(She's a Circuit Attorney, but DA fits better in a headline and is a lot more recognizable.)

Kim Gardner has been the biggest trainwreck in St. Louis for some time now. If she were a Republican, she'd be all over the news. As it is, the national media was working hard not to cover her. Or to stop covering her once it was clear she was a disaster.

But then she sucked them in with her latest story of police racism.

St. Louis' first black chief prosecutor is accusing the city, the local police union and others of a "racially motivated conspiracy" to prevent her from doing her job, invoking a rarely used federal law — passed after the Civil War to weaken the Ku Klux Klan — to wage a legal battle against her opponents. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner filed a federal lawsuit Monday outlining how she was elected in 2016 to "redress the scourge of historical inequality and rebuild trust" among communities of color. But she alleges that the city's "unprecedented appointment" of a special prosecutor in 2018 — part of a wider investigation into then-Gov. Eric Greitens — underscores a pattern of "collusive conduct" that she believes has undermined her authority.

Yes, the KKK Act. Why would a special prosecutor have been needed in the Greitens case?

A judge Friday disqualified the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office from participating in the pending perjury indictment of the man hired to investigate former Gov. Eric Greitens. Circuit Judge Bryan Hettenbach's order prohibits Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner and all of her assistants or special prosecutors from being involved in the seven-count indictment against William Don Tisaby. Lawyers for Gardner's office had sought to represent its former chief investigator in a deposition scheduled for next week, arguing that the office's only interest was protecting privileged communications and records from disclosure, not in the outcome of Tisaby's criminal case. Tisaby, 67, was indicted in June on charges of perjury and evidence tampering for allegedly lying multiple times under oath during a deposition in the run-up to Greitens' invasion of privacy trial in 2018. Gardner dismissed the case against Greitens during jury selection.

That would be former Governor Greitens. You heard a lot about the case in the media. You didn't hear how it fell apart, how Gardner's pet ex-FBI guy went on trial, while, predictably, claiming racism, after Gardner hired him to go after Greitens.

Gardner then decided to double down with the KKK Act. And the media, which reported on her claims and on the Greitens case, failed to report what actually happened in between because it's all pure fake news and narrative spinning.

Meanwhile the local media in St. Louis went on actually covering what was going on.

A St. Louis judge slammed the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office Tuesday for “standing in the way of a Grand Jury investigation.” Judge Michael Mullen is presiding over a grand jury investigation that involves the prosecutor’s office. St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner filed a motion Monday challenging the validity of a search warrant the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department obtained to search the Circuit Attorney’s Office’s files for the case.

You could think of Kim Gardner's latest stunt as an act of desperation. And she got Baltimore's Marilyn Mosby and the media to back up her false claims that she was the victim of a vast racist conspiracy. But then, Gardner being who she is, she had to blow it all up.

The St. Louis Circuit Attorney is claiming that St. Louis city police held her for over 15 minutes during a traffic stop, but police and surveillance video tell a different story. On December 23, police spotted a car driving without headlights down Market Street. Police initiated a traffic stop. St. Louis police said the driver was Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner. Gardner recently talked about the traffic stop earlier this month in an interview with CBS News where she also talks about her lawsuit accusing the city, police and police union of a racist conspiracy to take her down. “I was stopped for no lights but held for more than 15 minutes,” Gardner said in the interview. “I still don’t know the reason why.” Gardner suggested it was about intimidation and even reiterated her point on a local radio station. Real time surveillance video obtained by News 4 shows the incident. The video shows the stop lasting just over six minutes, less than the 15 minutes Gardner claimed. Jeff Roorda, with the St. Louis Police Officers Association, says the officer didn’t realize Gardner was the driver he pulled over. “She’s not talking about it publicly,” Roorda said. “She’s lying about it publicly.” You can’t see this in the video but Roorda claims an investigator from Gardner’s office arrived on the scene and engaged with the officer. “One of her investigators interfered with the traffic stop, tried to intimidate the office,” Roorda said. “I would have arrested him. You can’t just show up and interfere with traffic stop.”

Sorry New York Times, you screwed up, you trusted her.