How the FBI’s Andrew Bailey Helped Lead Missouri Into the Tradition Wars — ProPublica via NewsFlicks

After a struggle with a Black pupil in a St. Louis suburb left a white pupil badly injured in March 2024, Missouri Legal professional Normal Andrew Bailey blamed their college district for unsafe prerequisites, even if the incident came about after categories and greater than a half-mile from campus.

Bailey seized at the struggle as proof of what he referred to as the Hazelwood Faculty District’s out of place priorities. He despatched a letter to the superintendent tough paperwork at the district’s variety insurance policies and accused leaders of “prioritizing race-based insurance policies over fundamental pupil protection.” Bailey argued that the district’s dispute with native police departments over its requirement that officials take part in variety coaching — an deadlock that ended in some departments leaving colleges with out useful resource officials — had left scholars susceptible.

In reaction, the varsity board’s lawyer stated Bailey had misrepresented fundamental information: The district hired dozens of safety guards at colleges the place it will no longer assign useful resource officials, and despite the fact that it did have law enforcement officials stationed on the college, the ones officials should not have treated an after-hours, off-campus struggle. After all, police discovered no proof that race performed a task within the struggle.

The lawyer normal’s place of job took no additional motion.

“He was once simply seeking to get consideration,” stated college board President Sylvester Taylor II.

The prison skirmish was once the type of publicity-getting transfer that outlined Bailey’s two years and 8 months as Missouri’s lawyer normal earlier than his wonder variety final month via President Donald Trump as a co-deputy director of the FBI, in step with mavens who learn about the paintings of legal professionals normal.

As Missouri’s best legislation enforcement officer, Bailey time and again waded into fights over variety, gender, abortion and different hot-button problems, whilst casting conservatives and Christians as underneath siege via the “woke” left.

Bailey had pledged at first of his tenure in early 2023 to not use the state’s open public information legislation “as an offensive software” to call for bulk information from college districts in large investigations — a tactic utilized by his predecessor, Eric Schmitt, now a U.S. senator. Nonetheless, he made common use of cease-and-desist letters, caution college districts that their variety projects or dealing with of gender and sex-education problems violated the legislation.

Some efforts, like his letter to the Hazelwood Faculty District, amounted to little greater than a press liberate. Others ended in defeat, with judges calling his arguments unpersuasive or “absurd” or, in a single case, disregarding them with out remark. One lawsuit, towards China, led to a judgment towards the rustic that mavens stated will most probably by no means be enforced.

Bailey, who was once sworn in to the FBI place on Sept. 15, didn’t reply to messages left with the FBI’s press place of job and with James Lawson, an established pal who controlled his lawyer normal marketing campaign and served in quite a lot of roles on his personnel.

Bailey’s movements as lawyer normal, in step with prison observers, stood aside from the place of job’s core, nonpolitical tasks: protecting the state towards complaints and dealing with legal felony appeals. That paintings, via maximum accounts, endured as standard.

His Republican predecessors, Schmitt and, earlier than him, Josh Hawley, extensively utilized the location to advance conservative reasons, salary fights towards revolutionary ones and lift their nationwide profiles.

All the way through his stint as lawyer normal, Hawley — like Schmitt now within the U.S. Senate — delivered a speech by which he claimed the removal of social stigmas to premarital intercourse and birth control all through the Nineteen Sixties had degraded the remedy of ladies and promoted intercourse trafficking. And he fought to uphold state restrictions that threatened to close down Deliberate Parenthood clinics 4 years earlier than Missouri’s near-total abortion ban took impact after the U.S. Preferrred Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

Schmitt was once named to prevail Hawley in November 2018. All the way through his 4 years in place of job, he defended Christian prayer in public colleges and sued a number of native college districts that had enforced masks necessities all through the pandemic.

In 2022, he joined a small staff of conservative legal professionals normal in retreating from the Nationwide Affiliation of Lawyers Normal, a bipartisan staff that had lengthy coordinated multistate investigations in circumstances towards industries starting from tobacco to opioids. In a letter posted to the social media platform now referred to as X, Schmitt joined Texas Legal professional Normal Ken Paxton and Montana Legal professional Normal Austin Knudsen in arguing that NAAG had taken a pointy “leftward shift” and that endured club was once insupportable. Neither Hawley nor Schmitt, via their spokespeople, spoke back to requests for remark.

