During his short tenure as Missouri's top legal official, Attorney General Andrew Bailey has…
Another week, another tax-wasting, MAGA-pandering political stunt from our state’s top legal official.
This time, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — who so often seems to not grasp the “Missouri” part of his title — says he will sue the state of New York for daring to criminally prosecute former President Donald Trump. Because, naturally, the logical plaintiff in such a challenge is a state politician from a distant time zone who has no earthly connection to the criminal case at hand.
Because Bailey holds a law degree, we can pretty safely assume he understands the legal concept of “standing.” As in, he has none here.
No matter; Bailey, an appointed Republican seeking election to a full term this year, faces a primary challenge from a fellow right-wing culture warrior. So he is scrambling to establish his Trumpier-than-thou credentials to the base with this cynical maneuver. And all Missouri taxpayers — including those who want their attorney general to represent their state’s legal interests, instead of his own political campaign — get to foot the bill.
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Trump, of course, was convicted by a Manhattan jury last month on 34 felony counts related to falsification of business records to hide an alleged extramarital tryst with a porn star so it wouldn’t hurt his 2016 presidential campaign.
We and many other Trump critics have argued that, while evidence is clear Trump did what he was accused of, this particular case is the weakest of the four pending criminal cases against him. Trump’s brazen criminality in the two pending cases related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 election are far more substantive and solid. This one, conversely, stands a good chance of being overturned on appeal.
None of which makes Bailey’s latest stunt any more defensible.
Bailey last week announced on X (formerly Twitter) that he will “be filing suit against the State of New York for their direct attack on our democratic process through unconstitutional lawfare against President Trump.”
“We have to fight back against a rogue prosecutor who is trying to take a presidential candidate off the campaign trail,” he followed up. “It sabotages Missourians’ right to a free and fair election.”
Ironically enough, Bailey’s announcement is the very definition of “lawfare”: abusing the legal system for political gain. As we have cataloged in our “Bailey Tally“ — the Editorial Board’s ongoing record of the worst official abuses by Missouri’s worst public official — such self-serving political showboating is how Bailey spends most of his time and effort as attorney general.
As we outline there, other official targets of this brazen “rogue prosecutor” have included school districts, for teaching sex education or promoting diversity; trans kids and their counselors; legal immigrants; a national media watchdog group that had the audacity to criticize Elon Musk; and a private citizen slandered by right-wing Missouri legislators — who are now being defended on (once again) Missouri taxpayers’ dime.
Meanwhile, Bailey’s continued public embrace of Trump’s 2020 election lies should be the final word on his supposed concern for “free and fair” elections.
Bailey’s litigation announcement against New York, like so much of what he has done to abuse his publicly funded office during his 18-month tenure, is nothing more than an opportunistic demagogue looking at a national political firefight and thinking, cravenly, How can I get in on this?
There is, in fact, no rational legal basis for involvement in the New York case by a Missouri attorney general. So, true to form, Bailey has just made one up. Much like he fabricated a whole-cloth fiscal argument to stall an abortion-rights referendum effort until the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously ruled that he had no legal basis whatsoever for doing it.
Bailey’s latest campaign tool of a lawsuit is almost certainly doomed as well, given his lack of anything resembling standing.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t useful: The suit provides yet another reminder to Missouri voters this year that this uniquely unfit public servant cares nothing about public service — that his entire tax-funded project is the cynical promotion of his own ideology and political career. Voters shouldn’t reward it.