Patterico's Pontifications

2/22/2018

The Republican Governor, the Nude Photo, and the Indictment

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:30 pm



The Republican governor of Missouri has been indicted on felony “invasion of privacy” charges alleging that he threatened to release a nude photo of a woman if she revealed her affair with him:

Gov. Eric Greitens was indicted Thursday afternoon by a St. Louis grand jury on a felony charge of invasion of privacy.

The charge stems from a 2015 affair and allegations that he threatened to release a nude photograph of the woman, taken while she was blindfolded and her hands were bound, if she ever spoke publicly about the affair.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner launched a criminal investigation of the allegations last month shortly after they become public. The indictment accuses Greitens of not only knowingly photographing the woman with whom he had an affair, but also transmitting the image “in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer.”

After news of the indictment broke, Greitens was seen being led down a hallway in the local courthouse by several St. Louis city deputies, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

RedState’s smoosieq wrote about the allegations when they surfaced last month, noting that Greitens had admitted the affair but denied the blackmail. smoosieq said then:

My own takeaway at present is, “What a bleepin’ mess.” It’s probably too much to hope that this sordid tale won’t distract from some of the positive strides Missourians were hoping to take with a legislature and Governor who were seemingly on the same page.

Well, it’s an even bigger bleepin’ mess now. The Governor is not taking this lying down, blasting St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner as “a reckless liberal prosecutor who uses her office to score political points.”

As always, the proof will be in the pudding, which is to say, the evidence. Until that is revealed, it’s all political chest-beating, illuminating nothing.

[Cross-posted at RedState and The Jury Talks Back.]

90 Responses to “The Republican Governor, the Nude Photo, and the Indictment”

  1. If these allegations are true then the guy is a complete creep, but I am puzzled by the part of the law that prohibits placing the material where it can be accessed via a computer. Does that include any cloud-based backups (like to Dropbox or Google Photos)? If so, doesn’t that pretty much mean any nude picture taken with a phone or tablet is illegal unless you have deactivated the auto-upload?

    JVW (42615e)

  2. Sounds like a ham sandwich indictment to me. Where’s the picture?

    nk (dbc370)

  3. As always, the proof will be in the pudding, which is to say, the evidence. Until that is revealed, it’s all political chest-beating, illuminating nothing.

    Things that never get said about Trump.

    BuDuh (df946e)

  4. The Governor is not taking this lying down, blasting St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner as “a reckless liberal prosecutor who uses her office to score political points.”

    Grand jury indicts Missouri governor who admitted affair

    http://www.kcci.com/article/grand-jury-indicts-missouri-gov-eric-greitens...

    Embattled Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens was indicted by a grand jury Thursday on a felony charge of invasion of privacy.

    Gardner must be quite persuasive– or simply have enough to convince a GJ to indict. Regardless, it’s all seems rather GOP-family-values-creepy.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  5. Oh, yeah? At least he didn’t pay her $173,000 from the taxpayers’ money to shtup him, like this [guess the Party] married mayor paid her bodyguard. https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2018/02/22/megan-barry-affair-nude-cell-phone-photos-deleted-chats-may-show-evidence-crime-mayor-megan-barry/360898002/

    nk (dbc370)

  6. And that’s just the overtime. For reals. Snicker.

    nk (dbc370)

  7. Sounds like a ham sandwich indictment to me. Where’s the picture?

    nk (dbc370) — 2/22/2018 @ 9:57 pm

    I could send you a picture of a roast beef sandwich. Was that too much (It probably was)?

    Pinandpuller (bf7a89)

  8. Mayor Barry, sex rehab is just 40 miles down the road from you. Did you learn nothing from Carlos Danger? Now all the cops in Nashville know what you look like.

    People might be begging to get on that jury. Yes your honor, we would like to review Exhibit DD again.

    Pinandpuller (bf7a89)

  9. NAVY SEALS LOL

    happyfeet (105f80)

  10. “Regardless, it’s all seems rather GOP-family-values-creepy.”

    I’ve noted that it’s usually the LCD, low-life types that vilify aspirational core values.

    Colonel Haiku (bd4dc3)

  11. I’ve known guys like him throughout my life. Not especially talented or proficient at anything but very focused and ambitious. Male versions of Hillary. I think the picture story is something the rhymes-with-door made up for her husband, but it won’t be any loss to the country if his political career is scotched because of the affair.

    nk (dbc370)

  12. I’m wondering how “invasion of privacy” as a felony.

    Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7)

  13. @10. =Haiku!= Gesundheit!

