The Missouri state Republican Party has finally broken its silence following the news that Republican Gov. Eric Greitens was indicted by a federal grand jury for one count of felony invasion of privacy charge stemming from a 2015 extramarital encounter.

In a statement released by the Missouri State GOP, Sam Cooper, Executive Director of the Missouri Republican Party, stated that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner allegedly received $200,000 from “George Soros groups” making the indictment a “political hit job.” Gardner, who opened the investigation into the allegations against Greitens last month, alleged yesterday that Greitens snapped a photo of an unidentified nude woman — blindfolded and hands bound — without her knowledge in March 2015, and later threatened to release the photograph. The Missouri governor is married with children.

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“Kim Gardner has received more than $200,000 from George Soros groups,” the statement from the GOP read. “Missourians should see this for what it is, a political hit job. This law has never been prosecuted in this way and it is safe to say if Eric Greitens wasn’t governor, it wouldn’t have been this time earlier. We have a progressive anti-law enforcement Democrat wanting to single-handedly oust a law-and-order governor.”

The law the statement refers to is a bill that was approved in the state House to criminalize “revenge porn,” making it a class D felony to share sexually explicit images or recordings without the consent of the person pictured. The bill was sponsored by Republican Rep. Jim Neely. The bill says that it is a class E felony for those who threaten to disseminate private sexual images.

Hence, Greitens could face up to four years in prison.

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Over the years, liberal billionaire George Soros has been a favorite target of conspiratorial Republicans who pin the blame on him for whatever their grievance du jour is. Indeed, many conservative talking heads caricature him as some sort of political mastermind, without whom liberal causes would be rudderless. (Salon's Amanda Marcotte has written in-depth about the far-right's Soros obsession.) As the Parkland shooting survivors have raised their voices in protest, urging lawmakers to impose stricter gun regulations, some conservatives have claimed Soros is also the force behind the rebellion.

CNN commentator Jack Kingston, a former Republican congressman, said “organized groups that are out there, like George Soros, are always ready to take up the charge". He also suggested to Anderson Cooper that the Parkland shooting survivors were being paid to protest.

As Marcotte wrote, the GOP’s default move to cast blame on Soros is often driven by anti-Semitism.

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Marcotte explained:

"The tendency of right-wingers, especially of the Trumpian variety, to pin everything they don't like on Soros — a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust that was justified by similar conspiracy theories — is a chilling reminder of how much these kind of fringe fascistic ideas have been mainstreamed in American conservatism over the past decade."

Alas, here we are: the Missouri GOP honestly believes that the Missouri governor, who allegedly threatened to release nude pictures without consent, is merely a part of Soros’ masterplan.