In overdue July, Missouri state soldiers walked into St. Louis County executive headquarters and seized the mobile phone of probably the most distinguished Democratic officers on this solidly crimson state.
Two days later, a grand jury indicted Sam Web page, the St. Louis County government. Appearing as a distinct prosecutor, Missouri Legal professional Basic Andrew Bailey, a Republican, secured two prison counts of stealing by way of deceit and two election-law violations.
For Bailey, bringing prison fees towards the chief of the state’s largest blue stronghold added to the resume of a MAGA warrior who had already interviewed for a key place in President Donald Trump’s management.
Lower than 3 weeks later, Trump tapped Bailey to assist run the FBI. He’ll function co-deputy director with Dan Bongino, a former Secret Carrier agent and conservative podcast host. Bailey mentioned he’ll surrender as Missouri’s legal professional total on Sept. 8 to take the submit. A spokesperson mentioned he was once now not taking questions from the media.
The case towards Web page was once the most recent in a string of prison moves towards Democrats by way of Bailey, bringing the entire weight of the state on a political adversary. It wasn’t about bribery or self-dealing. Web page, the highest elected legitimate in a county with about 1 million citizens, wasn’t accused of stealing a dime for himself.
As an alternative, the fees became on one thing mundane: the printing and mailing of flyers weeks prior to a few measure at the poll in April — the type of informational subject material native governments steadily ship to citizens and such a motion that professionals mentioned had by no means resulted in legal fees in Missouri.
The election requested citizens to provide the County Council the facility to fireside the county’s division heads and its most sensible legal professional. Web page spent greater than $25,000 of taxpayer cash to print and mail flyers to citizens outlining the measure. The flyer at factor didn’t brazenly inform citizens to vote no, but it surely indexed teams that hostile it, together with the police board and NAACP, and it quoted a state pass judgement on’s ruling that the poll language was once deceptive and unfair. It additionally instructed {that a} sure vote would permit administrators to be fired for political causes or in emergencies and {that a} no vote would take care of strong management.
Paperwork filed within the case towards Web page additionally confirmed that he didn’t apply a county legal professional’s recommendation to make some adjustments to the flyer. Bailey alleged that the flyer crossed the road from offering knowledge, which is prison, to urging a no vote, which he mentioned was once an illegal use of tax greenbacks — and, in his view, grounds to hunt prison fees.
If convicted at the maximum severe depend, Web page may just face 3 to ten years in jail and $10,000 in fines. He may just additionally face removing from administrative center and sanctions towards his scientific license; he’s an anesthesiologist, even though he doesn’t recently observe complete time.
“Public officers will have to apply the regulation,” Bailey wrote in a information unlock, “and my Workplace will paintings to make certain that they at all times do.”
The playbook was once acquainted: Trump has mentioned arresting California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Town mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Federal brokers simply raided the house of John Bolton, the previous nationwide safety adviser within the first Trump management and a distinguished Trump critic.
Legal professional Basic Pam Bondi appointed Ed Martin, who had labored as an legal professional in Missouri, to move the U.S. Division of Justice’s Weaponization Running Workforce and to analyze two distinguished Democrats, New York Legal professional Basic Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff of California, on allegations of loan fraud.
“Bailey in point of fact was once auditioning for that position, or one thing love it, and what higher method to display loyalty than to just do what Trump needs at the federal degree, however replicated at the state degree,” mentioned Paul Nolette, the director of the Les Aspin Heart for Executive at Marquette College. “It’s a template for what form of way Bailey goes to take at the federal degree. Political combatants are going to get centered.”
Bailey has referred to as himself a defender of the guideline of regulation, portraying his high-profile court cases and investigations in Missouri as important to give protection to the state from what he has described as unlawful or unconstitutional movements by way of the government and abandonment of the guideline of regulation by way of the left.
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Jeff Roberson/AP Photographs
Web page was county government in 2019 after a federal corruption case toppled his predecessor, Steve Stenger. Web page had led a bipartisan bloc at the County Council towards Stenger, who was once sentenced to just about 4 years in federal jail for a pay-to-play scheme that instructed county contracts to political donors. (St. Louis County wraps round — however does now not come with — the a lot smaller impartial metropolis of St. Louis.)
