August 07, 2020
By Mark Chesnut
We told you earlier how George Soros-funded St. Louis Prosecutor Kim Gardner had come under fire for using her prosecution of Mark and Patricia McCloskey in a fundraising email to donors. Not so surprisingly, the move came less than a month after Gardner accepted more than $100,000 from a Soros front group called Missouri Justice and Public Safety PAC.
Because of the fundraising email, the attorney for the McCloskeys is calling for Gardner to be disqualified from the case.
Now, new information has come to light that Gardner has been taking extravagant trips using donor’s dollars, not an uncommon thing for a politician. However, according to reports, Gardner hasn’t been reporting the travel as required by law.
As local news channel News 4 put it: “A News 4 investigation has found that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has been flying all around the country and the globe with organizations who want to reform the criminal justice system. However, it appears she has violated the law, by not reporting the trips.”
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According to that report and others, Gardner has traveled to places like Cleveland, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Washington D.C.—even to Europe—all paid for by her donors. However, after reporting some trips in 2017, she apparently didn’t report any in 2018 or 2019, an obvious violation of the law.
In fact, such travel was far from an infrequent occurrence. Sources reportedly told KMOV that Gardner’s traveling was “prolific and problematic,” and that she was often “unreachable.”
For her part, Gardner was anything but contrite after her illegal travel was revealed.
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"Circuit Attorney Gardner refuses to apologize for seeking reasonably opportunities to further her knowledge and access prosecutors from throughout the nation for best practice,” said a statement from her office. “The suggestion that she would be persuaded to follow an alternative that is not focused on addressing the root causes of crime for a few plane tickets and hotel rooms is insulting.”
In fact, as a prosecutor, Gardner should be aware that criminal activities are illegal. But when caught in her own crime, she chose to lecture about intent rather than respond to the actual criminal allegations.
What are the chances that all this malfeasance will be enough for Gardner to be voted out of office in this fall’s election? Only time will tell, but gun owners under her jurisdiction should be doing all they can to get out the vote for her opponent.
Freelance writer and editor Mark Chesnut is the owner/editorial director at Red Setter Communications LLC. An avid hunter, shooter and political observer, he has been covering Second Amendment issues and politics on a near-daily basis for the past 20 years.
