He’s already facing one criminal charge, and the accusations have only gotten more disturbing.
A woman has accused Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens of coercing her to perform oral sex, undressing, kissing and touching her without her consent, and threatening to release a nude photo of her if she told anyone about their encounter, which took place in 2015.
The accusation — disturbing, detailed, and backed up by testimony from witnesses the woman spoke to at the time — was the centerpiece of a report from an independent panel of state legislators released Wednesday night. The report also included accusations that Greitens had physically abused the woman, including nonconsensual spanking and slapping.
The report followed Greitens’s February indictment on a felony charge of invasion of privacy carrying up to seven years of prison time, which saw him led away by the St. Louis sheriff’s office.
But the accusations in the report are even more damning and horrifying than the charges Greitens faces when the trial starts on March 14.
The scandal began in January when local CBS affiliate KMOV reported that Greitens cheated on his wife, secretly took photos of the woman he cheated with, and attempted to blackmail the woman into silence by threatening to release the photos. KMOV did not include the accusations that the encounter was not consensual, instead describing it as an extramarital affair — the framing Greitens has used in public statements but which the legislature’s report suggests is inaccurate.
Greitens called the report inaccurate and the result of a “political witch hunt.” The majority of the legislators on the panel were Republicans like Greitens, and they said they found the woman credible.
Greitens, a Navy SEAL and Rhodes Scholar with a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and a doctorate in refugee studies, was the country’s second-youngest governor at 43 and getting presidential buzz before the allegations first emerged. Previously a Democrat, Greitens switched parties and successfully ran for Missouri governor as a Republican in 2016. A profile during the gubernatorial campaign declared, “If the man has an Achilles’ heel, it’s perfection.”
His actual Achilles’ heel appears to be that he is accused of sexually and physically abusing a woman.
Greitens faced mounting calls for his resignation as a trial nears and new details of his offenses continue to accumulate. For now, he is not resigning in the wake of these allegations. In a news conference Wednesday in advance of the report’s release, he declared that “this was a private mistake that has nothing to do with governing,” that the matter would be put to rest at his trial, which begins on May 14, and that the woman accusing him was confused and might have just been dreaming it all.