Chris Toth, the chief director of NAAG who retired from the group weeks after the letter changed into public, stated in an interview that the claims within the letter had been “totally unsupported via information.” Republicans, he added, had been concerned “in each and every side of the group.”

The transfer mirrored a broader shift in what number of legal professionals normal now use their workplaces — no longer best to protect their states in court docket, however to attain political issues at the nationwide level. Few have embodied that technique greater than Paxton, who has regularly been described as that specialize in tradition battle problems as lawyer normal.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have reported how Paxton has remodeled the lawyer normal’s place of job into an company that turns out much less keen on conventional tasks like representing different state workplaces in court docket to at least one preoccupied with combating tradition wars. His place of job has increasingly more used the state’s tough user coverage regulations to research organizations whose paintings conflicts along with his political affairs. On the identical, he is began increasingly more outsourcing main circumstances to non-public legislation companies.

Paxton’s place of job has stated lots of the cases when it declined to constitute a state company had been because of sensible or prison limits — some companies selected their very own legal professionals; others had been barred via statute. He’s additionally argued that positive circumstances would have required reversing previous positions or advancing claims he seen as unconstitutional. He’s defended hiring out of doors legislation companies, pronouncing his place of job lacks the sources to tackle tough industries like tech and prescribed drugs. Paxton didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Bailey, although a long way much less distinguished nationally, are compatible squarely inside this mildew. Sooner than leaving for the FBI, he spoke brazenly about protective Missourians from what he referred to as “woke” ideology and lawlessness from the left.

A former U.S. Military officer, he has regularly framed his project in fight phrases. In a podcast interview this 12 months, he stated that whilst conservative states usually attempt to restrict the facility in their legal professionals normal to “maximize freedom,” blue states have weaponized their workplaces.

“I imply, Letitia James in New York has each and every weapon in her arsenal that her normal meeting may give her,” he stated within the podcast interview. He stated she makes use of them “to clutter with other folks’s lives, to prosecute President Trump, take him to court docket in civil legislation to check out to clutch his property and undervalue the ones property.”

“Missouri is uniquely located as a result of we had been so lately a blue state,” he stated, “so it’s like a backing out military has left the battlefield and dropped their guns and we’re choosing them up and studying how you can use them towards them.”

A spokesperson for James’ place of job stated that “any weaponization of the justice device must disturb each and every American” and that it stood in the back of its litigation towards Trump’s trade and would proceed to get up for New Yorkers’ rights.

Bailey stated within the podcast interview that he supported all efforts to research President Joe Biden, his circle of relatives and his management, and to discover what Bailey referred to as the reality in the back of the COVID-19 vaccine, which he stated “turns out not to be a vaccine in any respect.”

Bailey used his place of job to research the nonprofit media watchdog Media Issues for The united states after it reported that company advertisements had been showing subsequent to extremist content material at the social media platform X.

Stephen Miller, a best aide to Trump in his first management, posted that conservative state legal professionals normal must examine; Bailey temporarily spoke back that his workforce was once “having a look into the topic.” Weeks later, he issued a “understand of pending investigation” to Media Issues and ordered it to maintain information. He later accused the gang of the use of fraud to solicit donations from Missourians to bully advertisers out of pulling out of X, and demanded interior information and donor knowledge underneath Missouri’s user coverage legislation. In a June 2024 interview with Donald Trump Jr., Bailey described the probe as “a brand new entrance within the battle towards the First Modification” and tied it at once to the 2024 election, accusing Media Issues of seeking to silence conservative voices.

Media Issues sued and a federal pass judgement on blocked the investigation as most probably retaliatory. In early 2025, Bailey dropped the case in a agreement and stated he had no longer discovered proof of economic or different misconduct via Media Issues. The group didn’t reply to a request for remark.

When Trump was once watching for sentencing after being convicted in a New York court docket of falsifying trade information to hide hush cash bills to a porn famous person, Bailey requested the U.S. Preferrred Court docket to raise a gag order at the former president and lengthen his sentencing till after the 2024 election, arguing the limitations saved Missouri citizens from listening to Trump’s message. The Preferrred Court docket rejected his request in an unsigned one-page order with out rationalization. A New York pass judgement on later postponed the sentencing till after the election, writing that he sought after to keep away from the illusion, then again unwarranted, of political affect.

