\n<\/p>\n
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.<\/p>\n
In late July, Missouri state troopers walked into St. Louis County government headquarters and seized the cellphone of one of the most prominent Democratic officials in this solidly red state.<\/p>\n
Two days later, a grand jury indicted Sam Page, the St. Louis County executive. Acting as a special prosecutor, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, secured two felony counts of stealing by deceit and two election-law violations.<\/p>\n
For Bailey, bringing felony charges against the leader of the state\u2019s biggest blue stronghold added to the resume of a MAGA warrior who had already interviewed for a key position in President Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n
Less than three weeks later, Trump tapped Bailey to help run the FBI. He\u2019ll serve as co-deputy director with Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and conservative podcast host. Bailey said he\u2019ll resign as Missouri\u2019s attorney general on Sept. 8 to take the post. A spokesperson said he was not taking questions from the media.<\/p>\n
The case against Page was the latest in a string of legal strikes against Democrats by Bailey, bringing the full weight of the state on a political adversary. It wasn\u2019t about bribery or self-dealing. Page, the top elected official in a county with about 1 million residents, wasn\u2019t accused of stealing a dime for himself.<\/p>\n
Instead, the charges turned on something mundane: the printing and mailing of flyers weeks before about a measure on the ballot in April \u2014 the kind of informational material local governments often send to voters and the sort of action that experts said had never led to criminal charges in Missouri.<\/p>\n
The election asked voters to give the County Council the power to fire the county\u2019s department heads and its top attorney. Page spent more than $25,000 of taxpayer money to print and mail flyers to voters outlining the measure. The flyer at issue did not overtly tell voters to vote no, but it listed groups that opposed it, including the police board and NAACP, and it quoted a state judge\u2019s ruling that the ballot language was misleading and unfair. It also suggested that a yes vote would allow directors to be fired for political reasons or in emergencies and that a no vote would maintain stable leadership.<\/p>\n
Documents filed in the case against Page also showed that he did not follow a county lawyer\u2019s advice to make some changes to the flyer. Bailey alleged that the flyer crossed the line from providing information, which is legal, to urging a no vote, which he said was an unlawful use of tax dollars \u2014 and, in his view, grounds to seek felony charges.<\/p>\n
If convicted on the most serious count, Page could face three to 10 years in prison and $10,000 in fines. He could also face removal from office and sanctions against his medical license; he\u2019s an anesthesiologist, though he doesn\u2019t currently practice full time.<\/p>\n
\u201cPublic officials must follow the law,\u201d Bailey wrote in a news release, \u201cand my Office will work to ensure that they always do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The playbook was familiar: Trump has talked about arresting California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Federal agents just raided the home of John Bolton, the former national security adviser in the first Trump administration and a prominent Trump critic.<\/p>\n
Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Ed Martin, who had worked as an attorney in Missouri, to head the U.S. Department of Justice\u2019s Weaponization Working Group and to investigate two prominent Democrats, New York Attorney General Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff of California, on allegations of mortgage fraud.<\/p>\n
\u201cBailey really was auditioning for that role, or something like it, and what better way to show loyalty than to do exactly what Trump wants on the federal level, but replicated on the state level,\u201d said Paul Nolette, the director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University. \u201cIt\u2019s a template for what type of approach Bailey is going to take on the federal level. Political opponents are going to get targeted.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bailey has called himself a defender of the rule of law, portraying his high-profile lawsuits and investigations in Missouri as necessary to protect the state from what he has described as illegal or unconstitutional actions by the federal government and abandonment of the rule of law by the left.<\/p>\n
