House committee investigating Greitens releases report comparing woman's testimony

Previous coverage of Greitens investigations

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The Missouri House special committee looking into Gov. Eric Greitens' legal situation on Monday released a four-page report refuting claims that Greitens' former hairdresser told different versions of the events at the beginning of their affair.

Labeled "Additional Findings of the Committee," the new report begins with a note that the governor, on April 12 - the day after the committee released its first, 24-page report - "posted a public statement to Facebook in which he claimed that video of an interview taken by the (St. Louis) Circuit Attorney's office 'undermined the narrative' and 'directly contradicted allegations in the House report.'"

In a news release, state Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City and chairman of the House Special Investigative Committee on Oversight, explained: "We took these claims seriously and immediately sought the video interview in question. The committee does not find anything in the Circuit Attorney interview that causes it to change its statement regarding Witness 1's credibility.

"Greitens' claims about the content of the Circuit Attorney interview mischaracterize the actual testimony received and reviewed by this committee."

The report provides a number of comparisons between the woman's testimony to the committee March 7 and her video testimony to the circuit attorney's investigator.

Greitens has acknowledged having an affair that began before he launched his campaign for governor but has denied doing anything criminal.

He faces a May 14 trial on a felony charge of invasion of privacy, where he's accused of taking the woman's picture while she was bound, blindfolded and at least partially nude.

He repeatedly has told the public that most of what it knows is based on "lies and falsehoods" generated by "political witch hunts." He said the public will learn "the truth" during the trial and that he will be exonerated.

After his attorneys spent nearly 10 hours taking the woman's deposition, the governor said April 11 that the House committee's work was "based on the testimony of someone who said, under oath, that they may have been remembering this through a dream."

But the seven-member committee said in its new, supplemental report that it "finds that Greitens' statement mischaracterizes the purported testimony cited by his counsel in the pending criminal case in the City of St. Louis" and that the woman's "answer to a specific question whether she saw a phone does not bear on her testimony about other events.

"To the contrary, her reluctance to state under oath that she specifically remembers seeing the phone adds to her credibility. Further, this is consistent with Witness 1's testimony to the Committee."

The committee also reported it has asked for a copy of Greitens' full, nearly 10-hour deposition of the woman - but that the governor's attorneys have asked for more time.

In its new report, the committee said: "This Committee's charge is to determine the truth. Having claimed that the deposition testimony is helpful to Greitens, it is incumbent upon his counsel to comply with the Committee's duly-issued subpoena and to expeditiously provide it with the entire deposition transcript."

The committee's report pointed to the governor's complaint that, "Soon after this story broke, for example, the people who are attacking me now falsely claim that I slapped a woman while my wife was giving birth. It was absolutely untrue and slanderous and incredibly hurtful. It has also been 100 percent disproven because it was impossible."

The committee's new report said the woman never told that story to the House members.

"Instead, she testified that Greitens slapped her in an upstairs bedroom while his wife was out-of-town," the report noted.

The committee's April 11 report noted a couple of occasions when Greitens allegedly hit the woman.

She told the House committee members - and a couple of her friends - that her first sexual contact with the then-future governor occurred March 21, 2015.

Her testimony to the committee included a report that Greitens had slapped her that Saturday morning while the two were in the basement of his family's home in St. Louis' Central West End.

Monday's supplemental committee report noted the governor's April 12 statement included a comment that the woman "told the Circuit Attorney that she did not tell her friends about the slap until after a false report about the location of such an incident had been made in the media."

The committee said she also told it she had not told "her friends about the slap until later."

The committee's supplemental report was released about 90 minutes after it finished a 55-minute meeting Monday afternoon.

The panel has scheduled another closed meeting for 2:45 p.m. Tuesday.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner also has charged Greitens with tampering with a computer - another Class D felony - for taking donor and email lists from The Mission Continues veterans charity and using that information to raise funds during the early days of his campaign.

Greitens helped found the charity in 2007 and served as its executive director until 2014.

Again, he has denied any criminal wrongdoing.

No trial has been set in that case.

The woman has not been named publicly. She is identified as K.S. in documents related to the St. Louis case and as "Witness 1" in the House committee's two reports.

Read about the original April 11 report here.