During his short tenureÌýas Missouri's top legal official,ÌýAttorney General Andrew BaileyÌýhas consistently used and abused his office to promote an extremist right-wing agenda with a brazenness unheard of even in Missouri politics.
Bailey,Ìýappointed to the office to fill a vacancy in January 2023, is seeking a full elected term in November. In blatant self-service that campaign, he has repeatedly forced the taxpayers to fund headline-grabbing partisan litigation of questionable (or non-existent) legal validityÌý— while failing in numerous ways to carry out his actual responsibilities as Missouri's lawyer.Ìý Ìý
In the interest of keeping the public informed about this uniquely problematic public official, theÌýPost-Dispatch Editorial Board this springÌýlaunched this standing summaryÌýof Bailey's more outrageous ideological stunts, conflicts of interest and abrogations of duty. We have dubbed it TheÌýBailey Tally.ÌýIt is updated as needed.
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Latest addition:ÌýBailey fuzzies up the data on police stops of Black drivers.
Bailey in August moved to fuzzy up a metric of police traffic-stop data that has, for years, clearly highlighted the fact that Missouri law enforcement pulls over Black and Hispanic drivers at far higher rates than it does white drivers.
Bailey’s office is required by state law to produce an annual Vehicle Stops Report, compiling racial data and other information regarding each traffic stop conducted by police officers around the state. Since 2020, his predecessors as attorney general have augmented that report with an unmandated but crucial element: a “Disparity Index,†which presents the collected data as a ratio, taking into account the racial makeup of the jurisdiction where the driver was pulled over.
The Disparity Index has been invaluable in, for example, confirming that Black drivers in ºüÀêÊÓƵ city in 2018 were pulled over at a rateÌýsix times higherÌýthan their representation in the city’s population. Yet Bailey’s office this year simply stopped including that crucial metric, dismissing it as being of "limited analytical value."ÌýÌý
Keeping exonerated prisoners locked up in defiance of court orders.
In at least two instances in mid-2024, Bailey's office took the extraordinary step of telling Missouri Department of Corrections officials to ignore court orders releasing inmates based on judges' findings of actual innocence.
, 64, spent 43 years in prison before her murder conviction was overturned in June — then spent another month incarcerated as Bailey’s office launched an ultimately fruitless fight to keep her locked up. The judge in the case scolded Bailey’s office for calling the Chillicothe Correctional Center and telling officials there to ignore his order releasing Hemme. She was finally released after the judge threatened a prison warden with contempt of court.
In July, Bailey's office similarly told corrections officials to ignore a judicial release order for Christopher Dunn, 52, who had spent 33 years in prison for a murder that a judge had since determined he didn't commit.
In that case, Bailey's stalling tactic initially worked: After corrections officials ignored the judge's release order for two days on orders from Bailey's office, they finally began process of release under threat of contempt from the judge. But later that day, the Missouri Supreme Court, acting on Bailey’s appeal, suspended Dunn’s release in order to let the appeal play out.
The result was a scene that sounds like dystopian fiction: Dunn was literally in the process of filling out the paperwork to be released from the prison, with his wife on her way to pick him up, when the suspension of his release arrived — and he was led back in to be re-incarcerated. He was finally released a week later.
Too busy with political stunts to let the Sunshine in.
Among Bailey’s clearest duties, like those of all state officials, is to provide information about his office and its operations to those who file Sunshine Law requests for records. Given the legal power that office has, such transparency is especially crucial. Yet, as the Missouri Independent reports, his office as of early July was still completing the last of the Sunshine requests filed in 2023.
The backlog is in large part because of an insistence by Bailey's office on making even the most minor, easily fulfilled requests wait in line behind more complicated ones. The result has been ludicrous scenarios such as a 10-month wait for the Independent for access to three days’ worth of Bailey’s official calendar, a clearly public and easily provided piece of information.
