Eric Greitens wants back in the Navy. The Navy might not want Eric Greitens.

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 31, 2019 · 2:11 PM PDT

2019/05/31 · 14:11

no image description available — Former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens

While former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican who resigned in disgrace last year as part of a plea deal with prosecutors, reportedly has been telling friends that he plans to deploy to the Middle East with the Navy this fall, the Washington Post reported Friday that there’s one big potential stumbling block: The Navy may not want him back.

Greitens served as a Navy SEAL before he first ran for office in 2016, and he heavily promoted his combat experience in that successful bid for governor. However, Greitens’ brief political career began to unravel in early 2018 in the face of allegations that he’d sexually assaulted the woman he was having an affair with and blackmailed her. Greitens ended up getting indicted by local prosecutors twice: Once on allegations of first-degree felony invasion of privacy related to this story, and once for unrelated charges of computer tampering involving his charity.

The GOP-led state legislature, which had little love for Greitens after spending a year feuding with him, also began to move towards removing him from office. The governor eventually resigned in exchange for the tampering charges getting dropped. A short time later, the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office also announced that was dropping the charges in the sexual assault and blackmail case because it believed it was impossible to successfully prosecute Greitens.

Greitens kept a fairly low-profile over the following few months, but in late May, the Kansas City Star reported that he was telling his allies that he planned to deploy to the Middle East as well as publish another book this year. The former governor also doesn’t seem to think that his political career is over despite all that’s happened. The paper also wrote that, while Greitens showed little interest in running for his old job next year, he was eyeing a 2022 campaign for the Senate seat held by fellow Republican Roy Blunt.

However, while the Navy confirmed to the Star that Greitens had indeed transferred from the reserves back to active status, he may not be getting the post he planned for. Washington Post reporter Dan Lamothe reported on Friday that three unnamed Navy officials said that, while it’s possible that Greitens will keep serving, the Navy hasn’t decided if he should be allowed to deploy outside of Missouri.

Adm. John Richardson, who serves as chief of naval operations, also sent out an email on May 26 to fellow admirals saying that “recent events involving the transition of Mr. Greitens” have “excited a persistent frustration of mine that I want to address more comprehensively.”

Richardson added that the service's methods for addressing personal misconduct are “too cumbersome and slow” and that they lead to the Navy keeping people “we’d rather see dismissed from our ranks.” Richardson, who Lamothe writes “call[ed] for a new 30-day review of how the service handles personnel cases involving personal misconduct allegations, including Greitens’s,” confirmed that he’d sent out the email.

Despite Greitens’ fall from grace, he still has some high-profile friends in the government. Lamothe reports that retired Adm. Joseph Kernan, who now serves as an undersecretary of defense, spent January talking to the Navy about a possible return to active service for Greitens. Thanks to Kernan, the top admiral in charge of personnel spoke to the former governor and raised the possibility that Mike Pence himself could request Greitens by name for an assignment. An unnamed official close to Pence denies that he had any interest in helping Greitens revive his military career.

Eric Greitens wants back in the Navy. The Navy might not want Eric Greitens.

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