Greitens Had Pledged to Mission Continues Not to Use Donors List
JEFFERSON CITY — Gov. Eric Greitens oversaw the transfer of a list of donors to the charity he founded to his campaign for political fundraising purposes, according to a report issued Wednesday by a group of lawmakers investigating the governor.
Additionally, a former Greitens campaign staffer told Attorney General Josh Hawley's office that he did not, in fact, give the campaign a list of people who gave money to The Mission Continues — the charity Greitens founded well before his political career began — a finding that contradicts a settlement agreement Greitens signed last year while admitting wrongdoing to the Missouri Ethics Commission.
"Instead, (the list) was contributed by Greitens himself through his directions" to a former charity worker who also was employed by one of Greitens' personal corporations, the Special Investigative Committee on Oversight said in a report.
Lawmakers also reported that a previous campaign staffer felt misled about reporting the list by Greitens' campaign manager and current senior adviser, Austin Chambers. Greitens last year settled a complaint with the ethics commission and amended previous filings to name Danny Laub, the former staffer, as the source of the list.
Laub said he never consented to being named as the contributor of the donor list and said Greitens' settlement agreement "made me sick ... because it was misrepresented (and) because I was in a round of news stories falsely portraying what happened," according to the report.
Chambers told the News-Leader that the settlement was not a setback but was "a minor campaign finance reporting issue" that had been settled, according to previous reporting.
In an email to the News-Leader on Wednesday, Chambers denied misleading Laub in an attempt to cover up wrongdoing, calling Laub "a disgruntled former employee" whose "testimony is inaccurate."
The report on Greitens' campaign and charity actions was made public at 3 p.m. Wednesday and follows up on the committee's first report and addendum, which pertained to the affair the governor had with a woman who cut his hair. The first report included testimony from the woman, whom lawmakers deemed credible and who described alleged sexual misconduct at Greitens' hands.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, a Democrat, last month charged Greitens with a felony on suspicion of stealing a donor list from The Mission Continues. Her charging decision came days before the statute of limitations on the alleged offense would have run out.
Attorney General Josh Hawley said last month his investigation uncovered evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Greitens in connection with the Republican governor's campaign and the list of donors to the charity. Hawley told reporters he gave his evidence to Gardner, who is also prosecuting a felony invasion of privacy charge against Greitens that is slated to go to trial in less than two weeks.
Greitens' popularity has dropped amid his multiplying scandals, though recent polling indicates that a majority of Missouri Republicans continue to support him as he faces calls from the left and the right for his resignation and impeachment.
Greitens left the Capitol via the building's basement parking garage at about 12:45 p.m. Wednesday. He did not respond when a reporter asked for comment about the report or whether he photographed the woman.
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Greitens' response
In a statement, Greitens' campaign attorney — Catherine Hanaway, whom Greitens defeated in the 2016 GOP primary — said the report "does a tremendous disservice to the U.S. and Missouri Constitutions" by undercutting Greitens' right to due process.
Hanaway targeted committee chairman Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, by saying that he never allowed Greitens' campaign to present its side of the story by testifying or providing documents.
"If a witness made an allegation, it was accepted as true and republished," Hanaway said.
"The 'big revelation' comes at the end of the report where former campaign manager Danny Laub attempts to say that he was falsely listed as the contributor of the list to the campaign," Hanaway continued. "But if you read the actual testimony, Mr. Laub says Mr. Chambers called him, told him that his name would appear on the campaign finance report, that he was being listed because he was at the campaign at the time—and Mr. Laub agreed.
"If the committee had heard from the campaign, it would have learned that Mr. Laub had possession of the list in early 2015, that the campaign was not formed until then, and that Mr. Laub was the top staff person on the campaign when it began."
Hanaway went on to say that "this should have been an open process" and reiterated Chambers' year-old contention that "this is, at its core, a minor campaign finance issue."
"If Chairman Barnes were on a quest to find out the truth, he has unfinished business to conduct," Hanaway concluded. "He ought to ask the campaign for its version of events before acting as judge and jury in a matter that was settled long ago."
The report was supported by House leadership in a news release that includes a statement from Barnes.
"The report shows the governor took advantage of a charity that works hard to take care of our veterans," Barnes said. "The committee found that the Mission Continues was the true owner of the fundraising list and its property was taken without permission and used inappropriately for political gain."
