Eric Greitens is lying. He wasn’t ‘fully exonerated’ by Missouri Ethics Commission
The shortest-tenured Missouri governor in modern history is taking a victory lap after the long-awaited conclusion of the campaign finance complaint against him found “there were no reasonable grounds to believe that a violation exists under existing Missouri law” for most of its counts. And he’s taking full advantage of the fact that our campaign finance laws and the secretive moneyman networks that fund candidates weave a confusing and maddeningly impenetrable political spiderweb.
In a Thursday Facebook post seething with grievance and implied threats of revenge, Greitens parroted the tiresome language of our times: The Missouri Ethics Commission “released an order fully exonerating former Governor Eric Greitens.” “Lies were told and bribes were paid in a criminal effort to overturn the 2016 election.” “It was an attack designed for one purpose: to overturn your votes, because we were fighting for you.”
Greitens should save the theatrics for social media and talk radio, because the commission’s carefully-worded consent decree plainly lays out the facts — facts that the former governor’s own campaign doesn’t contest. That’s the very definition of a consent decree: Both parties agree to what it says. And here, both parties accepted a fine of $178,000, which can be settled if the former governor pays $38,000 and commits no further offenses. That’s an eye-popping dollar figure from a body more accustomed to levying penalties in the $100 range.
In six succinct pages, the commission addresses eight core complaints leveled against the Greitens for Missouri committee and A New Missouri, Inc., which is among the tens of thousands of 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits that fund candidates from all political parties with unlimited, untraceable dark money from anonymous donors.
Does this sound like the language of “exoneration”? The ethics commission “found reasonable grounds to support the allegations that the Greitens for Missouri committee failed to disclose the receipt of some in-kind contributions” from both A New Missouri and LG PAC, the Kansas-based conservative political action committee that gave Greitens’ campaign $4 million in 2016.
The devil in the details: The commission interviewed no firsthand witnesses about whether Greitens solicited or directed the donations personally. And that’s exactly how dark money is designed to work. The Internal Revenue Service doesn’t require most nonprofits to disclose their donors. Greitens’ is far from the only campaign to twist that system to maximum advantage. But under high-powered consultant Nick Ayers — who went on to serve as Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff and even turned down an offer to replace John Kelly in that same role for President Donald Trump — Greitens had a particularly sophisticated apparatus behind him.
It’s worth remembering that the “vicious, abusive, illegal political attacks” Greitens whined about on Facebook originated from within his own party. After he renounced Democrats, the newly-minted and highly ambitious Republican immediately began throwing elbows in his outsider campaign, making plenty of enemies in the Missouri GOP establishment.
The consent decree doesn’t mark the end of Greitens saga, either. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an aggressive liberal nonprofit that seeks to reduce the influence of money in politics, is suing the Federal Elections Commission for its inaction on its own complaint about Greitens’ fundraising groups. Expect more developments there.
Greitens may have taken some heat off his campaign’s financial misdeeds when his political career fizzled in 2018 amid multiple scandals. His resignation in a pique of unrepentant self-pity and recrimination was part of a plea deal that ostensibly put behind him disturbing allegations that he tied up the woman who testified under oath about violence and sexual misconduct that most Missourians would prefer not to revisit.
But a man who would steal valor from his fellow Navy SEALs by not correcting Stephen Colbert’s false inference that he took part in the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden clearly can’t be shamed by having to pay $38,000 (which surely will come out of his own pocket, right?). Regardless of how hard he rages, though, we all know better than to trust his word — and the Missouri Republican Party is better off with every day it puts between itself and Eric Greitens’ unending drama.
This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 2:35 PM.