# Eric Greitens Eric Greitens (b. 1974) is a former **Republican Governor of Missouri** whose single term (January 2017 – June 2018) collapsed in one of the most consequential dark-money and personal-misconduct scandals in modern Missouri politics. A decorated former **[[U.S. Navy]] SEAL officer** and founder of the veterans nonprofit **[[The Mission Continues]]**, Greitens ran in 2016 as a transparency-promising outsider, then governed through a network of secret LLCs, secret PACs, and the secret 501(c)(4) **[[A New Missouri]]** — an apparatus critics described as a literal *shadow government*. He resigned within hours of a court order to unmask A New Missouri's donors, facing simultaneous criminal charges and a House impeachment investigation. He attempted a political comeback in the **2022 U.S. Senate race**, where his "RINO hunting" campaign became a national flashpoint, but lost the Republican primary. For the right-wing knowledge base, Greitens matters as an **early prototype of the post-2016 outsider-strongman governing style** — the fusion of veteran-warrior branding, transparency rhetoric, dark-money infrastructure, and combative "anti-RINO" politics — and as a concrete Missouri case study in how [[Dark Money]] vehicles can be operationalized to run a parallel, unaccountable political operation. ## Background and Navy SEAL Service Greitens was a **Rhodes Scholar** at Oxford, where he studied international humanitarian organizations, before serving four tours of duty as a **U.S. Navy SEAL** officer. He rose to the rank of **lieutenant commander**, commanded a unit targeting al-Qaeda, and was awarded a **Bronze Star** and a **Purple Heart**. Following a stint as a White House Fellow, he founded **[[The Mission Continues]]**, a nonprofit connecting post-9/11 veterans to community-service work. This biography — warrior, scholar, philanthropist — formed the core of his 2016 political brand and made the subsequent scandal especially damaging, because several of the charges against him implicated the very charity that anchored his public image. ## 2016 Gubernatorial Campaign Greitens ran for Governor of Missouri as a Republican in 2016. He prevailed over three opponents in the Republican primary and defeated Democratic Missouri Attorney General **Chris Koster** in the general election, taking office in January 2017. He campaigned heavily on an **anti-corruption, pro-transparency** platform — a posture that later collided sharply with his governing reliance on undisclosed money. ## The 2018 Scandals and Resignation Greitens's governorship unraveled rapidly in 2018 across two intertwined fronts: personal misconduct and campaign finance. ### The Invasion-of-Privacy Charge In **February 2018**, Greitens was indicted on a felony **invasion-of-privacy** charge in St. Louis for allegedly photographing a partially nude woman — with whom he had been having an extramarital affair — without consent, with the photo allegedly used as leverage. The woman's testimony included allegations of coercion and sexual misconduct. The charge was eventually dismissed (the St. Louis Circuit Attorney dropped it mid-trial, with a special prosecutor later declining to refile), but the allegations drove the political crisis. ### The Charity Donor-List Felony Greitens faced a **second felony charge** accusing him of providing his political fundraiser with the **donor list from [[The Mission Continues]]**, the veterans charity he had founded — using a charitable organization's confidential donor data for political fundraising. This charge tied the personal-conduct scandal directly into the campaign-finance and dark-money questions. ### The Dark-Money Investigation and A New Missouri A Missouri House committee opened an investigation into Greitens's campaign-finance practices, with [[A New Missouri]] — the secret 501(c)(4) created weeks after he took office — at the center. The House committee **subpoenaed A New Missouri's records**. On the day a **Cole County judge ordered the nonprofit to reveal the identities of its backers**, Greitens announced his resignation. ### Resignation Greitens **resigned effective June 1, 2018**, facing potential impeachment. He was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor **[[Mike Parson]]**. As part of the resignation deal, the donor-list felony charge was dropped, and the associated criminal charges were ultimately not pursued — but the resignation itself was triggered by the dark-money disclosure order, not the personal scandal alone. ## The "Shadow Government" Apparatus The throughline of the Greitens scandal is structural, not merely personal: he governed through a layered network of **secret LLCs, secret PACs, and the secret nonprofit [[A New Missouri]]**, which raised and spent largely undisclosed money to support his operation. Critics — including Missouri journalists and ethics watchdogs — characterized this as **"literally a shadow government"**: a parallel, donor-opaque political machine running alongside the official governor's office. See [[A New Missouri]] for the full anatomy of the structure. ## Ethics Commission Fine In **February 2020**, the **[[Missouri Ethics Commission]]** fined Greitens's 2016 gubernatorial campaign **$178,000** for campaign-finance violations related to the 2016 campaign. The Commission **dismissed the specific charges** alleging that Greitens had used [[A New Missouri]] to circumvent campaign-finance disclosure law, a result Greitens framed as vindication even as the underlying fine stood. ## 2022 U.S. Senate Run and "RINO Hunting" Greitens attempted a political comeback by running for the open **U.S. Senate seat in Missouri in 2022**. The campaign drew national attention in **June 2022** when he released a video in which he held a shotgun and called for **"RINO hunting,"** depicting a simulated tactical home raid and offering supporters a "RINO Hunting Permit." The ad — denounced across the political spectrum as incitement, and flagged by platforms — was defended by Greitens as humor and "faux outrage" on his critics' part. He lost the Republican primary; Attorney General **[[Eric Schmitt]]** won the nomination and the seat. The episode cemented Greitens as an emblem of the most combative wing of post-Trump Republican primary politics. ## Connection to the KB Ecosystem Greitens connects the knowledge base across several threads. His downfall was advanced by then-Missouri Attorney General **[[Josh Hawley]]**, whose office investigated the charity donor-list and ethics matters — a rare instance of intra-party legal pressure that helped force the resignation. His governing model prefigures the **[[Dark Money]]** and **[[501(c)(4)]]** infrastructure documented elsewhere in the vault, applied at the state-executive level. And his 2022 "RINO hunting" persona situates him within the broader post-2016 turn toward eliminationist primary rhetoric on the American right. ## See Also - [[A New Missouri]] — the secret 501(c)(4) "shadow government" vehicle - [[The Mission Continues]] — the veterans charity at the center of the donor-list felony - [[Josh Hawley]] — Missouri AG whose investigation contributed to the resignation - [[Missouri Ethics Commission]] — issued the 2020 $178K fine - [[Dark Money]] · [[501(c)(4)]] — the financial machinery - [[Mike Parson]] — successor governor