In late July, Missouri state troopers walked into St. Louis County authorities headquarters and seized the cellphone of one of the distinguished Democratic officers on this solidly purple state.
Two days later, a grand jury indicted Sam Web page, the St. Louis County govt. Appearing as a particular prosecutor, Missouri Lawyer Basic Andrew Bailey, a Republican, secured two felony counts of stealing by deceit and two election-law violations.
For Bailey, bringing felony fees in opposition to the chief of the state’s greatest blue stronghold added to the resume of a MAGA warrior who had already interviewed for a key place in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Lower than three weeks later, Trump tapped Bailey to assist run the FBI. He’ll function co-deputy director with Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent and conservative podcast host. Bailey mentioned he’ll resign as Missouri’s lawyer normal on Sept. 8 to take the put up. A spokesperson mentioned he was not taking questions from the media.
The case in opposition to Web page was the newest in a string of authorized strikes in opposition to Democrats by Bailey, bringing the complete weight of the state on a political adversary. It wasn’t about bribery or self-dealing. Web page, the highest elected official in a county with about 1 million residents, wasn’t accused of stealing a dime for himself.
As a substitute, the costs turned on one thing mundane: the printing and mailing of flyers weeks earlier than a few measure on the poll in April — the sort of informational materials native governments usually ship to voters and the kind of motion that specialists mentioned had by no means led to prison fees in Missouri.
The election requested voters to present the County Council the ability to fireplace the county’s division heads and its high lawyer. Web page spent greater than $25,000 of taxpayer cash to print and mail flyers to voters outlining the measure. The flyer at difficulty didn’t overtly inform voters to vote no, nevertheless it listed teams that opposed it, together with the police board and NAACP, and it quoted a state choose’s ruling that the poll language was deceptive and unfair. It additionally recommended {that a} sure vote would enable administrators to be fired for political causes or in emergencies and {that a} no vote would preserve steady management.
Paperwork filed within the case in opposition to Web page additionally confirmed that he didn’t observe a county lawyer’s recommendation to make some modifications to the flyer. Bailey alleged that the flyer crossed the road from offering data, which is authorized, to urging a no vote, which he mentioned was an illegal use of tax {dollars} — and, in his view, grounds to hunt felony fees.
If convicted on essentially the most severe depend, Web page may face three to 10 years in jail and $10,000 in fines. He may additionally face removing from workplace and sanctions in opposition to his medical license; he’s an anesthesiologist, although he doesn’t at present observe full time.
“Public officers should observe the legislation,” Bailey wrote in a information launch, “and my Workplace will work to make sure that they at all times do.”
The playbook was acquainted: Trump has talked about arresting California Gov. Gavin Newsom and New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Federal brokers simply raided the house of John Bolton, the previous nationwide safety adviser within the first Trump administration and a distinguished Trump critic.
Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi appointed Ed Martin, who had labored as an lawyer in Missouri, to go the U.S. Division of Justice’s Weaponization Working Group and to analyze two distinguished Democrats, New York Lawyer Basic Letitia James and U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff of California, on allegations of mortgage fraud.
“Bailey actually was auditioning for that function, or one thing prefer it, and what higher option to present loyalty than to do precisely what Trump desires on the federal stage, however replicated on the state stage,” mentioned Paul Nolette, the director of the Les Aspin Middle for Authorities at Marquette College. “It’s a template for what sort of method Bailey goes to tackle the federal stage. Political opponents are going to get focused.”
Bailey has referred to as himself a defender of the rule of legislation, portraying his high-profile lawsuits and investigations in Missouri as needed to guard the state from what he has described as unlawful or unconstitutional actions by the federal authorities and abandonment of the rule of legislation by the left.
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Jeff Roberson/AP Pictures
Web page grew to become county govt in 2019 after a federal corruption case toppled his predecessor, Steve Stenger. Web page had led a bipartisan bloc on the County Council in opposition to Stenger, who was sentenced to almost 4 years in federal jail for a pay-to-play scheme that steered county contracts to political donors. (St. Louis County wraps round — however doesn’t embrace — the a lot smaller unbiased metropolis of St. Louis.)
