The Republican governor of Missouri has been indicted on felony “invasion of privacy” charges alleging that he threatened to release a nude photo of a woman if she revealed her affair with him:

Gov. Eric Greitens was indicted Thursday afternoon by a St. Louis grand jury on a felony charge of invasion of privacy.

The charge stems from a 2015 affair and allegations that he threatened to release a nude photograph of the woman, taken while she was blindfolded and her hands were bound, if she ever spoke publicly about the affair.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner launched a criminal investigation of the allegations last month shortly after they become public. The indictment accuses Greitens of not only knowingly photographing the woman with whom he had an affair, but also transmitting the image “in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer.”

After news of the indictment broke, Greitens was seen being led down a hallway in the local courthouse by several St. Louis city deputies, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

RedState’s smoosieq wrote about the allegations when they surfaced last month, noting that Greitens had admitted the affair but denied the blackmail. smoosieq said then:

My own takeaway at present is, “What a bleepin’ mess.” It’s probably too much to hope that this sordid tale won’t distract from some of the positive strides Missourians were hoping to take with a legislature and Governor who were seemingly on the same page.

Well, it’s an even bigger bleepin’ mess now. The Governor is not taking this lying down, blasting St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner as “a reckless liberal prosecutor who uses her office to score political points.”

As always, the proof will be in the pudding, which is to say, the evidence. Until that is revealed, it’s all political chest-beating, illuminating nothing.

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