Don’t delay: Missouri lawmakers investigating Greitens are right to press ahead with report

Never let anybody tell you that Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens doesn’t have a sense of humor.

His legal team has actually argued — without success, fortunately — that the Missouri House committee that has been investigating him shouldn’t release its findings until after his criminal trial on felony invasion of privacy charges, which is to start in mid-May. You know, because the committee’s report might sway potential jurors.

But isn’t swaying public opinion exactly what Greitens’ $50,000 Passover- and Easter-week radio ad arguing that his indictment was purely political was supposed to accomplish?

The spot, which was paid for by Greitens’ campaign fund, blamed liberals “hell-bent on stopping his conservative reforms” for his legal troubles. Those couldn’t be the ethics reforms he ran on, which went nowhere even before his own ethics problems became evident. Maybe he means all he accomplished in yanking away tax credits for low-income housing, though that was not so much a reform as a regression.

The former Navy SEAL should not be forced from office, the ad said, because “Eric Greitens is on a conservative mission for Missouri, and he won’t stop until the mission is complete.”

Meanwhile, all of Missouri was apparently supposed to stand motionless — sort of like that crowd at the JQH Arena in Springfield that watched him rappel from the rafters into the bull-riding competition last September — while we patiently waited to see what became of his legal challenges.

Which is why we said months ago that he should step down until the matter was resolved.

Greitens did not do that, of course, and the committee was right to decide not to wait to release the report that will decide not his legal but his political fate.

It will recommend whether or not the House should begin impeachment proceedings. The bar for impeachment in Missouri is lower than for a guilty verdict in a criminal trial, and lower, too, than the federal standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The Missouri standard involves a finding of “crimes, misconduct, habitual drunkenness, willful neglect of duty, corruption in office, incompetency, or any offense involving moral turpitude or oppression in office.”

On Wednesday, Republican Rep. Jay Barnes, the chairman of the committee of two Democrats and five Republicans that is investigating Greitens, said no, that there would not be any delay, as “the committee is on track.”

Greitens faces charges that he took and electronically transmitted a non-consensual photo of his hairdresser during their first sexual encounter in his family’s basement in 2015, six months before he announced that he was running.

In a conversation that was taped and released by the woman’s now ex-husband, also without her knowledge, she confessed the affair, and said he had invited her to his home, blindfolded her, duct taped her hands to a piece of exercise equipment and then had taken a semi-naked photo of her that he threatened would “go everywhere” if she ever went public. He has admitted the relationship, but has denied there was any blackmail.

His lawyers said in a March 26 letter to the committee that “Anything published by this committee will no doubt influence the jury pool and the public about this case, and thus it is vital that the committee’s work reflect the full facts.”

But there was no reason the committee had to wait to get the full facts.

If they don’t get the whole story, it will only be because the governor himself hasn’t cooperated.

And yes, their report should be made public as soon as possible after it’s delivered to House Speaker Todd Richardson on Monday.

This story was originally published April 4, 2018 at 6:27 PM with the headline "Don’t delay: Missouri lawmakers investigating Greitens are right to press ahead with report."