Why Eric Greitens finally stepped down

The dark money angle.

The chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence discussed soliciting contributions from “restricted donors” while he was advising future Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens’ 2016 campaign, according to a complaint filed Tuesday with the state’s ethics commission.

The complaint also says that Greitens for Missouri, which Pence chief of staff Nick Ayers advised, “funneled” donations through 501(c)(4) nonprofits, which do not have to reveal donor identities.

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Greitens, who was enmeshed in multiple scandals and had faced two potential felony court cases that were later dropped, resigned on June 1 after 17 tumultuous months in office. Greitens’ whereabouts have been unclear since he moved out of the Governor’s Mansion.

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It is unclear from Tuesday’s complaint who the prospective donor was, and whether the donor ultimately cut a check to help propel Greitens to office. But Barnes wrote that on June 29, 2016, two days after the email, a 501(c)(4) group called Freedom Frontier donated $500,000 to LG PAC, the mysterious entity that spent more than $4 million to attack Greitens’ competitors in the 2016 primary.

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In addition, Barnes said that on Dec. 4, 2015, Ayers and Gibbons exchanged emails about a “restricted donor,” though the two do not elaborate.

“There is a restricted donor that we’d like for you to reach out to when you have time,” Gibbons wrote to Ayers. “I can explain more over the phone.”

“Will buzz you soon re: restricted donor,” Ayers replied.

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[Catherine Hanaway, attorney for Greitens’ campaign,] wrote: “The Greitens for Missouri campaign never attempted to solicit or receive campaign contributions from prohibited sources. There was never any attempt by staff or consultants of the Greitens Campaign to violate campaign finance law. Missouri law was not violated — period. Any suggestion otherwise is completely false, and the facts prove that.”

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[Barnes] said the Greitens campaign violated Missouri law by purposefully concealing the ultimate source of the $4 million spent by LG PAC, as well as the source of a $1.97 million donation to the Greitens campaign from the opaque group called SEALs for Truth.

Barnes also released a Nov. 17, 2015, email exchange between Chambers and Gibbons, in which the two discuss directing two Democratic donors to an unknown 501(c)(4) “so that they don’t appear on our reports,” Chambers said.

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It is not uncommon for governors throughout the United States to use similar dark money groups.

According to a June report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, more than one in three governors holding office as of Jan. 31, 2017, can be linked to 501(c)(4) groups.

Of those, 70 percent did not voluntarily disclose their donors to the public, the CREW report noted.

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Other governors with similar organizations include Ohio’s John Kasich, New York’s Andrew Cuomo and Wisconsin’s Scott Walker.

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“This is a growing, cutting-edge way for secret money to influence politics, and we need to start paying more attention to it.”

  St Louis Post-Dispatch