(Oct. 25, 2022) St. Louis, Missouri: After a three-year legal battle, the St. Louis City Circuit Attorney’s Office finally produced key records revealing that external forces aided Soros-funded prosecutor Kim Gardner in toppling Missouri’s former governor, Eric Greitens. The previously concealed emails between Gardner and opponents of Greitens show how external pressure, especially financial, can result in prosecutorial misconduct.
John Solomon, award-winning investigative reporter and Editor-in-Chief of Just the News, submitted a Sunshine Law request to Kim Gardner’s office in 2019, asking for all communications between her office and numerous Soros-backed entities. When Gardner’s office refused to produce the records in violation of Missouri law, Southeastern Legal Foundation and the Freedom Center of Missouri filed a lawsuit on his behalf. Instead of responding to the lawsuit, Gardner’s office ignored it, leading the court to enter a default judgment in Mr. Solomon’s favor.
For the next two years, Gardner’s office did everything it could to conceal the newly released records—wasting taxpayer money with each new appeal. Despite their best efforts to hide these email communications from the public, Mr. Solomon and his attorneys remained diligent and recently obtained the treasure trove of documents which they made public earlier today.
The newly released records show that Gardner’s legal pursuits against Greitens for felony invasion of privacy for allegedly threatening to release a picture of his girlfriend if she talked about their affair and allegedly misusing a fundraising list were not only unfounded but brought solely due to external financial forces. The Soros-funded prosecutor had to drop the case, however, after admitting she didn’t have the photo or other evidence to sustain the charges.
In an article published in Just the News, Mr. Solomon explained: “The Greitens prosecution has raised troubling questions about the weaponization of law enforcement to bring a case that was missing key evidence but still achieved a political outcome of forcing a duly elected official to resign. These documents show some of the external forces interacting with Gardner’s office at critical moments, contacts that the public would never have known about were it not for the Sunshine request we pursued.”
Kim Hermann, SLF General Counsel and Mr. Solomon’s attorney, added: “For years Kim Gardner tried to hide these records from the public, directly disobeying the Sunshine Law and direct orders from the court to release them to the public. It is unconscionable that a prosecuting attorney who is responsible for knowing the law and applying it fairly and properly would so blatantly disregard and disobey it. As Mr. Solomon’s lawsuit proves, the truth will always come out.”
Teaming up with SLF, David Roland of the Freedom Center of Missouri explained this is a big win for Missouri: “Missouri citizens demand government transparency so they can make fully informed decisions about who will represent them in public office. We are gratified that, despite the Circuit Attorney’s years of stubborn resistance, the courts held her accountable and the public finally has access to these public records.”