ST. LOUIS — Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, already facing a felony invasion-of-privacy charge related to blindfolding and taking a photo of a woman, was charged Friday with two felony counts of computer tampering.
The new charge stems from investigations by the state attorney general and the St. Louis circuit attorney into claims that Greitens used the donor list of a veterans charity to raise funds for his 2016 gubernatorial campaign without the organization’s knowledge or consent.
On Tuesday, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said he was turning over evidence to the circuit attorney ahead of a pending statute of limitations deadline this Sunday.
The governor, as he has after every accusation, came out swinging. He accused the circuit attorney of wasting taxpayer money and indicated he’d go to trial.
“I will have my day in court. I will clear my name. This prosecutor can come after me with everything she’s got, but as all faithful people know: In time comes the truth. And the time for truth is coming,” he said in a statement.
Greitens accused Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner of bringing the charges because the original case against him was falling apart. Last week, a special state House committee released a report about the incident that led to that case in which a woman accused him of unwanted sexual contact. The woman, Greitens’s former hairdresser, said that in 2015, before his gubernatorial run, he groped her and slapped her. She also said in testimony that Greitens blindfolded her and taped her hands to exercise equipment and then took a photo of her and that she felt “coerced, maybe,” to perform oral sex on him.
Greitens has admitted to an extramarital affair but denied wrongdoing. A trial in that case is scheduled for May 14.
According to documents filed Friday by Gardner’s office, a source within the nonprofit the Mission Continues admitted to helping a “political fundraiser working on behalf of Greitens for Missouri” transmit the donor list “at the direction of the defendant” in violation of Missouri law and the charity’s internal policies. Greitens, a former Navy SEAL, established the organization in 2007 to help veterans reintegrate through community service after returning from war. He left it in 2014, a year before announcing his candidacy for the governor’s office.
“We believe the evidence we have will support a finding of probable cause that the governor obtained the list, transmitted the list, used the list without the permission of the Mission Continues, and that he did so for political fundraising purposes,” Hawley said. “That is a finding that would support prosecution in this case.”
The charges Friday add a new layer of trouble for the embattled governor. A Bronze Star recipient and former Rhodes Scholar, Greitens beat the incumbent state attorney by six percentage points in 2016 and was quickly hailed as a rising star in the Republican Party within and beyond his state. But his pugilistic outsider stance quickly soured in Jefferson City, and he has found himself with few allies as his troubles have mounted.
Every senior Republican officeholder in the state and Greitens’s top private donor called immediately for him to resign. A resolution to impeach sits on the Speaker’s desk awaiting action. Republicans in the House, meanwhile, are circulating a petition to convene a special session in late May to consider impeachment proceedings.
Former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, the former first lady, were unable to attend; a spokeswoman said that Mr. Carter would be on a private trip overseas and that Mrs. Carter was recovering from recent surgery.
The 90-minute service, set to begin at 11 a.m. local time, has been in the works for years. Mrs. Bush herself selected the three eulogists: her son Jeb Bush, the former two-term governor of Florida; Susan Baker, a longtime friend and the wife of James A. Baker III, the former secretary of state; and Jon Meacham, a presidential historian who published a biography of her husband in 2015.
PhotoThe program for services,, at the public visitation on Friday. Credit
Pool photo by Richard Carson
The funeral capped a weeklong period of mourning in Houston. There were formal gatherings and impromptu tributes at City Hall, the police headquarters, the elder Mr. Bush’s office, and Barbara Bush Elementary School in the city’s Energy Corridor.
At the school on Wednesday, the principal, Theresa Rose, wore pearls in honor of Mrs. Bush, who had been a regular presence there since the school opened in 1992. Mrs. Bush came to the school a couple of years ago to read to the students, a day Rahul Sanklecha, 10, still remembers. He was in the third grade, and she read a children’s book about Abraham Lincoln called “Abe Lincoln: The Boy Who Loved Books.”
“Her schedule is busy, but she came out to read to us,” said Rahul, now a fifth grader. “I’m really proud that I represent a school named after her.”
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The funeral on Saturday was to be a private, invitation-only service for 1,500 relatives, friends and dignitaries, but will be nationally televised. The viewing on Friday was for everyone else: ordinary men, women and children, many of them from Houston and other parts of Texas.
They came in suits and dresses, nurses’ scrubs and football jerseys, jeans and school uniforms. They were young and they were old. They were white, black, Asian, Latino. Inside the red-brick church, on the candlelit chancel in front of the altar, Mrs. Bush lay in a closed silver coffin adorned with a multitude of bright flowers. About halfway through the viewing, roughly 3,000 visitors flowed past throughout the afternoon, pausing to bow their heads or make the sign of the cross.
“I just wanted to be there to honor her,” said Barbara McMahon, 78, a retired librarian who lives in Houston and who wore her pearl earrings to St. Martin’s on Friday. “It does make me sad, because she’s such an incredible example, and I don’t know how many more people there are to be that kind of example.”
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Parts of the neighborhood surrounding the church were effectively shut down to most traffic on Friday. Members of the public were barred from approaching the church on foot or in personal vehicles. Instead, they gathered at the nearby Second Baptist Church, passed through security and then boarded buses that took them to and from St. Martin’s.
After the funeral, a motorcade was to proceed through Memorial Park and travel more than 90 miles northwest to College Station, where Mrs. Bush was to be buried in a private service at Texas AM University, on the grounds of the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. Mrs. Bush was to be buried beside her daughter Robin, who died of leukemia at the age of 3 in 1953.
Before arriving at the library grounds, the motorcade in College Station will turn left on George Bush Drive and then right on Barbara Bush Drive.
