When she was elected chief prosecutor in St. Louis in 2016 with the backing of far-left megadonor George Soros, Kimberly Gardner was the prototype for a new era of progressive lawfare: unabashedly liberal, the first black female to hold the job and eager to make her mark with headline-grabbing cases.
Soon, she went big-game hunting by indicting Missouri’s new Republican governor, a Navy SEAL and rising political star named Eric Greitens, by claiming he tried to blackmail his female hairdresser lover.
There was just one problem: Gardner, a Democrat, never had the evidence to back up her charges in 2018. She managed to force Greitens to resign in disgrace before a court called her bluff and she was forced to dismiss the charges.
62 acts of misconduct
As a result, Gardner’s world began unraveling. She was sued by Just the News to provide evidence in the Greitens case and penalized for failing to comply when a judge concluded she “recklessly impeded the judicial process.”
Missouri’s chief legal disciplinary officer accused Gardner of sweeping misconduct in the failed Greitens prosecution, concluding she engaged in 62 acts of misconduct that resulted in 79 false representations during the case.
Her top investigator in the case, a former FBI agent named William Tisaby, would eventually plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of evidence tampering in the case.
Even the basic job of keeping her city safe began to unravel.
A judge freed an accused murderer in St. Louis when prosecutors from Gardner’s office repeatedly missed court proceedings, rebuking her office because it “essentially abandoned its duty to prosecute those it charges with crimes.”
A young star athlete lost her legs last year when hit by a vehicle driven by a speeding motorist out on bond by Gardner’s office in a pending robbery case, despite having violated the conditions of his release many times, creating outrage.
“A rudderless ship of chaos”
Some of Gardner’s staff began resigning, and judges began to pursue contempt charges against her office for failing to stay on top of basic criminal cases.
“The Circuit Attorney’s Office appears to be a rudderless ship of chaos,” one judge declared in 2022.
Missouri’s Supreme Court also weighed in with a devastating blow, issuing a public reprimand for Gardner’s conduct in the Greitens case, concluding she violated the ethics requirements of her office. By spring 2023 she was so embattled she resigned from office.
But even resignation didn’t end the extraordinary boomerang from her conduct in the Greitens case.
A few weeks ago, Gardner admitted in a signed federal court document that she misused public funds to repay herself about $5,000 for penalties she was ordered to pay for her missteps in the Greitens case.
Federal prosecutors said in the document she signed that they had enough evidence to charge her with a federal crime for misuse of public funds.
Rather than face conviction, she reached a pretrial diversion deal that will spare her federal criminal prosecution if she repays the monies and stays out of trouble for 18 months.
Federal prosecutors found that Gardner directed her employees to issue a series of checks totaling $5,004.33 from the Contingent Fund Account in the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office to reimburse her for paying the fees and costs assessed against her personally by the Missouri Supreme Court, according to the diversion agreement she signed.
You can read the full agreement here.
Under Missouri law, the Contingent Fund was to be used only to pay such expenses for the “proper and vigorous prosecution of the duties of the Circuit Attorney’s Office,” prosecutors alleged. “The diverted funds were deposited in her personal bank account and used for her personal expenses unrelated to her job duties and the operations of the Circuit Attorney’s Office.”
She was investigated by the FBI and will be under the supervision of a pre-trial office until early 2026.
“The agreement follows a thorough investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI, during which investigators interviewed all pertinent witnesses and reviewed all available evidence and financial records,” U.S. Attorney Sayler A. Fleming said in announcing the case. “This is a just and fair outcome for a case involving a former official and the misuse of public funds that just met the minimum required under the pertinent federal criminal statute.”
Gardner’s attorney issued a statement saying his client entered into the pretrial diversion program to save the city she once served any more heartache.
“The parties agreed to resolve the matter prior to any criminal action commencing and to spare the district the time and costs associated with defending any claim of criminal wrongdoing,” attorney Ronald S. Sullivan Jr. said.
Greitens said Gardner’s fall from grace and his exoneration were the classic outcomes of a weaponized legal system, when he hopes will come to an end now that Donald Trump has won a new term in the White House he hopes will come to an end now that Donald Trump has won a new term in the White House.
“I’m grateful to have been exonerated, and I’m thankful for the country that the truth about Soros-funded prosecutors is now out,” he told Just the News. “America can now leave lawfare behind and return to the rule of law.”
Soros’ prosecutors failing nationwide
Gardner’s fall from power matches that of several other Soros-backed prosecutors in major cities. Several have been recalled or defeated at the ballot box by voters frustrated by a surge of crime they oversaw, including most recently Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon.
But Gardner’s flameout was among the most spectacular: She not only lost the trust of her constituents, she was found to have engaged in wrongdoing at multiple levels of the legal system. The failures even led Missouri GOP Attorney General Andrew Bailey to issue a lessons learned report known as the “Kim Gardner Report.”
You can read that report here.
That report summed up the failures of one of Soros’ first local prosecutors with unvarnished language.
“Ms. Gardner created a toxic office environment, and by the time she resigned from office, only a small number of people remained to conduct the work of the office,” the report reads. “Leading up to her departure, workloads had become untenable, attorneys were suffering from extreme stress and resultant medical issues, and cases were not being prosecuted.
“Ms. Gardner’s repeated failures to abide by her oath of office had severely undermined the criminal justice system, ruining countless lives.”
