Updated at 8:44 p.m.
Prosecutors in St. Louis have charged Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican, with felony tampering of computer data related to his campaign’s use of an electronic donor list from the veterans organization he founded.
The felony charge is the second the embattled governor is facing and stems from an investigation conducted by the Missouri attorney general’s office. Greitens is accused of obtaining and using the list from The Mission Continues, which he founded in 2007, without the organization’s permission.
His first felony charge stems from a photo Greitens allegedly took of a partially nude woman without her permission before becoming governor. The two were engaged in an extramarital affair.
“St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner reviewed the evidence turned over to her by my office and determined that there is probable cause to file criminal charges against the governor,” Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said in a statement Friday. “The office stands ready to assist the Circuit Attorney’s Office where appropriate and if needed.
“These are serious charges — and an important reminder that no one is above the law in Missouri. Like all criminal defendants, Governor Greitens is presumed innocent under the law until proven guilty,” the statement added.
Hawley said this week his office “obtained evidence of criminal violations” by Greitens and believed the governor may have committed a felony. The evidence was uncovered during his office’s investigation into Greitens’ use of the electronic donor list from The Mission Continues.
Hawley said his office believes Greitens obtained, transmitted, and used the list to solicit donations for his gubernatorial campaign in 2016.
The evidence was then shared with Gardner’s office, under whose jurisdiction the governor can be prosecuted.
Greitens’ attorney Ed Dowd shot back at the new charge, saying, “Now he’s being accused of stealing an email list from an organization he built? Give me a break.”
The Mission Continues has maintained it did not give Greitens’ campaign its list of donors, as doing so would be a violation of federal law.
Questions surrounding the campaign’s use of The Mission Continues’ donor list date back to 2016, when the Associated Press reported Greitens used the organization’s donor list and raised close to $2 million from those on it.
Last year, the governor and his lawyer signed a consent decree declaring the campaign received the list in March 2015 as an in-kind donation from his campaign manager, Daniel Laub.
But The Mission Continues has been adamant in attesting it does not know Laub.
Greitens has been under increasing pressure to resign after it was revealed he had an extramarital affair with his hairdresser. The governor allegedly took photos of her without her permission in an effort to blackmail her to keep quiet about the relationship.
Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, admitted to the affair but denied blackmailing the woman.
The former hairdresser told a bipartisan investigative committee in the Missouri House of Representatives she and Greitens had several sexual encounters, some of which were consensual and others that were not.
She also said the governor hit her.
