Greitens' new attorney represented male stripper charged in 1999 under same law
In 1999, St. Louis lawyer Scott Rosenblum represented a male stripper prosecuted for invasion of privacy for secretly videotaping women having sex with him and later showing those tapes to friends.
Nearly 20 years later, Rosenblum — now a sought after criminal defense attorney — has joined Gov. Eric Greitens’ legal team as he tries to fend off the same charge.
And Rosenblum’s former client from two decades ago is asking Greitens for a pardon, arguing that the governor’s motion to have the charge against him dismissed uses the same legal rationale as the request for the pardon.
According to his law firm bio, Rosenblum has defended dozens of professional athletes and major recording artists, focusing on business crimes, murder, sex and drug offenses.
Greitens is charged with felony invasion of privacy for allegedly taking a nude photo of a woman with whom he was having an affair and threatening to release it if she ever discussed their relationship.
The governor has admitted he cheated on his wife in 2015, but he denies that he blackmailed the woman.
The governor’s legal defense team didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Rosenblum told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he was asked to join the trial team on behalf of the governor, “and I was honored to accept.”
“It is an opportunity to work with outstanding lawyers on a great team and join in the effort to establish our governor's innocence, which we profoundly believe he is,” he said.
Rosenblum's 1999 client was Paul Henreid, who pleaded guilty in St. Louis to invasion of privacy after filming multiple sex partners without their knowledge.
Henreid, a documentary filmmaker and lawyer from Walnut Creek, Calif., is now represented by Al Watkins, a St. Louis attorney who is also representing the ex-husband of the woman with whom Greitens had the affair. The ex-husband released a secretly recorded conversation with his ex-wife to a St. Louis television station in January in which she claimed that Greitens took the compromising photo.
Watkins sent the pardon request on behalf of Henreid to one of Greitens' lawyers last month.
Henreid in 1999 unsuccessfully challenged the statute as unconstitutionally vague and aimed at peeping toms, not someone engaged in consensual sex, according to his pardon request.
After being indicted by a St. Louis grand jury last month, Greitens’ attorneys argued that Missouri's invasion-of-privacy law "applies to situations such as voyeurs or peeping toms who take photographs in locations such as restrooms, tanning beds, locker rooms, changing rooms, and bedrooms. The law does not apply to the participants in sexual activity.”
"What's good for the Governor should be good for the gander," Watkins said statement last month.
This story was originally published March 7, 2018 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Greitens' new attorney represented male stripper charged in 1999 under same law."