Eric Greitens could face $140,000 in fines after watchdog group files 2nd complaint accusing the former governor of illegal campaign spending

• Former MO Gov. Eric Greitens’s gubernatorial campaign could be forced to hand over $140k in fines.
• He may have violated an agreement his campaign made with the state after previous malfeasance.
• Greitens has a history of ethics violations and has been accused of sexual misconduct. He resigned as governor in 2018.

The Campaign Legal Center on Thursday filed an ethics complaint with the Missouri Ethics Commission calling for Greitens to face over $140,000 in fines after he allegedly spent $100,000 from his defunct gubernatorial campaign account on his current Senate campaign.

According to the watchdog group, Greitens has violated an agreement his campaign made with the ethics body in 2018 after he was busted for a completely separate campaign finance violation for illegally coordinating with a PAC and a dark money group.

In February 2020, his gubernatorial campaign entered into a “consent order” with the commission that enabled him to avoid paying most of the fines as long as he promised not to break the law for 2 years. But it didn’t last, according to the Campaign Legal Center.

“It certainly appears that [Greitens] did indeed violate state campaign finance law again,” said Brendan Fischer, Director of Federal Reform at CLC, in an interview with Insider. “That means that ‘Greitens for Missouri’ could be on the hook for an additional $140,000 in fines.”

According to a separate complaint filed in October by the watchdog group, Greitens spent $100,000 on media, advertising, and consulting expenses as he was testing the waters for his 2022 Senate campaign. But that’s strictly prohibited, because the rules that govern money in politics vary widely by state.

“When Greitens ran for governor in 2016, Missouri had no contribution limits and allowed for corporate contributions,” said Fischer. Federal laws block candidates who are seeking a federal office — like a House or Senate seat — from using leftover money from a state-level campaign for their races.

“Therefore it was unlawful to use those funds for his federal campaign,” he said.

Greitens’s Senate campaign did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

‘We’ve been completely exonerated’

According to the watchdog’s complaint, Greitens specifically ran afoul of state law by failing to disclose the alleged in-kind contributions that the group highlighted in their first complaint. 

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in February 2020 that Greitens had entered into the consent order with the ethics commission, paying just $38,000 of a total of $178,000 in fines after he received polling data from a dark money group called “A New Missouri” and received an in-kind contribution from a group called “LG PAC.”

He used the opportunity to claim vindication.

“Eric Greitens is and always has been innocent of these false accusations. Our contention from the beginning was that the accusations against Mr. Greitens were baseless,” spokeswoman Catherine Hanaway told the Post-Dispatch.

—Eric Greitens (@EricGreitens) February 13, 2020

 

If the state ethics commission buys Campaign Legal’s argument, then Greitens could face the rest of the fines he was spared in 2020, an embarrassing setback for the one-time governor and current Senate candidate.

Greitens is currently embroiled in a crowded Republican primary field in the Show-Me state, competing against two Republican House members, the state’s attorney general, the pro tempore of the state senate, and Mark McCloskey, the man who famously brandished an AR-15 as Black Lives Matter protesters walked past his home.

Former President Donald Trump has not yet made an endorsement in the race.

“If he endorses in this race, I don’t care who he endorses. It’s over,” said Rep. Billy Long, one of Greitens’s opponents, in a recent interview with POLITICO.

Greitens resigned from the governor’s office in disgrace in May 2018 after a “revenge porn” scandal in which he was accused of threatening to share an image of a nude woman he’d had an extramarital affair with if she spoke out about it; Greitens denied criminal wrongdoing. He had faced possible impeachment by a Republican-led legislature and an investigation by then-Attorney General Josh Hawley, now the state’s junior US senator.

Republicans reportedly worry that Greitens could jeopardize Republicans’ chances of holding the Senate seat next year, given his scandal-plagued past and the fact that he currently leads the Republican primary field. The former governor, for his part, has sought to cast himself as an ally of former President Donald Trump, traveling to Arizona several times to promote a Republican-led “audit” of 2020 ballots in an attempt to decertify President Joe Biden’s victory.

But even if he wins the primary, Greitens’s apparent history of ethical violations — whether it be personal conduct or campaign-finance related — could come back to haunt him in the general election.