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The state legislature will convene on May 18 to consider impeachment against the Republican governor who was indicted by a grand jury on felony invasion of privacy charges after using nude photos to blackmail his mistress into silence after an extra-marital affair. He faces an additional felony charge for improperly using a charity donor list for his 2016 campaign.
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“This path is not the one that I would’ve chosen for Missourians or my colleagues,” House Speaker Todd Richardson, a Republican, said. “Unfortunately this is where the facts led. We will not avoid doing what is right just because it is hard, just because it’s not the path we hoped to travel.”
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Per the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “Under state law, three-fourths of House members — 123 of 163 — had to sign the document to call themselves into a special session, a power generally reserved for the governor. In the Senate, 26 of 34 members had to sign in order to trigger the session.”
Ultimately, 29 Senators and 138 House members approved the measure.
The Missouri state legislature had previously released a special investigative report with the full, extremely graphic details of the governor’s sordid and abusive behavior towards a woman who had been his hairdresser.
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Having convinced her to come to his home while his wife was away, he lured her to his basement, had her change into his shirt and pajama bottoms under the pretense of demonstrating an exercise, and then blindfolded her and taped her hands to a set of gymnastic pull-up rings.
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He then ripped off her shirt, pulled down her pants, and took a photo of her naked body with his cellphone while she was hanging from the rings. He then threatened to release the photos if she ever told anyone what had just happened. The victim testified that Greitens told her:
“You’re not going to mention my name. Don’t even mention my name to anybody at all, because if you do, I’m going to take these pictures, and I’m going to put them everywhere I can. They are going to be everywhere, and then everyone will know what a little whore you are.”
He then began kissing his way down her body until she protested so much that he let her down from the rings and pulled her into a bear hug on the floor. While his victim lay on the floor crying from the humiliation of the encounter, the governor pulled down his pants, took his penis out and placed it inches away from his hairdresser’s face. He then coerced her to perform oral sex on him before allowing her to leave.
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The woman eventually revealed the details of her encounter to her ex-husband, who summarized his ex’s experience at the hands of the governor as having “been half-raped and blackmailed,” an assessment the victim concurred with.
The report on Governor Greitens’ alleged criminal sexual assault and extortion is the culmination of a long downward fall for the former Rhodes Scholar and decorated Navy Seal. While the calls from opposition Democrats for his resignation started when he was indicted on the felony charges back in February, they reached a fever pitch once the explicit details of the governor’s violent sexual assault were published in the investigation, ultimately culminating into today’s announcement for a special session.
Thus far, the governor has refused to resign and has called the accusations against him a politically motivated “witch hunt,” a common refrain for guilty Republicans these days.
Greitens continues to deny any wrongdoing, but his stubborn rejection of responsibility will only further sully the name of yet another Republican official to go down in utter, humiliating disgrace.
Follow Brian Tyler Cohen on Facebook and Twitter.