St. Louis County Executive Sam Page<\/span><\/p>\n Page became county executive in 2019 after a federal corruption case toppled his predecessor, Steve Stenger. Page had led a bipartisan bloc on the County Council against Stenger, who was sentenced to nearly four years in federal prison for a pay-to-play scheme that steered county contracts to political donors. (St. Louis County wraps around \u2014 but does not include \u2014 the much smaller independent city of St. Louis.)<\/p>\n The cooperative spirit collapsed as Page set St. Louis County on the aggressive end of Missouri\u2019s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing early emergency orders limiting gatherings and indoor dining. That stance put him at odds with state officials who were moving to curb local power.<\/p>\n Despite this and other political battles, Page has twice won countywide elections \u2014 first in 2020 to finish Stenger\u2019s term, then in 2022 to a full four-year term. He has said he will decide by the end of the year whether to run again in 2026. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think I did anything wrong,\u201d he said in brief remarks to local news reporters at a ribbon-cutting for a county road project.<\/p>\n A Page spokesperson referred questions to his lawyer, Jeff Jensen, a former U.S. attorney in Missouri during Trump\u2019s first term. Jensen did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n Many have questioned the legitimacy of the case and whether Bailey\u2019s successor, Catherine Hanaway, will see it through. Hanaway, also a former U.S. attorney, as well as a former speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives, did not respond to questions.<\/p>\n \u201cIt certainly seems, based on my reading of it, a stretch,\u201d said Peter Joy, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in legal ethics and trial practice. \u201cIt would be an uphill battle for the state to make this charge stick.\u201d<\/p>\n Ken Warren, a political scientist and pollster at Saint Louis University, said the charges were \u201ctotally phony\u201d but that \u201cthe more outrageous you are, the more you are going to attract the attention of Donald Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLet\u2019s say the same thing occurred but the county executive happened to be a Republican,\u201d Warren said. \u201cWould Bailey go after him? Of course not.\u201d<\/p>\n Missouri has become a proving ground of sorts for Trump appointees. Martin \u2014 a longtime state GOP insider with a record of stoking controversies \u2014 was named the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. After it became apparent he couldn\u2019t win Senate confirmation, he was moved to the administration\u2019s pardon office and the Justice Department\u2019s weaponization group.<\/p>\n John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor general and anti-abortion activist who last year helped bankroll a campaign to defeat Missouri\u2019s abortion rights ballot issue, defended Trump\u2019s claim to presidential immunity before the Supreme Court. Now, as U.S. solicitor general, he serves as the federal government\u2019s top advocate before the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n Will Scharf, who lost a primary bid last year to unseat Bailey, pivoted straight into Trump\u2019s legal inner circle. Then there\u2019s Billy Long. The six-term ex-congressman was confirmed in June as IRS commissioner \u2014 despite having once pushed to abolish the agency \u2014 amid scrutiny over his ties to questionable tax-credit plans. He was recently ousted and said he will become ambassador to Iceland.<\/p>\n That roster of loyalists is no accident. Over the past two decades, Missouri has moved from being a competitive bellwether state to a deep-red stronghold, with a political environment that rewards the kind of hard-line conservatism and culture-war ethos that Trump prizes.<\/p>\n John Danforth, a Republican who served as Missouri\u2019s attorney general from 1969 to 1976 and then as a U.S. senator until 1995, said the office has shifted dramatically from its core mission. Under him, he said, the job was to represent state agencies, handle every felony appeal, respond to legal opinion requests and manage litigation with a small staff. Asked about a move last year in which Bailey investigated a St. Louis-area school district after a student was beaten during school hours \u2014 blaming its diversity policies and removal of resource officers for safety failures \u2014 Danforth said, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have done it.\u201d<\/p>\n As the state has shifted right, many races are effectively decided in the primary. Candidates don\u2019t need to win over most voters, according to political experts and observers \u2014 just the small, very political group that shows up for low-turnout, winner-take-all primaries. That favors hard-line candidates.<\/p>\n Nowhere is that change clearer than in the attorney general\u2019s office.