JEFFERSON CITY • The head of Missouri’s Office of Administration has denied invoices sent in by two attorneys hired to represent ex-Gov. Eric Greitens’ office as he fended off impeachment last month.
According to invoices, the two attorneys and their firms billed the state more than $153,000. But the state had not shelled out the money as of this week, and the in-limbo payments became fodder for a bipartisan group of officeholders who are skeptical about the legality of the arrangement.
In letters dated Thursday, Commissioner Sarah Steelman wrote to attorneys Ross Garber and Ed Greim that while the office could spend money on counsel, it appeared “that the primary beneficiary of the legal services that your firm(s) rendered was the former Governor individually.”
Greitens has argued that he hired the attorneys to represent his office, not him. But Steelman said that any benefit to the office of the governor was at most “incidental.” She said the two attorneys had not offered evidence to show why their hiring was within bounds.
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Garber, when reached by phone on Thursday, said Steelman “cited no authority that would permit the state to not fulfill its contractual obligations.”
“This issue is obviously caught up in the middle of a political and politically motivated fight in Missouri, but that should have nothing to do with whether the state follows the law and honors its contractual obligations,” he told the Post-Dispatch.
Garber, formerly of the East Coast law firm Shipman & Goodwin, said that a “proper analysis” should be done and that he was “otherwise considering all legal options.”
Greim told the newspaper that “obviously we disagree with” the letter.
“She (Steelman) never met with us,” said Greim, who works for the Kansas City-based Graves Garrett law firm. He said he did work such as field a subpoena from the Missouri House seeking documents — tasks typically handled by counsel for the governor’s office, not the governor’s personal counsel.
“We would be happy to meet with her and explain to her what we did,” Greim said.
Greim said he was worried about the precedent Greitens’ paying him personally would set. He worried that every time an officeholder attempted to hire outside counsel, the officeholder’s opponents would challenge the decision.
“I would not advise someone to run for office if that becomes a sort of arrow in the quiver,” he said, adding that he worried officeholders might also in the future outsource state legal work to personal attorneys if it served their interests.
“I think we would probably lose the money altogether before we would ask the officeholder to pay us out of his own pocket,” Greim said. “I don’t think we want private sources to pay for official counsel.”
Attorney General Josh Hawley, a Republican, and Auditor Nicole Galloway, a Democrat, both challenged the legality of the Greitens administration’s impeachment attorneys last month.
Hawley said Greitens’ office needed to seek the approval of the attorney general’s office before bringing in outside counsel, something it had not done.
Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, who led the House’s investigation of the former governor, said in a letter to Steelman earlier this week that Greitens had violated state conflict-of-interest laws and his own executive order by contracting the two attorneys.