A Bailey spokesperson told the news site that a spike in Sunshine requests coupled with staff turnover is why it’s taken longer than anticipated to work through the backlog. As we noted in an editorial on the topic, this apparent shortage of staff makes it even more outrageous that Bailey is using tax-funded personnel in his office to pursue frivolous, ideologically driven or just plain silly lawsuits or investigations against targets like the Biden administration, the state of New York, trans-care medical professionals and school districts.
Bailey inserts Missouri into Trump's New York criminal case.
Bailey — who so often seems to not grasp that he works for the people of Missouri, not former President Donald Trump's MAGA movement — announced June 20 he willÌýsue the state of New YorkÌýfor daring to criminally prosecute Trump.Ìý
Because Bailey holds a law degree, we can pretty safely assume he understands the legal concept of “standing.†As in, he has none here.
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.
Bailey announced on X 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.â€
This is classic Bailey: An opportunistic demagogue looking at a national political firefight and thinking, cravenly,ÌýHow can I get in on this?Ìý
In early August, the U.S. Supreme Court ended Bailey's tax-fundedÌý campaign stunt, summarily his attempt to halt Trump's sentencing.Ìý
Fanning the flames of hate in doxxing case.Ìý
Bailey jumped into the culture-war fray as usual after Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker was tweaked on social media for his controversialÌýMay 11 commencement speech at Benedictine College calling for women to stay at home rather than work.
The speech prompted an irresponsible tweet from someone on Kansas City’s official municipal X account, referencing the suburb where Butker lives. It was inexcusable but wasn’t true “doxxing†— it didn’t reveal personal information such as Butker’s street address.
But Bailey, never one to let the facts interfere with his demagoguery, quickly announced a probe against the city for violating Butker’s religious rights.Ìý
Bailey was apparently less interested in standing up for other Missourians who actually wereÌýdoxxed, after a hyper-conservative news channel posted a photo and identifying information of a Black female Kansas City employee and wrongly accused her of being the source of the original tweet against Butker.Ìý
Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas tweeted that female city employees who had nothing to do with the original tweet were being harassed, to the point that one had to leave home.
“The growing online rhetoric on this issue, for which you are fanning the flames, has made City employees targets for online hate mobs and put their personal safety at risk," Lucas wrote in a direct appeal to Bailey to lower the temperature of the debate. Needless to say, he didn't.Ìý
Punting on Christian boarding school abuse.
Activists have implored Bailey to use the prominence of his office to highlight alleged physical and sexual abuse of kids atÌýChristian boarding schoolsÌý— a historic problem in Missouri's under-regulated private school system and one that critics say is still happening under the radar.
Bailey's office responded with a generic public statement saying his office doesn't have jurisdiction to unilaterally investigate "sexual abuse and human trafficking."
As we noted in a May 17 editorial, Bailey's entire 16-month tenure to that point had been spent largely in launching and promoting unilateral investigations and lawsuits regarding culture-war issuesÌý— including, specifically, a "trafficking" suit against Planned Parenthood based onÌýa fictional girlÌýconcocted by aÌý.
In fact, even as his office punted on the boarding-school issue, Bailey took to () Fox News that week to tout his crackdown on businesses that hire illegal immigrants, saying he will "fill the vacuum created by the federal government’s ineptitude" on immigration.
Bailey's reluctance to get involved in the boarding school debate comes on the heels of attempts by right-wing members of the Legislature in the last session toÌýloosenÌýthe already-inadequate state oversight of those Christian facilities to prevent child abuse.
Defending slander on the taxpayers' dime.
In early May, Bailey announced his office would provide the legal defense (on the taxpayers' dime) for hard-right Missouri state Sens. Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Nick Schroer, who were beingÌýsued for defamationÌýby Denton Loudermill.
The senators shared and commented upon social media posts falsely implicating the Kansas man as being involved in the Feb. 14 mass shooting during the Kansas City Chief's Super Bowl celebration.
