Missouri Governor Eric Greitens Indicted on Felony Invasion of Privacy Charge 

The New York Times reported on Thursday that a St. Louis grand jury indicted Missouri’s first-term Republican Governor Eric Greitens on a felony invasion of privacy charge.

This charge stems from an accusation that in 2015 43-year-old Greitens photographed a nude or partially nude woman without her knowledge or consent.

Greitens was in office for just over a year when, in January, St. Louis TV station KMOV 4 reported that a woman claimed to have had a sexual encounter with Greitens in 2015, an extramarital affair for them both, after which Greitens allegedly blackmailed her with nude photographs to try to keep her quiet. Greitens admitted to the affair and denied the blackmail accusations.

Despite calls for his resignation (and even serious reservations on the part of some Missouri State House Republicans), Greitens has maintained, in a statement posted to his social media accounts, that he “made a mistake” but “did not commit a crime.”

The Times reported that Greitens wrote on Facebook after the indictment was announcement, “With today’s disappointing and misguided political decision, my confidence in our prosecutorial system is shaken, but not broken,” and of course he made the unsubtle suggestion that the charges were leveled because of a “reckless liberal prosector who uses her office to score political points.” This is almost certainly a reference to the Democratic prosecutor who presented the case before the grand jury, Kimberly M. Gardner.

Anyway, I think most people have bothered to keep track of “political points” never, yet still, somehow, it’s possible to spot a political loser.