In what may qualify as the least-surprising development in Missouri politics lately, disgraced former Gov. Eric Greitens stands accused of unlawful shenanigans with campaign money — specifically, of diverting state-level campaign funds to his U.S. Senate campaign, which isn’t allowed. Greitens is innocent until proven guilty, but his past campaign practices suggest fire is at the source of this smoke.
It’s a useful reminder that Greitens was forced out of office not just for alleged sexual abuse of his hairdresser but also for his demonstrated contempt for clean-money campaign rules. This is not someone who should get another chance to represent Missourians.
As the Post-Dispatch’s Kurt Erickson reports, the Washington-based reform group Campaign Legal Center filed a Federal Election Commission complaint Thursday alleging Greitens used more than $100,000 from his state campaign fund to lay groundwork for his Senate campaign before announcing his candidacy in March. Federal election law prohibits use of state campaign money in federal elections because it isn’t raised under federal limits and restrictions.
The complaint says Greitens’ state campaign fund paid more than $50,000 to a campaign manager and tens of thousands more for advertising, website design and public relations — all after he was out of office as governor but before he’d formally announced his Senate candidacy. In one instance, the complaint cites circumstances that could indicate Greitens used roughly $18,000 from his state campaign committee to develop a website that would ultimately be used by his Senate campaign.
Greitens resigned his governorship in 2018 to avoid impeachment and criminal charges based on allegations that he’d abused and threatened to blackmail his hairdresser and extramarital lover before running for governor.
In addition to those allegations, Greitens was accused of improperly fundraising off a donor list from his former charity without the charity’s permission. That allegation, a potential felony, was dropped along with other threatened criminal action against Greitens when he agreed to resign as governor in June 2018.
However, the Missouri Ethics Commission later fined Greitens’ state committee $178,000 for separate violations involving improper use of “dark money,” a practice that Greitens perfected during his run for governor. In a settlement, Greitens agreed to pay $38,000. He nonetheless crowed that he’d been exonerated since there were no findings that he personally knew what his own campaign committee was doing — not a great testament to his leadership.
Even if Greitens is ultimately found to have violated federal election laws, he’s unlikely to face much in the way of sanctions, given how notoriously toothless the Federal Election Commission is these days. That isn’t the point. Once again, Greitens is under the kinds of ethics questions that have darkened his short political career from the start. Republican voters who will pick a GOP Senate nominee next year don’t have great choices, but Greitens would be a singularly bad one.
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