The senators' reposts of the false allegation included the (also false) claim that Loudermill was an illegal immigrant, and they used it to slam the Biden administration's immigration policies.Ìý
Bailey's justification in court documents for demanding "absolute legislative immunity" for the trio was that state legislators “should not be inhibited by judicial interference or distorted by the fear of personal liability when they publicly speak on issues of national importanceâ€Ìý— an obvious nod to the GOP's current obsession with politicizing the immigration debate.
Among those who recognized how improper it is to use public resources like that was Gov. Mike Parson, a fellow Republican who appointed Bailey as attorney general last year.
“This gentleman (Loudermill) did nothing wrong whatsoever other than he went to a parade, and he drank beer and he was Hispanic,†said Parson. (Loudermill is actually Black.) “We’re just not going to attack citizens, in Missouri or anywhere else, just because we think we have the power to do such.â€
Threatening a mayor overÌýlegalÌýimmigration.Ìý
In mid-April, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas publicly invitedÌýlegalÌýmigrants, withÌýlegalÌýwork permits, to come to work in his city, which was experiencing a building boom and labor shortage. Bailey, in a made-for-Fox News stunt, responded with aÌýthreatening letterÌýto Lucas laced with dubious legal reasoning, partisan disinformation and a whiff of xenophobia.
Bailey's letter (which the attorney general promptly, dutifully shared withÌý) threatened unspecified “legal action†over Lucas' comments. It quotes from statutes that make it illegal to transport undocumented migrants into Missouri or to employ them.
The letter acknowledges Lucas’ specification that he was talking about migrants who are “lawfully present, with lawful work permits.†But Bailey then dismisses that element as irrelevant because the federal government’s “open border programs are themselves illegal.â€
In calling for the hiring of migrants with federally approved work permits, Bailey alleges, "you are actively encouraging Missouri businesses to become entangled in a fundamentally unlawful program."
“Fundamentally unlawful†as decreed not by Congress or the courts, mind you, by one unelected official in one Midwestern state.
The race-baiting politicization of a tragic student fight.
In late March, Bailey inserted his office into a tragic incident in which 16-year-old Kaylee Gain was critically injured by another girl in a horrificÌýafter-school fightÌýnear Hazelwood East High School that was captured on video.
Though Kaylee is white and her attacker as seen on the video is Black, it’s not at all clear that race was a factor. The bystander video shows it was part of a broader melee in which multiple students were fighting with one another.
Yet Bailey announced an "investigation" into the school’s focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for students of all races. It shamelessly politicized the girl's life-threatening injuries in service to the political right's obsession with stamping out DEI policies.
A real lawsuit over an imaginary girl.
In February, Bailey filed a remarkable suit against Planned Parenthood allegingÌý. It’s based on a staged, heavily edited hidden-video sting in which the widely discredited right-wing activist group Project Veritas appears to get a Planned Parenthood employee to tell a man where he can take a pregnant girl out of state to get an abortion without parental permission.
The girl referenced in the video doesn’t actually exist. And the only alleged help from the Planned Parenthood employee is to provide information about abortion services, which the Missouri Supreme Court has long ruled is protected by the First Amendment.
In a social-media post announcing the suit, Bailey made clear the point, calling it "the culmination of a multi-year campaign to drive Planned Parenthood from the State of Missouri."
Some creative math to undermine voters' rights.Ìý
In a brazen attempt to stall efforts to put an abortion rights referendum on the statewide ballot, Bailey last year refused to sign off on the state auditor's modest official cost estimate of the measure, claiming instead it would cost the stateÌýbillionsÌýof dollarsÌýin lost tax revenue from unborn Missourians.
The state Supreme Court unanimously threw out the case in a scathing finding that BaileyÌýÌýto even weigh on the question.
Bailey's bizarre up-is-down argument on gun safety.
