Missouri governor who resigned over affair and blackmail allegations running for Senate

Nearly three years ago, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens left the state capitol in disgrace as he faced down two criminal charges, an ethics probe, and public fallout over reports that he’d had an affair with a hairdresser and then allegedly tried to blackmail her with nude photos.

Now, the criminal charges have been dropped, the ethics case has been closed, and Mr Greitens is aiming for a Lazarus-esque comeback.

The Republican announced on Fox News on Monday that he will run for the US Senate seat opening next year with the retirement of Senator Roy Blunt – a move that quickly froze out some other GOP figures angling for the seat.

Mr Greitens, 46, has tied his political fortunes to former President Donald Trump, backing Mr Trump’s false claims about mass election fraud and promising on Twitter that he would “continue Trump’s America First policies”. His candidacy has left some in the state party, which essentially forced him from office in 2018, wringing their hands about his entry to the race, Politico recently reported.

“I was honoured to serve the people of Missouri as their governor,” Mr Greitens told Fox News host Bret Baier on Monday. “. . . I think that now the people of Missouri need a fighter in the United States Senate.”

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The announcement would have seemed improbable in July 2018, when Mr Greitens was largely abandoned by the state GOP and resigned as governor, marking an abrupt end to an unlikely political ascent.

A former Rhodes scholar and Navy SEAL, in 2016 he surprisingly bested a field of Republican candidates featuring a heavily funded businessman and two political veterans and then topped Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster in the general election.

As a charismatic young governor, he earned mentions as a future presidential contender – until a devastating report landed from a St Louis TV station in January 2018 alleging that he had carried on an affair with a local hairdresser and threatened to release nude photos he’d taken of her if she revealed their relationship. After the report, Mr Greitens admitted to the affair but denied any blackmail attempt.

The revelation soon became a criminal case when Democratic St Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner launched a probe that resulted in a felony invasion-of-privacy charge a month later.

His political troubles intensified in April when a bipartisan committee in the GOP-dominated Missouri House released a report in which the woman he’d had an affair with described him calling her derogatory names, grabbing her crotch without consent and slapping her face.

Mr Greitens called the report a “political witch hunt” full of “lies and falsehoods,” but never specified which claims he specifically denied.

Weeks later, Ms Gardner’s office filed a second charge: felony tampering with computer data over allegations that he improperly took a donor list from a nonprofit he’d founded to help his political campaign. (The evidence in that case was gathered by then-Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley - now Missouri’s other US senator.)

In early May, GOP leaders in the state’s House and Senate said they would meet to consider disciplinary measures – including possible impeachment. Faced with political abandonment, Mr Greitens resigned on 1 June, 2018.

But the apparent implosion of his political career also brought a swift end to the criminal cases. Soon after his resignation, Ms Gardner announced she would drop the tampering case. The invasion-of-privacy case, meanwhile, had already collapsed over a complex scandal that left a private investigator hired by Ms Gardner’s office charged with lying in a deposition, the Associated Press reported.

Mr Greitens still faced a probe from the Missouri Ethics Commission over whether his campaign had illegally coordinated with a political action committee in 2016. In February 2020, the commission found his campaign had violated two state laws and fined it $178,000 (£129,000).

But the committee stopped short of accusing Mr Greitens of knowing about the violations, which led the former governor to claim that the report exonerated him.

In the year since the ethics case closed, Mr Greitens has sought to rebuild his political capital with regular right-wing media appearances where he has enthusiastically bolstered Mr Trump. On 6 January, less than an hour after a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol, Mr Greitens appeared on a right-wing radio show to repeat baseless claims that massive fraud had led to Mr Trump’s electoral loss.

It’s not clear what kind of support Mr Greitens will find in the Missouri GOP. Some of his top donors in 2016 have pledged to stay away from him this time around, Politico reported, and some in the party worry that his return could open the door for Democrats to snatch Mr Blunt’s seat.

Still, his announcement Monday led at least one potential candidate, Republican Leutenant Governor Mike Kehoe, to announce that he would skip the Senate race, the St Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The Washington Post