Yet another Missouri official may take Soros-backed prosecutor to court as more assistants resign

A George Soros-bankrolled prosecutor in St. Louis already facing a legal effort by Missouri's attorney general to fire her for allegedly neglecting her duties may soon be hit with a separate lawsuit from another top state official as her office struggles to carry out basic tasks amid a striking wave of staff resignations.

Missouri State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick threatened Monday to file a lawsuit against Gardner, warning she's not handing over the information he needs to complete an audit to see if her office is wasting taxpayers' money. He said he's been seeking certain documents for a long time and given Gardner's office deadlines to comply, so far to no avail, adding that as a result he's issued her a subpoena.

"If we don't receive that in the next week or so, then we will be going to court," Fitzpatrick told local Fox affiliate KTVI. "We basically have to file a lawsuit to enforce the petition in court, where a judge would essentially order the Circuit Attorney's Office to comply with the subpoena, and if they fail to do that, we would have to go back to the judge and say they didn't. Then the judge would have to determine if they were going to be held in contempt of court or what was going to happen there."

Fitzpatrick noted that Gardner's office has given him some information but not everything he needs.

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"The information that we're seeing so far has been somewhat limited. We've requested bank statements, copies of checks," said Fitzpatrick. "We've gotten some information, but a lot of it's been redacted. It's hard for us to say we've identified a bunch of concerns with the audit because we've been stonewalled for the most part on a lot of the important things that we need to see to complete the fieldwork on the audit… Ultimately, this resulted in a subpoena."

Fitzpatrick noted the process of auditing the Circuit Attorney's Office didn't start with him but rather with the St. Louis Board of Aldermen, which in 2018 asked for an audit of all the city departments. The Auditor's Office has been seeking information from Gardner's office since 2021, before he assumed office. 

"What I can say is that the process that I've seen in handling the audit report is certainly not efficient and not in the best interest of taxpayers," said Fitzpatrick. "When we are being forced to deal with outside counsel that the Circuit Attorney's Office is paying an hourly rate to and is racking up costs to the taxpayers of the City of St. Louis."

The auditor said he's prepared to go to court by May 15 if he doesn't get the information he's requested.

While Gardner's office didn't respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment for this story, a spokesperson said in a statement that the circuit attorney has been cooperating with the probe.

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"The CAO has cooperated with all requests from the auditor," the spokesperson said. "Today's subpoena was a surprise. However, our office is committed to complying with all requests related to its audit of the office."

Gardner is one of the first progressive prosecutors whom Soros, a liberal billionaire and Democrat mega-donor, bankrolled in 2016 and again for her re-election in 2020. She announced last month that she'll seek a third term.

Fitzpatrick's warning about St. Louis' top prosecutor came on the same day that Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Desilets resigned from Gardner's office. His resignation came after a Missouri judge last week moved to hold him and Gardner in "indirect criminal contempt" after they failed to appear at a trial and subsequent hearing in an assault case involving the wounding of an 11-year-old girl.

"The Circuit Attorney's Office appears to be a rudderless ship of chaos," Judge Michael Noble said at last week's hearing to address the no-shows. "Kim Gardner is the circuit attorney, and it is her duty to manage the caseload of each staff member. Chris Desilets has approximately 104 felony cases. Any prudent practitioner would expect such a caseload to create countless irreconcilable conflicts. It does not appear she has made any reasonable efforts to prevent the resulting chaos. It appears that Ms. Gardner has complete indifference and a conscious disregard for the judicial process."

Noble said Thursday that he will allow Gardner and Desilets to retain attorneys and seek evidence to defend themselves against the contempt charge. Both prosecutors could face jail time or a fine if found guilty. A hearing has been set for May 30.

Persistent personnel issues have plagued Gardner's long understaffed office, creating low morale and a dysfunctional working environment. Gardner, a Democrat who took office in 2017, had a more than 100% turnover rate for attorneys in her first two years in office and by earlier this year had about half as many attorneys on staff as when she assumed the job.

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To make matters worse, Desilets wasn't the only prosecutor to leave Gardner's office over the past few days. Assistant Circuit Attorney Alex Polta similarly resigned on Friday while embroiled in his own contempt case.

