Hawley says he'd go to court to force Greitens to answer questions in charity probe
Attorney General Josh Hawley says he'd be willing to go to court to fight any assertion of executive privilege by Eric Greitens to get out of answering questions in an investigation into the governor’s use of the resources of a veteran’s charity for his 2016 campaign.
Hawley announced Friday that his office has issued 15 subpoenas as part of its investigation of The Mission Continues, a charity Greitens founded in 2007. He declined to lay out specifically who has received a subpoena, but said it includes the charity itself, its staff and former staff, the governor’s private company and its former staff, and Greitens’ campaign and its staff.
“This is a very active investigation, and it is progressing by the day,” Hawley said, later adding: “I would strongly counsel those who have or will receive a subpoena from this office to cooperate fully, to comply fully and promptly with this office’s subpoenas. Failure to do so is a separate criminal violation under Missouri statute.”
Shortly after Hawley announced the subpoenas, his U.S. Senate campaign said that it would be inappropriate for the attorney general to appear at public events with the governor, a fellow Republican, while he's under investigation by Hawley's office.
The investigation into the charity could have major political ramifications for Hawley as he seeks to unseat U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, the incumbent Democrat, and for Greitens as he defends himself against a legislative investigation in Jefferson City and a criminal trial in St. Louis.
Hawley said his investigators are cooperating with St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who is prosecuting Greitens on a felony charge of invasion of privacy, and with a special Missouri House committee investigating whether that felony indictment should lead to impeachment proceedings.
The Star reported earlier this week that the circuit attorney and the House committee have expanded their inquiries to include The Mission Continues. Both have subpoenaed documents from charity.
Spokesmen for the governor's office and his legal defense team did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Michael Adams, the attorney for Greitens' campaign, said in an email that neither he nor the campaign manager, treasurer or custodian of records has received any subpoena.
"I don’t know about the Governor," he said, "but the campaign has not received a subpoena directed to him."
Hawley has faced criticism over his office’s recent investigation of Greitens’ use of a secret texting app called Confide. The app deletes a text message after it has been read, raising concerns that it could be used to circumvent Missouri’s open records law.
The attorney general’s investigation of Greitens’ use of Confide concluded last month with a determination that there was no evidence of wrongdoing, in part because there was no evidence. The attorney general’s office lacks subpoena power in Sunshine Law investigations, so the probe relied mostly on interviews with eight members of Greitens' staff.
The governor was not interviewed. The attorney general’s office says an interview wasn’t requested because it was believed Greitens would assert executive privilege, and without subpoena power the governor would prevail in court.
Democrats have argued that executive privilege doesn't exist in Missouri law. Hawley disagrees.
Hawley said Friday that Greitens could try to assert executive privilege as part of his current investigation, but “we have subpoena power, and we are more than willing and ready to combat such an assertion.”
He later added that subpoena power gives the attorney general “the power to compel people to cooperate even if they don’t want to.”
“If we have issued a subpoena, and someone attempts to block it … the fact that we have subpoena power gives us a venue to go to court to challenge that, and we would do so,” he said.
The controversy surrounding The Mission Continues began in 2016, when The Associated Press obtained an Excel spreadsheet labeled “All donors $1K total and up — as of 5-7-14.”
The list included more than 500 names, along with email addresses and phone numbers, for individuals who had given at least $1,000 to the charity. Those included on the list had combined to give the charity roughly $4.7 million in contributions. It also had names and contact information for foundations that gave an additional $4 million and corporations that gave more than $20 million.
The spreadsheet’s properties showed it was created by an employee of The Mission Continues on May 6, 2014, shortly before Greitens stepped down as CEO. It was last saved 10 months later, on March 24, 2015, by a member of Greitens’ gubernatorial exploratory committee.
Donors who had previously given significant amounts to The Mission Continues gave Greitens nearly $2 million. Of the more than $525,000 Greitens raised during an initial two-month period of his campaign in early 2015, the AP found 85 percent came from donors who previously gave to The Mission Continues.
Experts in nonprofit law previously told The Star that if someone took the list from the charity without permission and used it for personal or political purposes, that could be considered theft or embezzlement. The Mission Continues has been adamant that it did not and would not authorize any outside entity — including the political campaign of its founder — to use its donor list.
Greitens initially denied that his campaign ever possessed the donor list. After a complaint was filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission, Greitens and his attorney signed a consent decree last year attesting that the list was given to his campaign in March 2015 as an in-kind donation from Daniel Laub, his campaign manager.
Laura L'Esperance, a spokeswoman for The Mission Continues, told The Star earlier this week that the charity is cooperating with all document requests. She reiterated the charity's long-stated position that The Mission Continues did not and would not “authorize use of any materials or resources for the governor’s campaign.”
Hawley couldn't comment on the timeline of his investigation.
Peverill Squire, a political scientist at the University of Missouri, said that Hawley appears to be "far more aggressive" in his handling of the investigation into the charity than he was in his earlier investigation of the governor's staff.
"I think it’s probably more that Hawley does not come out of the initial investigation looking very strong… and I think that he wants to demonstrate greater independence from Greitens," Squire said.
Hawley had been scheduled to attend Republican Party events in Springfield and Joplin this weekend, but his campaign confirmed Friday afternoon that he would skip these events because of the governor's presence.
"It would be inappropriate to appear at a political event with an official currently under investigation by the Attorney General's office," Kelli Ford, Hawley's campaign spokeswoman, said in an email.
Ford said that Hawley would instead be attending a Republican Party event in St. Louis on Saturday.
Missouri Democrats were quick to criticize Hawley's public statements, saying the attorney general and frontrunner for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination was simply trying to distract "from his botched Confide investigation," said Missouri Democratic Party Deputy Communications Director Brooke Goren.
"It's clear Hawley is just trying to cover his tracks," Goren said, "as he continues to enable the corruption in Jefferson City."
On Friday, McCaskill attacked Hawley for waiting almost a year until after Greitens was found guilty of an ethics violation from the Missouri Ethics Commission to investigate the charity.
Squire said that the various scandals and investigations facing Greitens put Hawley in an awkward position politically as the state's top law enforcement officer and a Republican candidate for Senate.
"I can’t think of a situation similar to this either in Missouri or elsewhere," Squire said. "It’s obviously unusual for a state attorney general to investigate the chief executive particularly at a time when the attorney general is seeking higher office."
This story was originally published March 23, 2018 at 11:29 AM with the headline "Hawley says he'd go to court to force Greitens to answer questions in charity probe."