED: Judge Gives Eric Greitens Access to Ex-Wife’s Phone Records Following RINO Smear Job,” a headline on Big League Politics declared.

While she allowed Stamper access to Sheena Greitens’ telephone records, Schneider denied subpoenas for phones owned by Catherine Linkul, who is Sheena Greitens’ sister, and Austin Chambers, manager of Greitens 2016 campaign. A request for a subpoena of Karl Rove’s telephone records was dropped before Schneider could rule.

The path to McConnell, according to Greitens supporters, is Linkul, who works for Pathway Public Affairs, a Republican consulting firm led by Phil Cox, a board member of a PAC linked to McConnell.

In the statement, Wade said the records showed regular contact with her sister and Chambers, who is a personal friend. But that doesn’t equal a conspiracy, Wade said.

“Contrary to the statements of Mr. Greitens’ attorneys and campaign,” Wade wrote, “the records of Dr. Greitens’ communications are not indicative of any sort of collaboration with her sister, with Mr. Chambers, or with any other person.”

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens will get to look at his ex-wife’s telephone records from the days before she filed explosive allegations of child and spousal abuse against the Republican Senate candidate.

In an order dated April 28, Associate Circuit Judge Leslie Schneider overruled Sheena Greitens’ motion to quash subpoenas for her phone logs and text messages. In the same order, Schneider denied Eric Greitens’ request for phone records for his former campaign manager, Austin Chambers, and Sheena Greitens’ sister, Catherine Linkul.

The order was posted Thursday on Casenet, the state’s online court record system, and did not include any information about Schneider’s reasoning for the decision. Schneider ruled two days after hearing oral arguments from Gary Stamper, Eric Greitens’ attorney; Helen Wade, Sheena Greitens’ attorney; Kurt Schaefer, attorney for Chambers; and David Niemeier, attorney for Linkul.

Eric Greitens is seeking phone records in an effort to prove Sheena Greitens conspired with his political enemies, including former presidential adviser Karl Rove and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to write the affidavit that contains the abuse allegations and to make sure they were well-publicized.

In sworn statements to the court, Sheena Greitens has said she did not discuss the affidavit with anyone except Wade prior to the date it was filed.

Stamper argued to Schneider that the phone records were the fastest way to determine whether Sheena Greitens worked with political opponents to deliver the March 21 affidavit to the Associated Press minutes after it was filed.

“I am interested in knowing who was talking to who at or near the time of the leak in an effort to confirm a sad suspicion,” Stamper said.

Wade argued that the phone records have nothing to do with the underlying issue.

“The conspiracy theory that Mr. Greitens has concocted is just that – it’s not real,” Wade said.

Sheena Greitens and Eric Greitens were divorced in 2020, two years after he resigned as governor as part of a deal to dismiss criminal charges. She is trying to move jurisdiction of their child custody arrangements to Texas, where she is on the faculty of the University of Texas, from Boone County, where she lived while working on the faculty of the University of Missouri.

Eric Greitens is attempting a political comeback in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate.

He has consistently led or been in a statistical tie with other major candidates in the 21-person contest. No public poll has been conducted since the week after Sheena Greitens’ affidavit became public on March 21.

The subpoenas, which sought information directly from Verizon and AT&T, sought the call logs and text messages for Sheena Greitens, Chambers, Linkul, Rove and one other unidentified person for the period Feb. 1 through March 22. The request for Rove’s records was dropped before Schneider conducted the April 26 hearing on motions to quash the subpoenas.

Dylan Johnson, campaign manager for Eric Greitens, issued a statement Thursday again accusing Sheena Greitens of lying in her affidavit and stating that medical and dental records for their two sons show no abuse had occurred.

“We expect that the facts will show, sadly, that she coordinated with Mitch McConnell’s lieutenants and Karl Rove to peddle these false allegations,” Johnson said in the statement emailed to The Independent. “Ultimately, we look forward to gaining access to their records as well.”

A statement issued by Stamper repeated arguments he has made in filings, that Sheena Greitens had a duty to disclose the allegations in her March 21 affidavit during the original divorce case.

“A neutral observer might conclude Mother’s admitted silence through the discord common to failing marriages while simultaneously concocting an advantageous strategy to circumvent a previously agreed upon court order suggests her motivation might be less than honorable,” read the statement, which was not attributed to anyone by name.

Wade did not respond to an email from The Independent seeking comment. Schaefer declined to comment on the decision.

The couple is scheduled to be in court on Tuesday for a hearing on Eric Greitens’ motion for an order to compel Sheena Greitens to comply with the visitation order issued along with their 2020 divorce decree. Wade has asked Schneider to move a hearing set for May 27 on Sheena Greitens’ motion to move the case to Texas to Tuesday.

