Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) has filed to remove St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner after she “willfully neglected her duties” in office.
Bailey had previously given Gardner an ultimatum: resign or face removal.
One minute after the St. Louis Democrat failed to meet the Thursday deadline to resign, Bailey filed a petition in quo warranto, a rare procedure that challenges the right of an elected official to hold office.
“This is about the rule of law and justice, and thankfully, it’s a rare procedure,” Bailey told Breitbart News. “Thankfully, the 115 jurisdictions in the state of Missouri that have elected prosecutors, those prosecutors are doing their job to fulfill the rule of law and find justice for victims.”
“Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has willfully neglected her duties,” he asserted.
The Show Me State Attorney General explained three areas where Gardner has failed to fulfill her duty as a prosecutor: Failure to prosecute cases, failure to inform victims, and failure to review new cases — which he places in the thousands.
“She files charges and the cases languish on the docket, and are eventually dismissed by the court for failure to prosecute,” Bailey said, pointing to a recent example of a 17-year-old volleyball player who was injured by man who repeatedly violated bond conditions.
The girl’s injuries required both her legs to be amputated, but she survived apparently due to her father’s quick actions. She remains in critical condition.
Gardner claims her office made three “oral motions” to revoke bond for the driver, but Bailey told Breitbart News the court records do not reflect her claim.
“Now she’ll tell you, ‘Well, we made oral motion to revoke. We made oral motion in court and the court refused to revoke bond,'” he explained. “That doesn’t appear in the docket entries. So either the court is not accurately keeping up with what’s happening in the docket, or she’s not being truthful with the public in her excuse.”
“There’s a statutory and moral requirement that prosecuting attorneys keep victims notified of upcoming hearings and the ultimate disposition in their cases,” Bailey explained of the second failure claimed in his petition.
The petition states, among other examples, that Gardner’s failure to “inform the victim’s family members about any hearings in the case” of State of Missouri v. Campbell, No. 2022-CR02036-01, means that she has “forfeited her office and is a usurper who must be removed from office.”
“Victims of criminal offenses don’t get a say in whether or not they enter the criminal justice system,” Bailey said of the importance of keeping victims informed. “If your house is burglarized, if your family member is attacked, you didn’t get a say in that. You didn’t consent to that. In fact, the very nature of the criminal offense is that you had no say in the process.”
“The state of Missouri has placed a value on giving victims, who didn’t have a say in the process on the front end, a voice on the back end,” he concluded.
Finally, Bailey said Gardner has a “backlog of thousands of cases that she hasn’t filed” that were referred by police officers for prosecution.
When asked about why some prosecutors refuse to pursue cases and are so lenient on criminals, Bailey told Breitbart News, “The money that backs these people supports basically decriminalization of all behavior.”
“They hide behind prosecutorial discretion,” he continued. “Prosecutorial discretion does not empower prosecutors to nullify law after the fact. You don’t just get to say, ‘Well, I don’t like controlled substance offense laws, so I’m not going to enforce it.’ That would be a veto that’s not reserved to elected prosecutors. Elected prosecutors are to enforce the laws as written.”
The Missouri Republican said this new ideology about prosecution is relatively new, and purposeful.
“It appears to be a concerted effort, because 20-30 years ago, it was unheard of,” he said. “I mean, Democrat and Republican prosecutors essentially behaved the same way. They prosecuted criminals to hold folks accountable and find justice for victims.”
Bailey has faced criticism that his petition to remove Gardner is political — something he wholly rejects.
“People accused us of being politically motivated, and it’s not. Politics doesn’t enter into it at all,” he said. “We’ve reached a critical point where we can no longer ignore this willful neglect. Instead of protecting victims, she’s creating more victims by refusing to do her job.”
For Gardner’s part, she asserted the tired “racist” argument regarding Bailey’s actions.
“She is injecting race and politics into a legal proceeding,” Bailey told Fox News. “There are numerous Democrat lawmakers and politicians in the city of St. Louis, who have called for her to step aside.”
“This isn’t just me saying this, I’m speaking on behalf of the people in the state of Missouri, but her own constituents and her own elected officials within her jurisdiction have also called for her to resign,” he continued. “So the claim that this is politically racially motivated is ridiculous.”
St. Louis has been in the news recently regarding whistleblower revelations about a gender clinic, effectively making malpractice claims. The same gender clinic was caught coaxing teachers at a local school to “affirm” the “transgender” claims of a group of fifth grade girls.
Bailey, whose office is investigating the gender clinic, told Breitbart News that if the allegations prove true, the clinic would need to be held legally accountable, “I hope that at that point in time, we’ll have a different circuit attorney, because she will have been removed from office.”
Upon news of Bailey’s efforts, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R), who started the Protecting Americans Action Fund aimed at electing local attorneys who will prosecute crimes, said. “The job of a prosecutor is to prosecute criminals; instead Kim Gardner would repeatedly drop charges, coddle criminals, and should’ve never been in this position.”
“George Soros has spent $40 million electing soft-on-crime prosecutors like Kim Gardner, so we created Protecting Americans to fight back and to elect prosecutors who will enforce our laws, which will reduce crime,” the statement continued. “I commend my colleague, AG Andrew Bailey, for his work today, and I look forward to defeating more rogue AGs like Gardner at the ballot box.”
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.