Bailey last year filed suit attempting toÌýÌýby claiming fewer guns on the streets would cost Missouri hundreds of millions of dollars in “increased crime costs.â€
There is no reliable data backing that argument — though states with loose gun laws like Missouri’s generallyÌýdoÌýhave significantly higher gun death rates than states like Illinois, that have stronger gun laws.
Siding with a convicted cop against a dead Black victim.
In June 2023, Bailey’s office filed a highly unusual motion attempting toÌýoverturn the convictionÌýof a white Kansas City police officer who’d been found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a Black man in his own driveway. The motion cited no new evidence, but essentially just second-guessed the prosecution's case.Ìý
The motion — from an attorney general's office that normally is tasked withÌýsupportingÌýcriminal prosecutions on appeal — has been described as unprecedented, and infuriated local prosecutors who handled the case.
On orders from Elon Musk, Bailey goes after a media watchdog.
In November, Bailey vowed to insert his office into a spat betweenÌýElon Musk, owner of X (formerly Twitter), and the liberal national media watchdog group Media Matters that exposed how the platform sometimes placed ads from major companies next to antisemitic tweets.
When Musk and others suggested, bizarrely, that the expose’ constituted criminal fraud, Bailey tweeted (even more bizarrely): “My team is looking into this matter.â€
Bailey followed through in late March with aÌýÌýagainst Media Matters for its commentary. The suit declares (without an ounce of irony or apparent self-awareness) that Twitter is "one of the last platforms dedicated to free speech in America."
In August, a federal judge, acting on a countersuit by Media Matters to challenge Bailey's investigation on First Amendment grounds, issued a preliminary injunction against him, finding there was "direct evidence of retaliatory intent" in Bailey's probe.
Making life harder for trans Missourians is always good politics.
Last year, Bailey created an emergency rule to effectivelyÌýÌýnot just for kids but alsoÌýfor adults. He withdrew it only after even his fellow Republicans deemed it too extreme.
Continuing his seeming obsession with making life harder for trans people, Bailey last year joined 18 other Republican attorneys general to challenge a proposed federal rule that would require states to ensure thatÌýfoster parentsÌýwho want to take in kids with sexual identity issues agree to relevant training and to respect the child’s preferred pronouns.
The challenge argued that would constitute infringement on foster families’ freedom of religion and speechÌý— effectively seeking to turn abused kids into ideological fodder for the culture wars.
Public enemy No. 1: Underpaid teachers trying to do their jobs.
In the first two months of 2024, Bailey twice made legal threats against the Webster Groves school district over separate issues that are of questionable importance — but likely to appeal to right-wing culture warriors.Ìý
In late January, he sent a cease-and-desist letter to district alleging it was teachingÌýsex-education curriculumÌýwithout providing the required opt-out opportunity for parents.
In February, he sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Webster Groves school district alleging that its general goal of hiring a moreÌýracially diverse teaching staffÌýto reflect the diversity of its students is “discriminating on the basis of race in direct violation of both state and federal law.â€
Gamblers, polluters, pot growers and other generous supporters.
•ÌýAs Missouri debates how to confront an unlicensed video gambling industry so brazen that it sued to prevent the Missouri Highway Patrol from seizing the illegal machines, Bailey has refused to take any action at all.
In fact, he wouldn’t even use his own office to defend the lawsuit — the very definition of his official duty — insteadÌýcontracting it outÌýto a private firm at the taxpayers’ expense. Bailey’s campaign has accepted more than $25,000 in donations from that unregulated industry or its lobbyists.
•ÌýA PAC supporting Bailey accepted a $50,000 campaign contribution from a New York-based LLC in September 2023. Just two months earlier, Bailey had filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the LLC’s Missouri-based subsidiary in an environmental lawsuit stemming from theÌýlead poisoning of childrenÌýin Peru.Ìý
•ÌýLate last year, the co-owner of a marijuana company that was in the midst of a legal battle with state regulators — with Bailey’s office representing the state in that legal fight — hosted aÌýpolitical fundraiserÌýin his Ladue home in support of Bailey.