The Kansas City Star first reported the app usage earlier this month, raising concerns from open-government advocates who worried that Greitens, a Republican, and members of his senior staff were violating the law by deleting texts potentially dealing with state business.
In a letter dated Wednesday to state Sen. Scott Sifton, D-Affton, Hawley concluded that he could investigate the governor, putting to bed concerns that probing the governor's actions could represent a conflict of interest.
"While my Office currently represents the Governor in ongoing litigation, it represents the Governor in those other cases in his official capacity," Hawley wrote to Sifton, who had requested the probe. "The real party in interest in each of those cases, and the Office's true client, is the State of Missouri.
"Because my Office does not have a conflict of interest in this case, we have opened an inquiry into the issues you raised in your letter," Hawley said. He added that the attorney general's office would screen employees working on the probe to separate them from the office's representation of the governor in other cases.
"I am pleased to see the attorney general respond to two weeks of public pressure to move forward with his investigation," Sifton said Wednesday. "We need to ensure transparency in our state's highest office."
The governor broke his silence on the matter last week, when he told reporters in Bellefontaine Neighbors that "this is another nothing story that’s come from a liberal media outlet that is just desperate for salacious headlines." He did not directly deny the claims made in the report.
The Star reported that the governor and members of his staff downloaded the text-deleting app Confide on their personal cellphones. But Hawley, a Republican, has said that just because communication takes place on a personal device does not mean that the text messages may be deleted under the state's open records statutes.
"We're confident that this review of our records retention policy will show that we follow the law," said Parker Briden, the governor's spokesman. "Under the Governor's Office records retention policy, records related to official business of state government that come into possession of the Governor's office staff are retained."
He stated that Missouri law does not require that "transitory documents, drafts, non-decision making documents, records that are not necessary to sustain administrative functions, and materials that lack substantial administrative or operational value" need to be retained.
Nicole Galloway
Later on Wednesday, Loree Anne Paradise, Hawley's deputy chief of staff, said that the attorney general's office is also investigating Auditor Nicole Galloway's compliance with the Sunshine Law.The investigation stems from a July lawsuit brought by the Republican-aligned Missouri Alliance for Freedom and a later Sunshine Law complaint filed with Hawley's office.
The alliance says that Galloway, a Democrat, has failed to produce any text messages after the group filed sweeping open records requests with her office earlier this year.
Steph Deidrick, spokeswoman for Galloway, has said the requests are politically motivated, and that so far Galloway's office has produced more than 24,000 documents to the group.
Deidrick said text messages dealing with public business are retained in some form — and are not necessarily in text message format.
She said the auditor's office retains text messages for 30 days and that "regardless of the method of communication, information about public business is retained in some form."
"In the 24,000 documents that were produced, it would be difficult to differentiate whether content originated in a text message, hand-written note or other form of communication," Deidrick said in an email. "Keep in mind, this office is still in the process of fulfilling the Sunshine requests."
She added that processing of the group's original requests has recently been delayed.
In November, the Alliance for Freedom submitted a new 13-point Sunshine request to the auditor, requesting that the office process that request first before continuing on with the prior requests.
©2017 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