<\/p>\n Bailey is a U.S. Army veteran who served two tours in Iraq as an armored cavalry officer. He started his career as an assistant Missouri attorney general, then worked as a prosecutor. He joined the governor\u2019s office as deputy general counsel in 2019 and later served as general counsel to then-Gov. Mike Parson.<\/p>\n His politicization of the attorney general\u2019s office follows a path blazed by two predecessors, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, who each used relatively brief tenures as the state\u2019s attorney general to launch themselves into the U.S. Senate. In Hawley\u2019s case, out-of-state political consultants were embedded in the office from his first weeks on the job, directing taxpayer-funded staff, shaping his policy rollouts and boosting his national profile ahead of his Senate run. Schmitt used the office to wage headline-grabbing legal fights, from suing China over COVID-19 to challenging pandemic restrictions, elevating his profile as he prepared his own Senate campaign.<\/p>\n Neither Hawley nor Schmitt could be reached for comment.<\/p>\n After Schmitt was elected to the Senate in November 2022, Parson announced that he would appoint Bailey to fill the vacancy. That set up a high-profile Republican primary last year against Scharf, a candidate with backing from the conservative establishment. Bailey won 63% of the vote and cruised to an easy general-election victory in November.<\/p>\n Within a week, Bailey was interviewing with Trump for the job of U.S. attorney general in the new administration.<\/p>\n With no Democrats holding statewide office and a GOP supermajority in the legislature, Bailey has turned his fire on Democratic officials in Missouri\u2019s two largest cities. He pressured St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner to resign by filing a lawsuit to remove her from office that alleged willful neglect of duty and a failure to prosecute violent crimes, and he recently sought to remove St. Louis Sheriff Alfred Montgomery, accusing him of misconduct. Gardner repeatedly denied any wrongdoing before resigning; later she acknowledged misusing some public funds. Montgomery has denied wrongdoing and has refused to resign.<\/p>\n Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas has also been a frequent target: Bailey threatened a Missouri Human Rights Act investigation into Lucas and his staff after a city-run social media account, responding to a speech by the Kansas City Chiefs football player Harrison Butker about women being homemakers, named the suburb where Butker lived. The city deleted the post and apologized. Bailey framed the post as discrimination against Christians.<\/p>\n Last year, Lucas suggested the city could benefit from asylum-seeking immigrants joining the local workforce, then clarified that he meant immigrants who were in the U.S. legally. Bailey \u2014 who had sued the Biden administration over what he called an \u201cillegal\u201d parole program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela \u2014 accused Lucas of trying to involve Missouri businesses in a \u201cfundamentally unlawful program.\u201d He posted a letter on the social media platform X calling Lucas\u2019 comments \u201cwildly irresponsible\u201d and said he was \u201cputting him on notice that it is a Class D felony to knowingly transport an illegal alien in the State of Missouri.\u201d<\/p>\n Lucas responded in a statement then that Bailey\u2019s letter was \u201ca political campaign press release with no legal effect.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not effective lawyering,\u201d Lucas said in a recent interview. \u201cIt\u2019s a whole new branch of lawyering that I, as a lawyer, didn\u2019t grow up knowing, which is: If you get a story out, who cares if you drag people through the mud?\u201d<\/p>\n \n RFK Jr. Vowed to Find the Environmental Causes of Autism. Then He Shut Down Research Trying to Do Just That.<\/strong>\n <\/p>\n Bailey, on the other hand, has stepped up to defend Republican allies. His office intervened to defend three GOP state senators who were sued for false light and invasion of privacy after wrongly identifying a Kansas man as the shooter at a Super Bowl parade honoring Kansas City\u2019s NFL team \u2014 and falsely calling him an undocumented immigrant.<\/p>\n Two of the senators called the lawsuits frivolous, while Bailey has argued the posts were protected by legislative immunity, as the senators were acting in their official capacity.<\/p>\n Lawsuits against two of the officials, who are represented by the Missouri deputy solicitor general, a high-ranking lawyer in the attorney general\u2019s office, remain pending in federal court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. 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\n Credit: <\/span>
\n Jeff Roberson\/AP Images
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