Trump can have confronted as much as 4 years in jail, however a pass judgement on issued an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction in position however sparing him any penalty or high quality. Trump stated the conviction was once a “very horrible revel in” and a humiliation to New York. He’s interesting.

Bailey additionally fought to stay a girl in jail even after a state court docket pass judgement on declared her blameless. Even after the state Preferrred Court docket ordered her liberate, Bailey’s place of job instructed the jail warden to forget about the court docket’s order. A state court docket overseeing the case scolded Bailey’s place of job in a listening to, pronouncing, “I might counsel you by no means do this.”

Felony mavens and different observers of the place of job stated state legal professionals normal historically didn’t act essentially as partisan warriors. Maximum had been keen on protecting the state in court docket and protective customers.

Scott Holste, who served as a spokesperson for Jay Nixon, a average Democrat who served because the Missouri lawyer normal from 1993 to 2009, recollects a starkly other method from Bailey’s. As an example, in overdue September 2008, the best headlines on Nixon’s web site keen on robocall laws, complaints over loan fraud and user guidelines for college students.

“We had been stridently apolitical in our information releases and in the best way we operated,” Holste stated. “Our activity was once to serve all Missourians, to not make political issues.”

Within the days earlier than the August 2024 Republican number one, two of the 3 tales featured on Bailey’s homepage centered the Biden management over immigration and protections for LGBTQ+ scholars. The 3rd highlighted a consumer-fraud prosecution.

To his supporters, Bailey is pleasurable marketing campaign guarantees — a conservative performing like a conservative, stated state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Republican from Branson.

Electorate see a pace-setter protecting their freedoms via combating insurance policies corresponding to variety and fairness, which they regularly equate with racism, and masks mandates, which they view as govt overreach, Seitz stated. “And,” he added, “now we have a populist president who appreciates that.”

Toth, the retired head of the nationwide AGs affiliation, traced the shift in how state legal professionals normal act to the 1998 multistate agreement with the tobacco business, when just about each and every state joined a landmark deal that required cigarette makers to pay greater than $200 billion, curb promoting aimed toward kids and fund anti-smoking campaigns. It additionally confirmed legal professionals normal how a lot energy they may wield.

Through the years, the newfound energy has raised the profile of lawyer normal workplaces around the nation, turning them right into a springboard for upper place of job. That upper profile has fueled politicization.

Democratic legal professionals normal are not any strangers to the use of their workplaces to struggle political battles. California Legal professional Normal Rob Bonta, for instance, has filed a lot of complaints difficult insurance policies of the Trump management on immigration, environmental rules and federal investment. Whilst Bonta maintained those fits had been in accordance with the legislation, critics characterised the coordinated prison motion as politically motivated resistance.

Dan Contemplate, a political science professor at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, stated that because the state has shifted to the suitable, the GOP number one, relatively than the overall election, is now the true contest for statewide place of job.

He pointed to movements corresponding to Schmitt opposing crucial race concept and reviewing public college textbooks. “That may had been extraordinary twenty years in the past,” Contemplate stated, “however now you’ll be able to’t lose since you’re combating the quote-unquote just right struggle.”

Peverill Squire, a political science professor on the College of Missouri, stated that from the time of Bailey’s appointment to the location in January 2023, he almost definitely had best two audiences. The primary had been citizens he had to defeat Will Scharf, a candidate already in Trump’s orbit, within the 2024 Republican number one for lawyer normal.

“After which as soon as he secured his election, then I feel his target market was once in point of fact Trump,” Squire stated.

Former Missouri Republican Birthday celebration Chair John Hancock stated citizens perceived to praise Bailey’s method. Bailey were given just about as many votes as Trump and Gov. Mike Kehoe within the 2024 normal election — and greater than Hawley or any of the Republicans who gained the workplaces of lieutenant governor, treasurer or secretary of state.

“So clearly the paintings he was once doing in that place of job was once supported,” Hancock stated. “I don’t take horrible surprise when politicians do political issues.”

Kehoe has appointed Catherine Hanaway, a former Missouri Area speaker and U.S. lawyer, to prevail Bailey as lawyer normal. Hanaway has stated she intends to run the place of job in a distinct taste. She instructed the Missouri Unbiased she had extra pastime in Medicaid fraud, user coverage and violent crimes.

Her place of job stated she was once no longer to be had for an interview with ProPublica.