An 18-year-old was set to face trial starting two weeks ago on charges that he killed a man in 2021, but no one from Gardner's office appeared in court. Polta, the prosecutor assigned to the case, was on sick leave.

"This conduct thwarts and defeats the authority of the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis," Judge Scott Millikan wrote in his filing, ordering Gardner's office to show cause as to why she shouldn't be held in criminal contempt and ordered to pay a fine or face jail time.

Millikan ultimately opted not to hold Gardner in contempt but lamented that miscommunications within her office allowed the case to "[fall] through the cracks." 

Desilets and Polta were the longest-tenured violent felony prosecutors in Gardner's office.

Polta's resignation came after one of the few remaining prosecutors who handles the city's most violent felonies abruptly resigned earlier this month, citing a "toxic work environment" where basic prosecutorial tasks weren't getting accomplished.

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"The backbone of the Circuit Attorney's Office are the hardworking men and women who review and issue cases on a daily basis," Gardner's spokeswoman Allison Hawk said of the resignations in a statement. "While we have had some high-profile departures, the office continues to seek justice for the people of the City of St. Louis. The CAO has made adjustments to the workload to ensure all cases are covered, and is actively recruiting talented attorneys. 

"The prosecutor's office continues to be an excellent training ground for those seeking experience in the criminal justice system," Hawk added, "and we continue to receive resumes from qualified attorneys. Despite constant criticism and scrutiny, the team continues to pull together to serve the City of St. Louis under the leadership of Circuit Attorney Gardner."

Following the latest departures, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that nearly one-third of the attorneys in Gardner's office have left in just the past two months. Of those remaining, there is now just one prosecutor in Gardner’s office handling about 500 violent felony cases, according to local NBC affiliate KSDK, which filed an open records request showing 22 total people in the office have the title of attorney and only one is assigned to the Violent Felonies Unit. However, Hawk disputed that figure, claiming there are over 30 attorneys in the office handling violent felonies.

Regardless of the exact number, no-shows from Gardner's office have become common amid chronic staffing issues. Several hearings in recent months have been delayed because no one from her office was there to argue them. In 2021, Gardner came under fire after three murder cases under her purview were dismissed in one week due to prosecutors in her office not showing up for hearings or being unprepared. Authorities later learned that the prosecutor who had failed to show up for one of the trials that was dismissed altogether had been assigned 30 cases while on maternity leave.

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Another increasingly common issue for Gardner has been dismissing and refiling cases as her understaffed office has struggled to prepare for trials. Earlier this month, for example, prosecutors dismissed and refiled charges against two men accused of killing a father and his 7-year-old daughter, likely pushing back the trial by months. According to an investigation by local CBS affiliate KMOV, the reason for the dismissal and refiling is that "the prosecutors weren't ready for trial," which had been set to take place in a matter of days.

Meanwhile, overshadowing all the chaos embroiling Gardner's office is the ongoing effort by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to remove her from office. Bailey, a Republican, asserts that Gardner is not enforcing the law or protecting public safety.

For years, Gardner's office has faced criticism for mishandling cases and office dysfunction. The final straw for Bailey came in February, when a teenage volleyball player visiting St. Louis with her team was struck by a car and lost both of her legs.

A man was charged in the crash with assault, armed criminal action and operating a motor vehicle without a valid license. He was out on bond awaiting trial for a separate armed robbery case despite violating the terms of his bond several dozen times.

Gardner argued that her office had tried to put the suspect back in jail but that a judge had denied their request. However, there are no court records of her office, which is responsible for monitoring compliance with bond conditions and revoking them when those terms are violated, asking for his bond to be revoked, according to local reports.

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In the wake of the incident, Bailey filed a petition quo warranto, the legal mechanism under state statute that allows the attorney general to remove a prosecutor who neglects the job's duties.

Bailey claims that nearly 12,000 criminal cases have been dismissed to what he calls Gardner's failures. He also says more than 9,000 cases have been thrown out as they had been about to go to trial, forcing judges to dismiss more than 2,000 cases due to what Bailey described as a failure to provide defendants with evidence and speedy trials.

Gardner has refused to leave office, calling Bailey's efforts a political "witch hunt" and a form of "voter suppression." She's also suggested that racism and sexism are behind some of the criticism against her.

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A St. Louis judge has set a tentative trial date for Sept. 25 to hear arguments from both sides.