The cooperative spirit collapsed as Web page set St. Louis County at the competitive finish of Missouri’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing early emergency orders proscribing gatherings and indoor eating. That stance put him at odds with state officers who have been shifting to curb native energy.
In spite of this and different political battles, Web page has two times gained countywide elections — first in 2020 to complete Stenger’s time period, then in 2022 to a complete four-year time period. He has mentioned he’ll come to a decision by way of the tip of the 12 months whether or not to run once more in 2026. He’s scheduled to be arraigned on Friday.
“I don’t assume I did anything else flawed,” he mentioned briefly remarks to native information journalists at a ribbon-cutting for a county street challenge.
A Web page spokesperson referred inquiries to his legal professional, Jeff Jensen, a former U.S. legal professional in Missouri all over Trump’s first time period. Jensen didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Many have puzzled the legitimacy of the case and whether or not Bailey’s successor, Catherine Hanaway, will see it thru. Hanaway, additionally a former U.S. legal professional, in addition to a former speaker of the Missouri Space of Representatives, didn’t reply to questions.
“It undoubtedly turns out, in line with my studying of it, a stretch,” mentioned Peter Pleasure, a regulation professor at Washington College in St. Louis and a professional in prison ethics and trial observe. “It will be an uphill combat for the state to make this rate stick.”
Ken Warren, a political scientist and pollster at Saint Louis College, mentioned the fees have been “utterly phony” however that “the extra outrageous you’re, the extra you will draw in the eye of Donald Trump.”
“Let’s say the similar factor took place however the county government took place to be a Republican,” Warren mentioned. “Would Bailey pass after him? In fact now not.”
Missouri has change into a proving flooring of varieties for Trump appointees. Martin — an established state GOP insider with a file of stoking controversies — was once named the U.S. legal professional for Washington, D.C. After it was obvious he couldn’t win Senate affirmation, he was once moved to the management’s pardon administrative center and the Justice Division’s weaponization team.
John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor total and anti-abortion activist who closing 12 months helped bankroll a marketing campaign to defeat Missouri’s abortion rights poll factor, defended Trump’s declare to presidential immunity prior to the Ideally suited Court docket. Now, as U.S. solicitor total, he serves as the government’s most sensible suggest prior to the Ideally suited Court docket.
Will Scharf, who misplaced a number one bid closing 12 months to unseat Bailey, pivoted immediately into Trump’s prison inside circle. Then there’s Billy Lengthy. The six-term ex-congressman was once showed in June as IRS commissioner — in spite of having as soon as driven to abolish the company — amid scrutiny over his ties to questionable tax-credit plans. He was once just lately ousted and mentioned he’ll change into ambassador to Iceland.
That roster of loyalists isn’t any coincidence. Over the last 20 years, Missouri has moved from being a aggressive bellwether state to a deep-red stronghold, with a political surroundings that rewards the type of hard-line conservatism and culture-war ethos that Trump prizes.
John Danforth, a Republican who served as Missouri’s legal professional total from 1969 to 1976 after which as a U.S. senator till 1995, mentioned the administrative center has shifted dramatically from its core venture. Below him, he mentioned, the process was once to constitute state businesses, care for each prison enchantment, reply to prison opinion requests and organize litigation with a small group of workers. Requested a few transfer closing 12 months during which Bailey investigated a St. Louis-area college district after a scholar was once overwhelmed all over college hours — blaming its variety insurance policies and removing of useful resource officials for protection screw ups — Danforth mentioned, “I wouldn’t have accomplished it.”
Because the state has shifted proper, many races are successfully made up our minds in the main. Applicants don’t wish to win over maximum citizens, in line with political professionals and observers — simply the small, very political team that displays up for low-turnout, winner-take-all primaries. That favors hard-line applicants.
Nowhere is that fluctuate clearer than within the legal professional total’s administrative center.