From charity official to politician
Greitens helped start the pro-veteran nonprofit The Mission Continues in 2007 and served for several years as its leader. He left the charity in 2014, shortly before he started his political career. A Democrat-turned-Republican, Greitens was elected governor in November 2016.
The report into his charity involvement is presented as a series of 94 findings accompanied by relevant exhibits and evidence.
The committee noted that its first subpoena for the new report was to obtain testimony from Michael Hafner, a GOP consultant who worked for Greitens' campaign.
In January 2015, Hafner and Laub, the former campaign manager, received a list of donors to Greitens' charity from Krystal (Taylor) Proctor, a former employee of The Mission Continues who worked for Greitens' personal company, The Greitens Group, and also worked on the governor's campaign.
Proctor also testified after receiving a subpoena. The committee noted that she worked "at (Greitens') direction" through her time as an employee, which began January 2011. Her salary and expenses were split between The Mission Continues and The Greitens Group.
The committee also spoke with a lawyer and current and former The Mission Continues staff through early April as well as with Dave Whitman, a former Greitens employee who is currently serving a sentence at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield for defrauding Greitens. (Whitman declined to speak to the committee on the record.)
The other consultant who received the list, Laub, declined to testify before the committee. But Laub was deposed by Hawley, which turned over that transcript to the committee. The report says both Laub and Hafner were advising Greitens about a run for office by early 2014.
New findings
Greitens and Proctor signed nondisclosure agreements as employees of The Mission Continues, according to the report. Greitens' agreement required him to avoid disclosing donor identities and contact information as well as any "lists" or "databases" and "similar or dissimilar information relating to the operations or activities of" the charity.
The governor had his campaign staff sign similar pledges, which included prohibitions against disclosing information about donor lists and other information, the News-Leader previously reported.
Greitens also signed a charity handbook that stressed the importance of not sharing confidential information about the nonprofit's "donor material" and other information.
A charity official told the committee that while Greitens was a critical part of The Mission Continues' fundraising efforts, he was not solely responsible for raising money for the nonprofit. And the list of more than 500 donors who had given more than $1,000 to The Mission Continues was not just limited to Greitens' friends, family and supporters, according to the report.
"Greitens, did, in fact, put substantial labor into cultivation of donors for the list," the report says. "However, Greitens earned a salary as CEO of TMC for most of that time, and other people also put labor into cultivation of the list."
The committee noted that "an email suggests Greitens began considering a run for statewide office at least as early as October 16, 2013," when he was contacted by a political operative who sent him "(Former State Auditor and gubernatorial candidate Tom) Schweich's donor list."
Laub told Hawley's office that "the later, the better" as far as Greitens' formal declaration for office; the governor's campaign committee was formally organized in February 2015.
On May 8, 2014, Greitens, Proctor and The Mission Continues officials Spencer Kympton and Lyndsey Reichardt received an email from nonprofit employee Lori Stevens that included "a list of TMC donors" labeled "All donors 1K total and up — as of 5-7-14.xlsx," the report said.
Laub was asked to sign an NDA about two weeks later that protected disclosure of donor lists to outside parties. He was formally hired in December 2014, according to the report, and was paid by another one of Greitens' limited-liability corporations.
Hafner started working for pay from one of Greitens' companies in 2015, according to the report, but Greitens' committee "did not report Laub's or Hafner's pay as in-kind contributions" to the campaign.
Laub and Hafner received the list from Proctor in January 2015, according to an email obtained by the committee.
Kympton testified that Greitens' NDA applied to the donor list and that he was not aware of any authorization for Greitens to use the donor list for political purposes. Reichardt told the committee the donor list and other material was provided for the purpose of allowing Greitens to make phone calls as he transitioned away from the charity.
Kympton also said he "first became aware of Grietens' political use of TMC resources in August 2016, but did not yet have knowledge of the Greitens campaign's use of the TMC donor list," the report says.
At that time, Kympton communicated with Greitens' senior adviser and campaign manager Austin Chambers. The charity official told Chambers that he was concerned about Greitens' advertising and fundraising campaign that could "jeopardize" The Mission Continues' nonprofit status, the report says. For example, Greitens' campaign website included the use of the phrase "The Mission Continues" on a fundraising page.
Chambers replied that after consulting with attorney Michael Adams, some information on Greitens' campaign material was changed.