    And hypocrites who award them mulligans as a means to an end; the Perkins Axiom.

    DCSCA (797bc0)

  14. Yes what gov Nixon did to missou,

    narciso (d1f714)

  15. I think they call it “revenge porn” in the vernacular, Hoagie.

    But the truth is that, Glenn Reynolds notwithstanding, we don’t have laws against everything. As we saw with the Wichita SWATting that got the victim killed. The prosecutor may have found Missouri’s invasion of privacy statute a closer fit than say the blackmail, intimidation or extortion statutes.

    nk (dbc370)

  16. 13… the guv had been a Dem until flipping to the R’s in 2015, so he should be given the benefit of the doubt and due process, as these rehabilitations can be a long and protracted process, ASPCA.

    Colonel Haiku (bd4dc3)

  17. He could have just said he was reenacting 50 shades, its hard to still who the stupider of the two.

    narciso (d1f714)

  18. Yes they threw bolling to the wolves for much less.

    narciso (d1f714)

  19. But the truth is that, Glenn Reynolds notwithstanding, we don’t have laws against everything.


    That’s my point, nk. We don’t have laws against everything because we don’t need laws about everything. I’m no lawyer but it would seem crap like this would be better hashed out in civil court. After all what pressing public need is being met by making showing somebody’s nude pictures a felony? A felony, no less. So now we have the time and money to prosecute a guy and send him to prison for publishing pictures of an ex? Is there nothing the government won’t waste our money on?

    Rev.Hoagie (6bbda7)

  20. The reason I think the picture story is fake, is that such a picture is prima facie evidence of aggravated kidnapping and rape. Let’s say he was that stupid — wouldn’t the honey boo boo have thought of that? Eventually? Nah, the whole thing smells like the kind of phony baloney stupid lowlife trash come up with.

    nk (dbc370)

  21. This was the reporter on romneys haitcut beat:
    https://althouse.blogspot.com/2018/02/eager-to-be-seen-as-leading-debate.html

    Remember when we assumed she had integtity

    narciso (d1f714)

  22. Yes that was a typo, but it seemed on point.

    narciso (d1f714)

  23. Hoagie, it used to be that a spouse could sue the other spouse’s lover for alienation of affections. But a lot of states have abolished to tort altogether, or limited it to “special damages” which means she spent the family’s money on him.

    nk (dbc370)

  24. Always assume they are complicit when the waterworks came one:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/DLoesch/status/966876463805947905

    Like with kumbaya on lake eola after pulse.

    narciso (d1f714)

  25. 23 and Hoagie, what’s Korean for “Get Yo Hand Out of My Pocket?”

    urbanleftbehind (7df0e2)

  26. @15:

    But the truth is that, Glenn Reynolds notwithstanding, we don’t have laws against everything.

    @19:

    We don’t have laws against everything because we don’t need laws about everything.

    No one knows how many laws there are and what they cover:

    http://www.kowal.com/?q=How-Many-Federal-Laws-Are-There%3F

    Lenny (5ea732)

  27. This is why macarthur should have gone all the way, and Truman should have dropped the bomb if needs must, the arzamas facility, couldnt havecturned that many weapons

    narciso (d1f714)

  28. 20,000 laws alone covering the ownership and use of guns.

    Lenny (5ea732)

  29. I have to go brave a wet Chicago day, now. No sooner had it stopped snowing that it started raining.

    Precipitation
    It’s keeping us wading
    Keeping us wading
    Yeah

    nk (dbc370)

  30. @31 – the irony is lost on the FBI and local govt. How dare them protect a cop who wouldn’t do his job protecting others.

    Lenny (5ea732)

  31. “Yes that was a typo, but it seemed on point.”

    Yes… way up firm and high, please.

    Colonel Haiku (bd4dc3)

  32. The affair, given the reputation he trades on, is enough to ruin his respectability.

    That makes a charge of blackmail plausible, and if proved would reveal not just error and not just bad character, but the worst character – someone entrusted with power willing to destroy others to keep his false front in place.

    I have heard somewhere that his actual defense is “I was only joking.”

    I guess we’ll find out who is really at the bad end of any such joke.

