Republican Gov. Eric Greitens of Missouri, who is under indictment for allegedly blackmailing a former mistress with a compromising photo, is now also being investigated as to whether his 2016 gubernatorial campaign improperly obtained a list of donors from The Mission Continues, a charity for veterans that Greitens founded and ran until stepping down the year before he began his run for governor. The Kansas City Star reports that the state attorney general, the prosecutor for the city of St. Louis, and a state House committee have all subpoenaed documents related to the matter.
At issue is the fact that charities may not give the names of their donors (which they are not obligated to disclose publicly) to political campaigns; they may only rent them at fair market value. But The Mission Continues insists it never provided any data to the Greitens campaign, and Greitens initially denied ever using a list from the charity—even though the Associated Press obtained a spreadsheet in 2016 listing more than 500 high-dollar contributors to The Mission Continues that, according to its metadata, was last saved by a Greitens campaign staffer in 2015. Indeed, of the $525,000 Greitens raised in his first two months in the race, 85 percent of it came from people on that list.
After getting fined $1,000 last year by the state ethics commission for failing to disclose the receipt of the list, Greitens claimed that the list was an in-kind donation from his campaign manager, Daniel Laub. However, The Mission Continues maintains it doesn't know who Laub is. So either the charity is lying, or someone stole the list from them. Either way, one of these investigations is likely to find out.