"Our goal from the beginning has always been to protect The Mission Continues, and keep it separate from the campaign. As you know, Eric cares deeply about protecting the brand and image of TMC," Chambers wrote in an email obtained by the committee, adding that "the ad will remain on air, and there will be additional advertisements that mentions (sic) the great work of The Mission Continues."
Adams also made assurances that Greitens' campaign "would do nothing to jeopardize (the charity's) tax-exempt status," the committee noted. But he and the campaign "failed to notify TMC that the campaign was using the TMC donor list for political fundraising."
Both Chambers and Adams were later involved in setting up A New Missouri, Inc., a nonprofit formed to support Greitens' agenda. A New Missouri does not disclose its donors and is not required to do so.
Proctor said multiple times that Greitens had emphasized to her "the importance of the TMC donor list to support future political fundraising efforts," according to the report. She later testified that "there was no confusion" about sharing the list at Greitens' direction with Laub and Hafner — their intent was to use it for "'political fundraising," she said.
Hafner testified he had never before used a charity's donor list as part of his involvement in a campaign. He later worked for the campaign of one of Greitens' Republican rivals, John Brunner, and was no longer working for Greitens for Missouri by April 22, 2015, the report says.
On that day, the report says, Proctor sent the list to Meredith Gibbons, Greitens' campaign finance director. Proctor said she shared the list with the understanding that it "would be used for political fundraising" and that Greitens instructed her to use donor information for such purposes.
After the election
The report noted that Greitens was sanctioned by the Missouri Ethics Commission and signed a consent order in which he "admitted that the campaign used the list to contact donors" and described the list as a $600 donation from Laub.
"In fact, however, the list was not an in-kind contribution from Danny Laub," the committee reported. "Laub was never an employee of TMC, and thus, was not able to authorize disclosure or use of the list; and the list was sent to Laub and Hafner by Proctor at Greitens' direction."
While being deposed by Hawley, Laub said Chambers called him in April 2017 and asked if the campaign could "put (Laub's) name down" in connection with the ethics complaint.
"And then Austin says to me, 'I don't know if you know this, but there's a bullshit ethics complaint filed against us by the Democrat party about this Mission Continues donor list.'" Laub said. "And (Chambers) said, 'I need someone who was on the campaign at the time, because I wasn't, to put their name down so we can get this bullshit complaint dismissed.'"
Laub said Chambers "affirmatively misled" him about what it meant to "put (his) name down" as the donor of the list, which "was not what I thought I told Austin on the phone he could use my name for."
Laub added that he would not have agreed to put his name down as the donor of the list "because that's untrue." He called Greitens' amended campaign report to settle the ethics complaint "false in every particular," and the committee reported his testimony as saying that "everything of substance in the settlement agreement between Greitens and the MEC was untrue."
Chambers told the News-Leader in April 2017 that "neither the governor nor the campaign were found (guilty of an ethics violation. This was a minor campaign finance reporting issue that has been settled."
Roy Temple, the former state Democratic party chairman, filed the initial ethics complaint that led to Greitens' April 2017 settlement and reporting of the list. Earlier this year, Temple filed a second ethics complaint alleging that Greitens lied as part of the settlement.
Greitens' campaign has continued to write checks to Chambers and the Georgia-based consulting company he works for through early 2018, according to MEC filings.
In a statement to the News-Leader, Chambers offered his own side of the story.
"Here are the facts: I was not involved with or employed by the Greitens campaign during the time in question surrounding The Mission Continues donor list," Chambers said. "I was first made aware of the alleged issue regarding The Mission Continues donor list in the fall of 2016 when it was raised by the Associated Press. In the course of responding to a complaint filed by the former state Democratic Party Chairman, the campaign found that the donor list in question was in Laub's possession when the campaign was formed. This was supported by records retained by the campaign.
"Prior to the settlement with the MEC, I relayed this finding to Laub in a brief phone conversation. Laub did not provide differing facts. To say that I provided false information, or misled Laub to go along with false information, is absolutely untrue."
The company was founded by Nick Ayers, now chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence and a core figure in Greitens' campaign. Ayers is not named in the report.
The legislative committee's second full report is accompanied by pages of transcripts, many of which are transcripts of depositions Hawley turned over to lawmakers. The committee noted straightaway that "its work is not complete with this report, and that, in addition to other actions, subsequent reporters may be issued."
This is a developing story and may be updated.
Source: https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/politics/2018/05/02/gov-greitens-took-charity-donor-list-without-permission-missouri-lawmakers-say/572814002/
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