JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A former campaign aide to Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens testified that he was duped into taking the fall when the governor's campaign was trying to explain how it had gotten a list of top donors to a veterans' charity that Greitens had founded, according to a legislative report released Wednesday.
The report from a special House investigatory committee indicates that Greitens himself had received the donor list of The Mission Continues for the purpose of calling key supporters and explaining that he was stepping down as its chief executive in 2014. It says Greitens later directed political aides to work off the charity's list to raise money for his gubernatorial campaign -- even though he had signed an agreement never to disclose the charity's confidential donor information.
Transcripts of an aide's testimony included with the report also indicate that Greitens' campaign lied when it settled a Missouri Ethics Commission complaint last year by categorizing the charity list as an in-kind donation valued at $600 provided March 1, 2015, by Daniel Laub, who had functioned as Greitens' campaign manager.
"The whole document made me sick," Laub said in an April 18 deposition included in the report. "One, because it was misrepresented; and two, because now I was in a round of news stories falsely portraying what happened."
Greitens already faces a felony charge in St. Louis of tampering with computer data over the disclosure of a Mission Continues donor list to his political fundraiser in 2015 without the permission of the St. Louis-based charity. Greitens has not been charged with filing a false campaign report, but authorities are still reviewing the matter.
The first-term Republican governor also faces a May 14 trial in St. Louis on a felony invasion-of-privacy indictment connected with taking and transmitting a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman in March 2015. Greitens has acknowledged having a consensual affair with his former hairdresser but has denied criminal wrongdoing.
The February indictment related to sexual misconduct led the House to create an investigatory committee to evaluate whether to try to impeach and remove Greitens from office. The panel released an initial report April 11 with the woman's testimony that Greitens restrained, slapped and threatened her during sexual encounters that at times left her crying and afraid.
Information for this article was contributed by Blake Nelson of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/03/2018