St. Louis circuit attorney Kimberly Gardner is facing heat following a seven-count felony indictment against her chief investigator for his actions in a failed prosecution against former Missouri Republican Gov. Eric Greitens.

Gardner, who was funded heavily by liberal megadonor George Soros during her election, made waves in 2018 when her office led the arrest of then-Gov. Greitens on felony invasion of privacy charges.

Greitens was accused of tying up his mistress, blindfolding her, taking a picture without her permission, and then threatening to release the picture if she ever went public about the affair. Later in the investigation, Gardner's office charged Greitens with computer tampering as it related to his campaign's alleged procurement of donor lists.

The governor later resigned after mounting pressure from his colleagues.

But now, many months later, the picture has never been found and both sets of charges have been dropped — and the investigation is coming back on Gardner.

According to a Just the News report, investigators now allege that the Greitens prosecution, which led to the governor's resignation, was built on false testimony and evidence tampering.

Most significantly, testimony transcripts and court records obtained by Just the News show the woman Gardner built her case around, beautician Katrina Sneed, testified she was asked unsolicited by Gardner's office to come forward as a witness and that she was actually reluctant to accuse Greitens because the entire story of a photo on his mobile phone may have been a dream.



"And at any point where you were in the basement with E.G. (Eric Greitens) at his home, did you see what you believed to be a phone?" Sneed was asked during an April 6, 2018 pretrial deposition with defense lawyers.



Sneed answered: "So not that's like a very vivid memory which is the reason why I haven't talked about it because I don't know if it's because I'm remembering it through a dream or I — I'm not sure, but yes, I feel like I saw it after that happened, but I haven't spoken about it because of that."

Ahead of the 2018 prosecution, Gardner had hired an out-of-state investigator, William Tisaby, to build the case against Greitens. Tisaby reportedly met with Gardner in early January to gather gather background material ahead of a meeting with the governor's paramour, Katrina Sneed. Sneed had not contacted authorities with a complaint prior to the meeting.

Gardner would eventually make the allegation that Greitens took a compromising picture of Sneed to use as blackmail, but no photo was ever found.

Last summer, Tisaby was indicted for six counts of felony perjury and one count of evidence tampering stemming from the Greitens prosecution. According to Just the News, Gardner has been ordered to appear before the grand jury in Tisaby's criminal trial. She can be seen listed as a key witness for the upcoming trial in a copy of the indictment obtained by the news outlet.

The report goes on to indicate that the indictment against Tisaby may implicate his former boss, as well.

Facts disclosed in the Tisaby indictment suggest Gardner herself was complicit in his wrongdoing by staying silent while Tisaby allegedly lied. For instance, the special prosecutors alleged that when Tisaby falsely denied during a March 2018 pretrial deposition in the Greitens case that there was a functioning videotape of the Sneed interview, Gardner did not correct him even as she questioned him.



"There is no recording of this interview?," Tisaby was asked by Gardner. "None whatsoever," he answered.



Tisaby's indictment declared that Gardner's office had videotaped the sessions and she "failed to disclose the fact for several months."



Prosecutors say a functioning videotape was found in Gardner's office, and the camera had not malfunctioned as had been claimed, according to the Tisaby indictment.

Tisaby's criminal trial is set to begin later this month.

In advance of the trial, for which she is set to appear, Gardner sued the city of St. Louis under a law passed in the 1800s to help fight the Ku Klux Klan, arguing there are "white supremacists" in the police force.

In the lawsuit, she accused city officials, police, and a special prosecutor of a "racially motivated conspiracy to deny the civil rights of racial minorities" interfering with her efforts to crack down on corruption within law enforcement.