While that motion does not state a reason for moving the hearing forward, in a March 31 filing Sheena Greitens said she was enduring daily attacks on social media from Eric Greitens and his allies. She was trying to refrain from public statements, she said, but she would find it hard to remain publicly silent until May 27.

“I would like to continue to restrict my comments on this to the courtroom, but it will be difficult to do so if we cannot resolve the question of where this case should be decided until May 27, because I expect I will have to go through two months of untrue public attacks on my character, motherhood and professionalism,” she said.

Stamper objected to adding the question of jurisdiction to the Tuesday hearing because of the lack of time to prepare. Stamper suggested instead that Schneider move arguments set for Tuesday to the May 27 hearing.

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.

Democrats want to kick a candidate off the ballot in the race for a Kansas City-area Missouri House seat, claiming the Grandview man who filed in the 36th District contest is actually “a longtime Republican and vocal opponent of the Democratic Party.”

John D. Boyd Jr. filed for the seat on Feb. 22 after paying the $150 fee to Democratic Party. He has run twice in the district as a Republican, taking 40.9% against an incumbent in 2018 and 42.9% in the general election for an open seat in 2020.

Boyd was also a candidate for mayor of Grandview in the April 2021 election, taking 23.7% of the vote in the nonpartisan election.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Cole County, claims the party has First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights of association and that the 36th Democratic House District Committee voted unanimously not to be associated with Boyd.

Along with a history of running as a Republican and making minor contributions to Republican committees, Boyd also “has at least twice had full orders of protection entered against him (and) has a history of not timely paying his taxes…”

Boyd declined to comment Monday on the lawsuit, in which he and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft are defendants. He said his statement on the case will be his filing in response to the lawsuit.

Forrest Richardson, executive director of the Jackson County Democratic Party, said local party leaders weren’t aware of Boyd’s candidacy until after the state party had accepted his filing fee and he had already submitted the other paperwork.

“Fortunately, 36th District Committee was able to gather information, convene and vote to take this step to have Mr. Boyd removed,” Richardson said in a prepared statement. “We believe that once the facts are brought to light, it will be very clear that Mr. Boyd is trying to manipulate voters and he will be removed.”

The party was unable to block Boyd from filing as a Democrat because he gave no advance notice of his intention to do so, the lawsuit states. He did not form a fundraising committee in advance of filing, it noted.

“The 36th District did not learn about Boyd’s proposed candidacy in the Democratic primary until after he filed his declaration of candidacy,” the lawsuit states

The candidates in the Democratic primary include incumbent state Rep. Annettee Turnbaugh, who defeated Boyd in the 2020 general election, and attorney Anthony Ealy. A Republican, Kurt Lauvstad, is unopposed in the GOP primary.

During the Feb. 22 to March 29 filing period, candidates for the Missouri House were required to pay their filing fee and take the receipt to the Secretary of State’s office and complete the necessary paperwork.

“Based on the ease with which individuals can declare their candidacy, a political party has virtually no ability to screen potential candidates to determine the extent to which the party wants to be associated with a particular candidate,” the lawsuit states.

Republicans refused the filing fees from two candidates – incumbent state Rep. Tricia Derges, indicted in 2021 by a federal grand jury on charges she sold fake stem-cell treatments and illegally prescribed narcotics at her medical practice in Springfield, and Steve West, who wanted to run for a Kansas City-area House district, over anti-Semitic comments he has made.

In 2018, Democrats refused to accept a filing fee from former state Rep. Courtney Curtis, who had not paid more than $114,000 in fines for violating numerous state campaign finance laws. The Missouri Supreme Court upheld that decision.

The party objects to a harsh critic being allowed to run in its primary, the lawsuit states. His social media posts from April 2019 to December 2021 praise former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party and refer to Democrats as socialists while suggesting they are anti-American.

“It does not appear that Boyd has ever expressed public support for the Democratic Party or any Democratic Party candidate,” the lawsuit states.

The party also does not want to be associated with someone who has Boyd’s personal history, the lawsuit states. From late 2010 to late 2012, Boyd was the target of protective orders from a woman who claimed he engaged in threats and violence against her.

Case records available online show Boyd was ordered not to “abuse, stalk or molest” the complainant and was barred by the court from possessing a firearm while the order remained in effect.

The state Department of Revenue filed tax liens against Boyd in 2013 and 2014, both of which have been satisfied. Candidates for office must be current on their state and local taxes in order to file.

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and Twitter.