The cooperative spirit collapsed as Web page set St. Louis County on the aggressive finish of Missouri’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, issuing early emergency orders limiting gatherings and indoor eating. That stance put him at odds with state officers who had been shifting to curb native energy.
Regardless of this and different political battles, Web page has twice gained countywide elections — first in 2020 to complete Stenger’s time period, then in 2022 to a full four-year time period. He has mentioned he’ll resolve by the top of the yr whether or not to run once more in 2026. He’s scheduled to be arraigned on Friday.
“I don’t assume I did something fallacious,” he mentioned briefly remarks to native information reporters at a ribbon-cutting for a county street mission.
A Web page spokesperson referred inquiries to his lawyer, Jeff Jensen, a former U.S. lawyer in Missouri throughout Trump’s first time period. Jensen didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Many have questioned the legitimacy of the case and whether or not Bailey’s successor, Catherine Hanaway, will see it by. Hanaway, additionally a former U.S. lawyer, in addition to a former speaker of the Missouri Home of Representatives, didn’t reply to questions.
“It actually appears, based mostly on my studying of it, a stretch,” mentioned Peter Pleasure, a legislation professor at Washington College in St. Louis and an knowledgeable in authorized ethics and trial observe. “It could be an uphill battle for the state to make this cost stick.”
Ken Warren, a political scientist and pollster at Saint Louis College, mentioned the costs had been “completely phony” however that “the extra outrageous you might be, the extra you’re going to appeal to the eye of Donald Trump.”
“Let’s say the identical factor occurred however the county govt occurred to be a Republican,” Warren mentioned. “Would Bailey go after him? In fact not.”
Missouri has grow to be a proving floor of kinds for Trump appointees. Martin — a longtime state GOP insider with a document of stoking controversies — was named the U.S. lawyer for Washington, D.C. After it grew to become obvious he couldn’t win Senate affirmation, he was moved to the administration’s pardon workplace and the Justice Division’s weaponization group.
John Sauer, a former Missouri solicitor normal and anti-abortion activist who final yr helped bankroll a marketing campaign to defeat Missouri’s abortion rights poll difficulty, defended Trump’s declare to presidential immunity earlier than the Supreme Court docket. Now, as U.S. solicitor normal, he serves because the federal authorities’s high advocate earlier than the Supreme Court docket.
Will Scharf, who misplaced a main bid final yr to unseat Bailey, pivoted straight into Trump’s authorized inside circle. Then there’s Billy Lengthy. The six-term ex-congressman was confirmed in June as IRS commissioner — regardless of having as soon as pushed to abolish the company — amid scrutiny over his ties to questionable tax-credit plans. He was just lately ousted and mentioned he’ll grow to be ambassador to Iceland.
That roster of loyalists isn’t any accident. Over the previous twenty years, Missouri has moved from being a aggressive bellwether state to a deep-red stronghold, with a political atmosphere that rewards the sort of hard-line conservatism and culture-war ethos that Trump prizes.
John Danforth, a Republican who served as Missouri’s lawyer normal from 1969 to 1976 after which as a U.S. senator till 1995, mentioned the workplace has shifted dramatically from its core mission. Beneath him, he mentioned, the job was to characterize state businesses, deal with each felony enchantment, reply to authorized opinion requests and handle litigation with a small employees. Requested a few transfer final yr through which Bailey investigated a St. Louis-area college district after a scholar was overwhelmed throughout college hours — blaming its variety insurance policies and removing of useful resource officers for security failures — Danforth mentioned, “I wouldn’t have completed it.”
Because the state has shifted proper, many races are successfully determined within the main. Candidates don’t have to win over most voters, in line with political specialists and observers — simply the small, very political group that exhibits up for low-turnout, winner-take-all primaries. That favors hard-line candidates.
