Nearly two years after Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a rising star in the Republican Party, resigned in the wake of misconduct allegations, an ethics commission announced that it found no evidence of wrongdoing.
The Missouri Ethics Commission released its findings on Thursday and concluded that although there were two violations in reporting of in-kind contributions, no other wrongdoing was found, despite numerous and varied allegations leveled against the former governor.
“After a review of the complaint, 235 pages of supporting documentation; the issuance of 23 subpoenas, which resulted in the production of roughly 8,000 multi-page documents, emails, and videos; approximately 20 interviews conducted by Commission investigators. … The MEC found no evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Eric Greitens, individually, and no evidence that Governor Greitens knew of the two reporting violations,” the panel wrote.
The commission also conducted a “review of publicly available documents provided on the Internet by the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Federal Communications Commission” as part of the lengthy investigation.
For the two violations Greitens was ordered to be fined about $178,000.
“If the respondent pays $38,000 of the total fee within 45 days after the date of this Consent Order, the remainder will be stayed,” the document reads.
Despite the panel’s finding of two reporting violations, “The Commission did not find reasonable grounds to support the remaining allegations contained in the complaint filed with the Commission,” it wrote.
Greitens, a 45-year-old former Rhodes Scholar and Navy SEAL, told the Washington Examiner that he was pleased that “the truth has won out.”
“It’s good to have been exonerated, and I’m glad to have been vindicated,” Greitens said. “I’m grateful the truth has won out, but this was never really about me — they launched this attack because we were fighting for the people of Missouri.”
Although the determination is a significant win for Greitens, it is a small consolation for a political figure once pegged as a future presidential candidate.
The former governor, who was once named one of Time’s 100 most influential people, resigned in June 2018 after a political and sexual scandal turned into a possible impeachment scenario. Although he was indicted in February 2018 on two counts, one of invasion of privacy and another of computer tampering, both charges were later dropped.
The invasion of privacy charge was tied to accusations that he blackmailed a woman who he was having an extramarital affair with. Greitens admitted he was involved in an affair with the woman, but denied he blackmailed her.
The computer privacy charge came from allegations that he knowingly deceived the state ethics commission about how he obtained a donor list from a charity for veterans.
From the start, Greitens and his allies said that the accusations leveled against him were part of a political attack and characterized the entire situation as a “witch hunt.”
A person close to Greitens told the Washington Examiner at the conclusion of the ethics investigation that the former governor did not intend to run for any political office this year but would likely “leave his options” open for future endeavors.
The friend said that Greitens was writing a book and working to launch a new service organization.
