When disgraced former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens resigned from his position as governor of Missouri—over allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman he was having an affair with, tied her up, took photos of her, attempted to blackmail her, and subsequently participated in publicly humiliating her—everyone hoped that was the last we would hear from Mr. Greitens. Unfortunately, Greitens, like a true Trumpian psychopath, announced he would be running in the Missouri GOP primary to replace Sen. Roy Blunt’s soon-to-be-vacated seat.
While some on folks in the GOP are willing to try and finesse the dark-recent history of Greitens, even attempting to call the accusations against him “half-rape,” the fact remains: Eric Greitens has more than simply skeletons in his closet, he sounds like a true nightmare of a person. Greitens’ ex-wife, Sheena Greitens, has made a new filing in the ongoing custody case between the two. The filing, once again, calls into question Greitens’ capacity to be in charge of anything—let alone the responsibilities of a U.S. Senator.
According to the Associated Press, the affidavit Sheena Greitens filed includes statements casting doubt on the GOP candidate’s emotional and psycological stability. “Prior to our divorce, during an argument in late April 2018, Eric knocked me down and confiscated my cell phone, wallet and keys so that I was unable to call for help or extricate myself and our children from our home. I became afraid for my safety and that of our children at our home.” Sheena Gretiens also alleges physical abuse on the part of Eric Greitens, against his children, giving the example of “cuffing our then-3-year-old son across the face at the dinner table in front of me and yanking him around by his hair.”
The Washington Post reports that the affidavit also details more potential abuse, saying that after one visit with her former husband, one of their children came back “with a swollen face, bleeding gums, and a loose tooth.” According to Sheena, the child said his “dad had hit him,” but Eric Greitens had said it was an “accident” that happened while the two were “roughhousing.”
Also in the affidavit are claims by Greitens’ former wife that in the months leading up to his resignation, Greitens claimed to be suicidal, and tried emotionally extorting her in order to get her to provide “specific public political support.” An interesting note here is that Sheena Greitens writes that “multiple people other than myself were worried enough to intervene to limit Eric’s access to firearms.” This means she believes, at least in writing, that she has evidence to support her claims.
According to Sheena Greitens, Eric’s actions and emotional instability during that time led to her “sleeping in my children’s room simply to try to keep them safe.”
Finally, Sheena Greitens’ filing includes an allegation that during a trip, where she was taking her children to fly to her parents’ home, Eric Greitens—still governor at the time—“threatened to come to the airport and have me arrested for kidnapping and child abuse, saying that because of his authority as a former governor who had supported law enforcement, the police would support him and not believe me.”
Eric Greitens’s campaign manager Dylan Johnson released a statement saying this affidavit “is clearly a politically-motivated attack against him.” Johnson also said that Eric Greitens was suing for full custody of the couple’s children: “This attack is nothing more than a sad attempt to force a father to yield custody of his children to a deranged individual.”
Greitens first ran for Governor of Missouri, and won, even his ad campaign sort of exposed his strange pornographic obsession with guns and firing automatic and semi-automatic guns into trees. It was what most of us in the business would call scary and gross. Sadly, his Navy SEAL pedigree seemed to wash away all of the red flags pertaining to his character, and Greitens was elected and quickly set about signing anti-labor, pro-big business laws into effect.
Shortly into his tenure as Missouri Governor, Greitens was indicted on multiple charges connected to tying up, photographing, and then threatening a woman with blackmail, in a predatory series of heinous acts. Greitens refused to resign for what felt like forever, even as charges were added to what ought to have been a career-ending violation of another human’s rights. When Greitens finally resigned, he signed a few dozen laws into action—including a law that would have criminalized his sexual blackmail violations to a higher degree than they already were, if it had been enacted before he had been charged.
Greitens’ resignation came only after Missouri republicans made it clear they were willing to impeach him. Greitens seems to have been able to get a deal that included not being charged in another computer tampering case, wherein Greitens was suspected of having illegally used his veteran nonprofit’s fundraising list to help generate money for his gubernatorial campaign.
Greitens subsequently made it clear that he was still considering a run for higher office at some point in the future. Not because he planned on rehabilitating his image, but because, like Donald Trump, he maintains the deluded stance that he never did anything wrong. In order to make any semblance of reality out of this position, Greitens has maintained that all of these allegations—including the ones from his now-estranged wife—are politically-motivated attacks from powerful and mysterious operatives.
Since announcing his campaign to become Senator, Greitens has misrepresented the nature of the allegations against him, painting the accusations of sexual assault against him as proven to be false. In fact, at the time, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker explained that the lack of sexual assault charges against Greitens was due to two things: the statute of limitations has lapsed on some of the charges, and perhaps more crucially, “31,000 files had disappeared from Greitens' phone between an April review conducted by his legal team and a forensic examination in May ordered by a St. Louis judge.”
Greitens has not yet received the Trump seal of approval, but as Trump has shown, GOP candidates accused of serious domestic violence charges seem to be exactly the kind of pathological narcissists Trump wants to promote. Probably something to do with needing fascist officials whose motivations are easy for Trump to understand.
Check out Daily Kos Elections’ The Downballot podcast for coverage of races like Missouri’s gubernatorial clown car.