Source: LifeSiteNews.com
The Republican attorney general of Missouri this week published a report concerning the recent ouster of a leftist St. Louis prosecutor, expressing hope that the document will help other states learn how to show “rogue, Soros-backed prosecutors” the door.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who has made a name as a staunch opponent of transgender ideology and a defender of free speech against government censorship, filed the 62-page investigative document on Tuesday in a bid to “put into the public domain what went wrong here, how it happened, and what systems need to be put in place to prevent it from ever happening in the future.”
The so-called “Kim Gardner Report” details the steps taken by the attorney general to oust left-wing prosecutor Kim Gardner after her alleged mishandling of criminal cases.
Gardner was elected as circuit attorney for the City of St. Louis in 2016, earning the support of far-left political mega-donor George Soros. She was re-elected in 2020 and resigned earlier this year.
In comments to Fox News at the time, Bailey argued that nearly 12,000 criminal cases were dismissed under Gardner’s watch, something he attributed to her failures as a prosecutor.
“She bragged about coming to office with a new approach to criminal justice focused on racial equity,” he told The Epoch Times. “She bragged about seeking to actively shrink the criminal justice system, and she did that by unlawfully refusing to do her job and let the criminals take over the streets.”
Gardner, who came onto the scene just a few years after the Ferguson riots rocked St. Louis following the justified police shooting of Michael Brown, campaigned on cracking down on alleged police malfeasance. Her actions drew the ire of conservatives, who pushed back against her allegedly soft-on-crime policies as the murder rate, which had begun sharply increasing before Gardner’s election, reached a 50-year high in 2019.
In 2020, Gardner filed a lawsuit against the city of St. Louis and its police union alleging that her reforms were being blocked due to a racist conspiracy of “entrenched interests.”
“It’s about the people, and that’s why we have to fight. Enough is enough,” Gardner said during a 2020 interview for “Nightline,” according to ABC News. “It’s about being the first African American prosecutor in the city of St. Louis, running on a platform about bringing criminal justice reform, bringing equality to the criminal justice system.”
Gardner became the subject of renewed scrutiny in February after a 21-year-old driver struck a 17-year-old volleyball player with his car, resulting in the loss of both of her legs. The situation sparked nationwide attention and outrage, particularly since the driver “was out on bond on a robbery charge despite nearly 100 bond violations including letting his GPS monitor die and breaking the terms of his house arrest,” the AP reported.
Gardner announced her resignation in May 2023 after Bailey filed a petition quo warrant calling for her removal following allegations of mishandling cases, the New York Post reported.
Charges filed in the city more than doubled in the three months immediately after Gardner’s resignation….