Nowhere is that change clearer than within the lawyer normal’s workplace.
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 lawyer normal, then labored as a prosecutor. He joined the governor’s workplace as deputy normal counsel in 2019 and later served as normal counsel to then-Gov. Mike Parson.
His politicization of the lawyer normal’s workplace follows a path blazed by two predecessors, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, who every used comparatively temporary tenures because the state’s lawyer normal to launch themselves into the U.S. Senate. In Hawley’s case, out-of-state political consultants had been embedded within the workplace from his first weeks on the job, directing taxpayer-funded employees, shaping his coverage rollouts and boosting his nationwide profile forward of his Senate run. Schmitt used the workplace to wage headline-grabbing authorized fights, from suing China over COVID-19 to difficult pandemic restrictions, elevating his profile as he ready his personal Senate marketing campaign.
Neither Hawley nor Schmitt could possibly be reached for remark.
After Schmitt was elected to the Senate in November 2022, Parson introduced that he would appoint Bailey to fill the emptiness. That arrange a high-profile Republican main final yr in opposition to Scharf, a candidate with backing from the conservative institution. Bailey gained 63% of the vote and cruised to a simple general-election victory in November.
Inside per week, Bailey was interviewing with Trump for the job of U.S. lawyer normal within the new administration.
With no Democrats holding statewide workplace and a GOP supermajority within the legislature, Bailey has turned his fireplace on Democratic officers in Missouri’s two largest cities. He pressured St. Louis Circuit Lawyer Kim Gardner to resign by submitting a lawsuit to take away her from workplace that alleged willful neglect of responsibility and a failure to prosecute violent crimes, and he just lately sought to take away St. Louis Sheriff Alfred Montgomery, accusing him of misconduct. Gardner repeatedly denied any wrongdoing earlier than resigning; later she acknowledged misusing some public funds. Montgomery has denied wrongdoing and has refused to resign.
Kansas Metropolis Mayor Quinton Lucas has additionally been a frequent goal: Bailey threatened a Missouri Human Rights Act investigation into Lucas and his employees after a city-run social media account, responding to a speech by the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs soccer participant Harrison Butker about girls being homemakers, named the suburb the place Butker lived. Town deleted the put up and apologized. Bailey framed the put up as discrimination in opposition to Christians.
Final yr, Lucas recommended the town may benefit from asylum-seeking immigrants becoming a member of the native workforce, then clarified that he meant immigrants who had been within the U.S. legally. Bailey — who had sued the Biden administration over what he referred to as an “unlawful” parole program for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela — accused Lucas of attempting to contain Missouri companies in a “essentially illegal program.” He posted a letter on the social media platform X calling Lucas’ feedback “wildly irresponsible” and mentioned he was “placing him on discover that it’s a Class D felony to knowingly transport an unlawful alien within the State of Missouri.”
Lucas responded in a press release then that Bailey’s letter was “a political marketing campaign press launch with no authorized impact.”
“It’s not efficient lawyering,” Lucas mentioned in a latest interview. “It’s an entire new department of lawyering that I, as a lawyer, didn’t develop up figuring out, which is: Should you get a narrative out, who cares in the event you drag individuals by the mud?”
Bailey, alternatively, has stepped as much as defend Republican allies. His workplace intervened to defend three GOP state senators who had been sued for false gentle and invasion of privateness after wrongly figuring out a Kansas man because the shooter at a Tremendous Bowl parade honoring Kansas Metropolis’s NFL crew — and falsely calling him an undocumented immigrant.
Two of the senators referred to as the lawsuits frivolous, whereas Bailey has argued the posts had been protected by legislative immunity, because the senators had been performing of their official capability.
Lawsuits in opposition to two of the officers, who’re represented by the Missouri deputy solicitor normal, a high-ranking lawyer within the lawyer normal’s workplace, stay pending in federal court docket.
