The already murky “invasion of privacy” case against Gov. Eric Greitens has gotten murkier with the revelation in Breitbart.com that Greitens’s accuser was being manipulated by House Democrats.
At the center of this new development is Rep. Stacey Newman, a St. Louis Democrat. According to Steve Hantler writing for Breitbart, Newman texted the accuser, “K.S.,” a day after the story broke in January, “my House Dem leadership insist you need a lawyer fast.”
Newman and K.S. have a history. Hantler reproduced a Newman Facebook post from a Planned Parenthood event in April 2017 with the perfectly Orwellian name, “Moral Missouri Rally.” K.S. is shown in the accompanying photo with her face redacted.
Wrote Newman at the time, “Fun to introduce on the House floor our longtime family hairdresser, who as a new activist brought her mom and cousins to the state Capitol for the first time.”
A few weeks ago, Newman commented on Facebook. “Believe me, some of us are doing everything we can with the impeachment process to get him out of there now.”
Newman had been doing quite a bit all along. On the same day, she asked K.S. to talk to Democratic lawyers, she texted, “I may need to talk w your lawyers.” Says Hantler, “A politician communicating with a witness in a case of this kind is just plain wrong.” And K.S. is not just a witness but the witness, Greitens’s sole accuser.
A week after the first two texts, Newman texted K.S. again, this time with an even more problematic message: “STL Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, she said you can have your attorney call her.”
Argues Hantler with some justification, “This [text] shows a Missouri House Democrat conspiring with a public prosecutor — Democrat St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner — in order to coax a witness into bringing a charge.”
Gardner brought charges after this text on the flimsiest grounds. It is hard not to see the complicity between Gardner, a Democrat, and two Planned Parenthood activists, one a legislator.
Three months to the day before K.S. went public, Planned Parenthood sued the state of Missouri over a law that Greitens signed into effect. This case gets curioser and curioser by the day.