    SarahW (3164f0)

  33. A fair point, but does gardners actions seem little suspicious.

    narciso (d1f714)

  34. I think Gardners actions are overwrought and harken back to the frogwalking that a fellow by the name of Eliot Spitzer used to pride himself on. It could even well be out of partisan spite that a budding star chose the opposite team. Alas, based on the fact that both sides want to get him in the neck (read the whole article), it actually makes me root for him to pull through.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  35. A bondage scene. Woo, Woo.

    Bang Gunley (5a4596)

  36. El Rushbo is on target as usual.

    mg (cb9e0f)

  37. All conservatives owe Rush a thank you for many years of free education.

    mg (cb9e0f)

  38. Former border states like Missouri take the Evangelical Oath of Hypocrisy just like the Deep Derp South. But many mistakenly took the path of escape designed for Black Slaves. They thought white trash was included m

    Ben burn (7d2e65)

  39. She was looking for the great white defendant, re bonfire,

    narciso (d1f714)

  40. Has she gone full Kim Foxx yet? Thats the problem we see 6 hours up I-55.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  41. Admittedly, he’s an idiot and worse, but Like the ahab in Philly are their more pressing problems?

    narciso (d1f714)

  42. I think a fatty, ROR, would have the worst of it in a Florida school system, and each subculture seems to have enough potential members (one might say the same of a large suburban Texas H.S.) so yeah, Rush is asking the right question. I missed out on his mid-90s glory years because I honestly thought it was a chance Bob Uecker broadcast drifting in from Milwaukee.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  43. Am I gonna have to be a one issue voter ?

    California resident

    Ben burn (7d2e65)

  44. I was a skinny kid, I was a little on the heavy side and they were not merciful in a public school.

    narciso (d1f714)

  45. A private school, no one cared back then.

    narciso (d1f714)

  46. Meanwhile, as of 2013, the year after the Newtown massacre, mass shootings accounted for only 1.5 percent of all gun deaths in the United States, or 502 total fatalities. That figure is unacceptably high. But it nonetheless represents a minuscule portion of our overall gun problem, and a tiny fraction of the lives lost each year to countless other social crises, from the opioid epidemic, to workplace safety violations, to the unaffordability of health insurance.

    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/02/liberals-are-embracing-the-politics-of-fear-thats-scary.html

    Ben burn (7d2e65)

  47. ‘I have heard somewhere that his actual defense is “I was only joking.”

    I guess we’ll find out who is really at the bad end of any such joke.’

    SarahW (3164f0) — 2/23/2018 @ 7:16 am

    It may just be a case of “playing house” gone way out of control…

    Colonel Haiku (bd4dc3)

  48. “I was a skinny kid, I was a little on the heavy side and they were not merciful in a public school.”

    narciso (d1f714) — 2/23/2018 @ 8:10 am

    Was this within the span of one week, or are we talking school year?

    Colonel Haiku (bd4dc3)

  49. The Governor is not taking this lying down, blasting St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner as “a reckless liberal prosecutor who uses her office to score political points.”

    As always, the proof will be in the pudding, which is to say, the evidence.

    Sorry, no. As the saying goes, “Law isn’t about truth. It’s about evidence.” The difference may be immaterial to lawyers, but not to anyone else.

    random viking (6a54c2)

  50. was Narciso the inspiration for an ABC Afterschool Special? That, or he was on the wrestling team and he had to keep weight in one of the extreme classes.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  51. Ask tom delay about that, teed Steven, bob Mcdonnell,

    narciso (d1f714)

  52. Indiana Jones said almost the same (facts i/o evidence).

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  53. Its water long under the bridge, lawyers and doctors kids aren’t anymore virtuous apriori.

    narciso (d1f714)

  54. But I put that link out there for perspective,

    narciso (d1f714)

  55. Narbisco has a full one-third share of comments!

    Huzzahh!

    Ben burn (7d2e65)

  56. I hope to illuminate not obfuscate, if he is guilty by all means throw the book, but is that the most pressing problem in that county.

    narciso (d1f714)

  57. A person’s faith should be personal and private, but once a governor uses prayer to rally support for his special extraordinary session, he must be called out.

    Who is he praying for?

