Gov. Eric Greitens was fined $1,000 by the Missouri Ethics Commission on Friday for violating state campaign ethics law.
Greitens, a first-term Republican governor, failed to disclose last year that his campaign obtained a donor list from The Mission Continues, a nonprofit that he founded in 2007.
Federal law prohibits charities like The Mission Continues from intervening in political campaigns on behalf of candidates. The Internal Revenue Service has ruled charities cannot give donor lists to politicians but can rent them at fair market value if made available to all candidates.
According to the state ethics commission, Greitens’ campaign should have disclosed receiving the donor list as an in-kind donation from his campaign manager, Daniel Laub. The commission does not specify how Laub came into possession of the donor list. A spokesman for the governor could not be reached for comment.
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Greitens denied last year that he used his charity’s donor list for his campaign, although an Associated Press analysis found Greitens has received nearly $2 million from donors who previously gave significant amounts to The Mission Continues.
The governor was fined $1,000 but only has to pay $100 if he doesn’t violate state campaign law for the next two years.
Both Greitens and his attorney, Michael Adams, signed the ethics commission’s order. Adams is the attorney for both the nonprofit that bankrolled Greitens’ inaugural and the nonprofit that recently made headlines for attacking a Republican state senator who has been critical of the governor.
Adams is also general counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based Republican Governors Association, which donated $13 million to Greitens’ gubernatorial campaign last year.
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