Ethics commission says Greitens campaign broke the law. Prosecutor won’t file charges

The Missouri Ethics Commission asked Cole County Prosecutor Mark Richardson to file criminal charges against former Gov. Eric Greitens over his campaign’s use of a donor list belonging to a veterans charity.

Yet for the second time this year, Richardson declined to press charges against Greitens, who resigned from office June 1.

Former Missouri Democratic Party chairman Roy Temple filed a complaint against Greitens with the ethics commission in March. He alleged that Greitens knowingly filed false campaign finance disclosure reports to the Missouri Ethics Commission, a Class A misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail.

The allegations of criminal wrongdoing center on a consent decree Greitens signed in April to settle a previous complaint filed with the ethics commission. In that consent decree, Greitens admitted that his campaign had failed to disclose that it had obtained a donor list belonging to The Mission Continues, a veterans charity Greitens founded in 2007.

Greitens’ campaign paid a $100 fine and agreed to amend its campaign filings to show it had received the donor list as an in-kind contribution from former campaign manager Danny Laub in March 2015.

In May, Laub testified under oath to the Missouri attorney general’s office that the explanation offered by Greitens as to how the campaign acquired the list was a lie.

Laub said he didn’t give the campaign the list, that the campaign didn’t receive it on March 1 and that while his name was on the consent decree, he wasn’t the one who wrote it there.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley asked Richardson’s office in April to file criminal charges against Greitens.

Richarson declined.

In a letter released Friday, Elizabeth Ziegler, the Missouri Ethics Commission’s executive director, said that following an investigation the commission found “reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of criminal law had occurred as alleged in the complaint.”

“The commission was notified by the Cole County Prosecutor on Aug. 9, 2018, that no prosecution should be sought in this matter,” Ziegler said.

Richardson, who lost his bid for re-election last week in the GOP primary, could not immediately be reached for comment. In a letter to the ethics commission, Richardson focused on the alleged erroneous date of the filing, saying that he has been “unable to find that the reporting date the contribution was received was a knowing or willful violation. I have also determined the reported date was not material to the filing.”

He did not address any of the other allegations of knowingly incorrect information regarding the donor list that was included on Greitens’ campaign disclosure reports

In a statement to The Star, Temple said he was pleased that the Missouri Ethics Commission “took their job seriously and found reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of criminal law had occurred.”

“However, I am disappointed that the Cole County Prosecutor declined to do his job by failing to prosecute the case,” Temple said. “Fortunately, there will be a new prosecutor in Cole County soon who can review the case before the statute of limitations has run.”

Greitens still faces an ethics complaint filed by Republican Rep. Jay Barnes accusing the former governor’s campaign and dark-money nonprofit of multiple campaign finance violations.

This story was originally published August 17, 2018 at 2:40 PM.