Earlier on Thursday, we wrote about St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner seeking a motion to dismiss the attempt to remove her from office. The process began on February 23 when the Missouri Attorney General’s office filed the quo warranto—which as my colleague Susie Moore explained, stemmed from “serious allegations of malfeasance on the part of her office”—after a request that Gardner resign immediately.
Then in late April, a St. Louis judge lowered the boom on Gardner, writing that her office was a “rudderless ship of chaos”:
Describing Gardner’s office as “a rudderless ship of chaos,” [St. Louis Circuit Judge Michael Noble] held that there was sufficient evidence to find that Gardner and Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Desilets had acted with “intentional disregard for the judicial process” and announced that he would be appointing a special prosecutor to pursue a case of “indirect criminal contempt” against them both.
Garner’s filing failed on Thursday, however. But now, she has resigned.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner resigns, effective June 1 https://t.co/HJyTuqepIc
— FOX2now (@FOX2now) May 4, 2023
ST. LOUIS – After months of calls, requests, and demands for her to resign, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is stepping down. Her resignation is effective June 1.
Gardner, the city’s first African American chief prosecutor, tweeted her resignation letter to city residents at 3:44 p.m. In the letter, she drew a connection to her presence in power and the Missouri Legislature’s efforts to take over both the circuit attorney’s office and turn control of the city’s police force back over to the state. […]
There’s no word if the contempt hearings will be dropped, or how the attorney general will react to Gardner’s resignation. It’s also unclear what will happen to a bill being pushed in the Missouri Legislature that would give Governor Mike Parson the power to appoint a special prosecutor in jurisdictions where the homicide rate exceeds a set milestone.
— Circuit Attorney (@stlcao) May 4, 2023
The embattled Gardner had many other ethical issues, the report said:
She was fined more than $63,000 by the Missouri Ethics Commission in December 2018 for using campaign funds to pay for personal expenses during her time as a Missouri representative, and agreed to pay about 10% of that amount. Gardner blamed clerical errors for the mistakes.
In May 2022, a three-person disciplinary panel ruled Gardner violated ethics rules and recommended the Missouri Supreme Court reprimand the circuit attorney after she failed to share evidence with Eric Greitens’ attorneys during her 2018 investigation against the former governor. The state’s highest court formally reprimanded Gardner in August 2022.
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