Los Angeles,<\/p>\n
Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, already facing an invasion-of-privacy trial next month in connection with an extramarital affair, was charged separately on Friday with felony computer tampering tied to his political fund-raising.<\/p>\n
The new case was brought by the same St. Louis prosecutor two days before the statute of limitations deadline for the charge, which stems from Greitens\u2019 alleged theft of a donor list from the military veterans charity he created and ran for several years.<\/p>\n
Greitens, a Republican under mounting pressure from Missouri politicians of both parties to resign since the sex scandal broke earlier this year, called the latest case part of a \u201csmear\u201d campaign orchestrated by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, a Democrat.<\/p>\n
The governor, a former US Navy SEAL commando once seen as a rising star in the GOP, vowed to clear his name in court, declaring, \u201cPeople will know the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
His attorney Ed Dowd called the latest allegation against Greitens \u201cabsurd\u201d and said his client was innocent.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow he\u2019s being accused of stealing an email list from an organization he built? Give me a break,\u201d Dowd said in a statement. \u201cNot only did he create this list donor, by donor, friend by friend, but (the charity) still has the list.\u201d The prosecutor\u2019s office issued a summons for the governor to appear in court, rather than an arrest warrant, allowing Greitens to turn himself in for booking, a spokeswoman for Gardner said. She said the city attorney\u2019s office would coordinate with Greitens\u2019 defense team for his surrender.<\/p>\n
A similar process was followed when Gardner brought an invasion of privacy indictment against Greitens in February – a case slated to go to trial on May 10.<\/p>\n
According to Friday\u2019s criminal complaint, the electronic theft occurred in April 2015, about a month after the privacy offense was alleged to have occurred, while Greitens was running for governor.<\/p>\n
The complaint and accompanying \u201cprobable cause\u201d statement accuse Greitens of felony computer data tampering to obtain and transmit the donor list of the veterans charity The Mission Continues without permission for his own political gain.<\/p>\n
According to court documents in the case, Greitens directed another individual to obtain the donor list and furnish it to a fundraiser who was working on behalf of Greitens\u2019 gubernatorial campaign.<\/p>\n
The charity\u2019s employee handbook and its non-disclosure agreements \u201cprohibited disclosure of the donor list and the retention of it by anyone not employed by and working on behalf of The Mission Continues,\u201d the probable cause statement said.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors did not say whether anyone else faced charges in the investigation.<\/p>\n
A growing number of Missouri\u2019s elected officials, Democrats and Republicans alike, have called for Greitens\u2019 ouster since he was charged in an unrelated case in which he was accused of taking a compromising photo of a woman with whom he was involved without her consent and threatening to blackmail her with it.<\/p>\n
Both the invasion of privacy and computer tampering charges are felonies, each punishable by up to four years in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Los Angeles, Missouri Governor Eric Greitens, already facing an invasion-of-privacy trial next month in connection with an extramarital affair, was charged separately on Friday with felony computer tampering tied to his political fund-raising. The new case was brought by the same St. Louis prosecutor two days before the statute of limitations deadline for the charge, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28751,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28749\/revisions\/28751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}