Bailey is a U.S. Military veteran who served two excursions in Iraq as an armored cavalry officer. He began his profession as an assistant Missouri legal professional total, then labored as a prosecutor. He joined the governor’s administrative center as deputy total recommend in 2019 and later served as total recommend to then-Gov. Mike Parson.
His politicization of the legal professional total’s administrative center follows a trail blazed by way of two predecessors, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, who each and every used reasonably transient tenures because the state’s legal professional total to release themselves into the U.S. Senate. In Hawley’s case, out-of-state political experts have been embedded within the administrative center from his first weeks at the process, directing taxpayer-funded group of workers, shaping his coverage rollouts and boosting his nationwide profile forward of his Senate run. Schmitt used the administrative center to salary headline-grabbing prison fights, from suing China over COVID-19 to difficult pandemic restrictions, raising his profile as he ready his personal Senate marketing campaign.
Neither Hawley nor Schmitt might be reached for remark.
After Schmitt was once elected to the Senate in November 2022, Parson introduced that he would appoint Bailey to fill the emptiness. That arrange a high-profile Republican number one closing 12 months towards Scharf, a candidate with backing from the conservative established order. Bailey gained 63% of the vote and cruised to a very easy general-election victory in November.
Inside of every week, Bailey was once interviewing with Trump for the process of U.S. legal professional total within the new management.
Without a Democrats preserving statewide administrative center and a GOP supermajority within the legislature, Bailey has became his hearth on Democratic officers in Missouri’s two biggest towns. He harassed St. Louis Circuit Legal professional Kim Gardner to surrender by way of submitting a lawsuit to take away her from administrative center that alleged willful overlook of responsibility and a failure to prosecute violent crimes, and he just lately sought to take away St. Louis Sheriff Alfred 1st viscount montgomery of alamein, accusing him of misconduct. Gardner again and again denied any wrongdoing prior to resigning; later she said misusing some public budget. 1st viscount montgomery of alamein has denied wrongdoing and has refused to surrender.
Kansas Town Mayor Quinton Lucas has additionally been a widespread goal: Bailey threatened a Missouri Human Rights Act investigation into Lucas and his group of workers after a city-run social media account, responding to a speech by way of the Kansas Town Chiefs soccer participant Harrison Butker about ladies being homemakers, named the suburb the place Butker lived. Town deleted the submit and apologized. Bailey framed the submit as discrimination towards Christians.
Remaining 12 months, Lucas instructed the town may just take pleasure in asylum-seeking immigrants becoming a member of the native staff, then clarified that he intended immigrants who have been within the U.S. legally. Bailey — who had sued the Biden management over what he referred to as an “unlawful” parole program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — accused Lucas of seeking to contain Missouri companies in a “essentially illegal program.” He posted a letter at the social media platform X calling Lucas’ feedback “wildly irresponsible” and mentioned he was once “striking him on understand that this can be a Elegance D prison to knowingly shipping an unlawful alien within the State of Missouri.”
Lucas spoke back in a remark then that Bailey’s letter was once “a political marketing campaign press unlock and not using a prison impact.”
“It’s now not efficient lawyering,” Lucas mentioned in a contemporary interview. “It’s a complete new department of lawyering that I, as a legal professional, didn’t develop up realizing, which is: In the event you get a tale out, who cares when you drag other people throughout the dust?”
Bailey, however, has stepped as much as protect Republican allies. His administrative center intervened to protect 3 GOP state senators who have been sued for false mild and invasion of privateness after wrongly figuring out a Kansas guy because the shooter at a Tremendous Bowl parade honoring Kansas Town’s NFL staff — and falsely calling him an undocumented immigrant.
Two of the senators referred to as the court cases frivolous, whilst Bailey has argued the posts have been secure by way of legislative immunity, because the senators have been appearing of their legitimate capability.
Court cases towards two of the officers, who’re represented by way of the Missouri deputy solicitor total, a high-ranking legal professional within the legal professional total’s administrative center, stay pending in federal courtroom.
