Greitens defense looks for special prosecutor in second felony case

Attorneys for Gov. Eric Greitens hope a judge will allow for a special prosecutor in the second felony case before them.

Each side appeared for the first time in court on Tuesday for the computer tampering case. The St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office claims that Greitens directed one of his employees to send his gubernatorial campaign a list of people who donated to The Mission Continues, a veterans charity he founded.

Judge Madeline Connolly said she would wait for the grand jury to make a decision on the case. She set a follow-up hearing for July 2.

Greitens’ defense team has a pending motion to disqualify the circuit attorney from handling the computer tampering case. Mistakes made by their private investigator, William Don Tisaby, have also tainted the second case, according to attorney Jack Garvey.

“He had interviewed several of those witnesses, and we think they are now tainted with his lack of candor during the deposition regarding that investigation,” Garvey told reporters outside the courthouse. “If he has a conflict, we believe the whole office has a conflict.”

The judge in Greitens’ now-dropped invasion of privacy case appointed a special prosecutor to review that matter on Monday. Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker will now decide whether or not to refile the case.

Garvey said that a judge should exclude the Missouri Attorney General’s Office from handling the computer tampering case as a special prosecutor, citing Josh Hawley’s call for Greitens to resign amid the House of Representatives report on his 2015 extramarital affair.