    Gov. Eric Greitens did just that last week in St. Charles when he asked audiences to pray for the “career politicians” prior to the special session he called to repeal a St. Louis city reproductive anti-discrimination ordinance and pass religious protections for pregnancy centers. These religious-based centers received over $7 million in tax credits in the 2017 state budget but have zero state regulations mandating they provide medically accurate information (most don’t) or employ medical staff (many don’t).

    https://www.google.com/amp/www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/greitens-uses-religion-women-as-political-tools/article_513a2a3b-e996-5962-aa84-6cbd2bc47675.amp.html

    Ben burn (7d2e65)

  58. Well, hope in one hand..

    Ben burn (7d2e65)

  59. Fred Thompson, in his turn as SDA Arthur Branch from Law and Order, stated “there is no fundamental right to privacy in the Constitution”.

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  60. What a complete arse!

    I bet a review of Silver Star also in order.

    Ben burn (7d2e65)

  61. Yes its in Romans 13, serving molochs sacrifices is not in the job description.

    Thompson, in his prime could have given in a good performance

    narciso (d1f714)

  62. You have the temerity to reference Romans in your obfuscationz?

    Ben burn (7d2e65)

  63. You would have us all liquidated like holomodor denying Mrs ohr don’t pretend otherwise

    narciso (d1f714)

  64. Isnt tilting at Russia also tilting at the World’s Most Visible White Defendant?

    urbanleftbehind (5eecdb)

  65. Here is Greitens’ motion to dismiss the indictment. It argues that the conduct alleged is not covered by the statute under which he is charged. That it’s a Peeping Tom law, that applies only to third parties and not to participants who unclothe in front of each other.

    nk (dbc370)

  66. Since he was a (D) when this “affair” happened, did he change his party registration to enhance his electoral possibilities, or to escape his past? Why are Democrats such misogynists.

    askeptic (340f22)

  67. @75
    He was clearly inspired by Trump’s affairs while his wife was pregnant.

    Davethulhu (fab944)

  68. Facts not in evidence,

    narciso (d1f714)

  69. 63… narciso writes to educate folks who frequent this blog. You, beenburned, frantically type with those little sausage fingers, your Manson Lamps ablaze with the true fanaticism so common among the fever-swamp left. And your execrable output is far from having anything to do with education.

    Colonel Haiku (bd4dc3)

  70. Thanks coronello, I do regard greirens as a very foolish fellow, but I trust zampolit Gardner even less

    narciso (d1f714)

  71. If you guys would use the blocking script, Bun Burn would be something you’d peek at only if you felt a need for a “There but for the Grace of God go I” reminder.

    nk (dbc370)

  72. It seems an exceedingly odd position, to be in.

    There was a troll at the old contentions blog, who I got to know at another place, he was more idiosyncratic than cadet burn

    narciso (d1f714)

  73. As a st Louis City resident and family law attorney I am annoyed by this enditement. It’s no secret the Cities Democrats hate the rural republicans (of which Grietens is the embodiment). I have been involved in more than a few cases with these allegations and I have never seen a inditememt. There is a lot of violence in the city and the prosecutor is having trouble closing out cases because so many lawyers are leaving the prosecutor’s office. Waste of public resources. I wish public officials would just do their job instead of trying to score political points.

    Matthew S Wideman (5a5a16)

  74. If you guys would use the blocking script, Bun Burn would be something you’d peek at only if you felt a need for a “There but for the Grace of God go I” reminder.

    WTF are you afraid of Niedermeir?

    Ben burn (39368b)

  75. Niedermeier..

    https://g.co/kgs/npyFTc

    Ben burn (39368b)

  76. I don’t know who is wurst N iedermeier or Marmalade

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.urbandictionary.com/define.php%3fterm=Marmalard&

    Ben burn (39368b)

  77. Niedermeyer’s Mark Metcalf was the first cop to be killed on Hill Street Blues and he was also Maestro on Seinfeld. More range.

    urbanleftbehind (60b5be)

  78. The Range is microcosmic

    Ben burn (39368b)

  79. I loved Hill Street Blues. Do they have a DVD collection?

    Pinandpuller (16b0b5)

  80. Here is Greitens’ motion to dismiss the indictment. It argues that the conduct alleged is not covered by the statute under which he is charged. That it’s a Peeping Tom law, that applies only to third parties and not to participants who unclothe in front of each other.

    nk (dbc370) — 2/23/2018 @ 11:15 am

    Isn’t that Ronnie Earl’s Law:

    DeLay DeLay DeLay

    Pinandpuller (16b0b5)

  81. Hey Pin

    How about an honorable mention..ya know…just for the halibut?

    Ben burn (39368b)


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