from the missouri’s-top-culture-warrior dept
This story was initially printed by ProPublica. Republished below a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.
After a battle with a Black pupil in a St. Louis suburb left a white pupil badly injured in March 2024, Missouri Legal professional Basic Andrew Bailey blamed their faculty district for unsafe circumstances, although the incident occurred after lessons and greater than a half-mile from campus.
Bailey seized on the battle as proof of what he known as the Hazelwood College District’s misplaced priorities. He despatched a letter to the superintendent demanding paperwork on the district’s variety insurance policies and accused leaders of “prioritizing race-based insurance policies over primary pupil security.” Bailey argued that the district’s dispute with native police departments over its requirement that officers take part in variety coaching — an deadlock that resulted in some departments leaving colleges with out useful resource officers — had left college students susceptible.
In response, the varsity board’s lawyer stated Bailey had misrepresented primary info: The district employed dozens of safety guards at colleges the place it couldn’t assign useful resource officers, and even when it did have law enforcement officials stationed on the faculty, these officers wouldn’t have dealt with an after-hours, off-campus battle. Lastly, police discovered no proof that race performed a job within the battle.
The lawyer common’s workplace took no additional motion.
“He was simply making an attempt to get consideration,” stated faculty board President Sylvester Taylor II.
The authorized skirmish was the sort of publicity-getting transfer that outlined Bailey’s two years and eight months as Missouri’s lawyer common earlier than his shock choice final month by President Donald Trump as a co-deputy director of the FBI, in accordance with consultants who research the work of attorneys common.
As Missouri’s high regulation enforcement officer, Bailey repeatedly waded into fights over variety, gender, abortion and different hot-button points, whereas casting conservatives and Christians as below siege by the “woke” left.
Bailey had pledged at the beginning of his tenure in early 2023 to not use the state’s open public information regulation “as an offensive instrument” to demand bulk information from faculty districts in broad investigations — a tactic utilized by his predecessor, Eric Schmitt, now a U.S. senator. Nonetheless, he made frequent use of cease-and-desist letters, warning faculty districts that their variety initiatives or dealing with of gender and sex-education points violated the regulation.
Some efforts, like his letter to the Hazelwood College District, amounted to little greater than a press launch. Others ended in defeat, with judges calling his arguments unpersuasive or “absurd” or, in a single case, dismissing them with out remark. One lawsuit, towards China, resulted in a judgment towards the nation that consultants stated will probably by no means be enforced.
Bailey, who was sworn in to the FBI place on Sept. 15, didn’t reply to messages left with the FBI’s press workplace and with James Lawson, a longtime buddy who managed his lawyer common marketing campaign and served in numerous roles on his workers.
Bailey’s actions as lawyer common, in accordance with authorized observers, stood aside from the workplace’s core, nonpolitical duties: defending the state towards lawsuits and dealing with felony felony appeals. That work, by most accounts, continued as regular.
His Republican predecessors, Schmitt and, earlier than him, Josh Hawley, additionally used the place to advance conservative causes, wage fights towards progressive ones and lift their nationwide profiles.
Throughout his stint as lawyer common, Hawley — like Schmitt now within the U.S. Senate — delivered a speech wherein he claimed the elimination of social stigmas to premarital intercourse and contraception through the Sixties had degraded the therapy of ladies and promoted intercourse trafficking. And he fought to uphold state restrictions that threatened to close down Deliberate Parenthood clinics 4 years earlier than Missouri’s near-total abortion ban took impact after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
Schmitt was named to succeed Hawley in November 2018. Throughout his 4 years in workplace, he defended Christian prayer in public colleges and sued a number of native faculty districts that had enforced masks necessities through the pandemic.
In 2022, he joined a small group of conservative attorneys common in withdrawing from the Nationwide Affiliation of Attorneys Basic, a bipartisan group that had lengthy coordinated multistate investigations in circumstances towards industries starting from tobacco to opioids. In a letter posted to the social media platform now generally known as X, Schmitt joined Texas Legal professional Basic Ken Paxton and Montana Legal professional Basic Austin Knudsen in arguing that NAAG had taken a pointy “leftward shift” and that continued membership was insupportable. Neither Hawley nor Schmitt, via their spokespeople, responded to requests for remark.
Chris Toth, the chief director of NAAG who retired from the group weeks after the letter grew to become public, stated in an interview that the claims within the letter have been “fully unsupported by info.” Republicans, he added, have been concerned “in each side of the group.”
The transfer mirrored a broader shift in what number of attorneys common now use their workplaces — not solely to defend their states in court docket, however to attain political factors on the nationwide stage. Few have embodied that technique greater than Paxton, who has usually been described as specializing in tradition warfare points as lawyer common.
ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have reported how Paxton has reworked the lawyer common’s workplace into an company that appears much less centered on conventional duties like representing different state workplaces in court docket to 1 preoccupied with combating tradition wars. His workplace has more and more used the state’s highly effective shopper safety legal guidelines to research organizations whose work conflicts along with his political opinions. On the similar, he’s began more and more outsourcing main circumstances to personal regulation corporations.
Paxton’s workplace has stated a lot of the situations when it declined to symbolize a state company have been because of sensible or authorized limits — some businesses selected their very own attorneys; others have been barred by statute. He’s additionally argued that sure circumstances would have required reversing earlier positions or advancing claims he seen as unconstitutional. He’s defended hiring exterior regulation corporations, saying his workplace lacks the assets to tackle highly effective industries like tech and prescribed drugs. Paxton didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Bailey, although far much less outstanding nationally, match squarely inside this mildew. Earlier than leaving for the FBI, he spoke overtly about defending Missourians from what he known as “woke” ideology and lawlessness from the left.
A former U.S. Military officer, he has usually framed his mission in fight phrases. In a podcast interview this 12 months, he stated that whereas conservative states typically attempt to restrict the ability of their attorneys common to “maximize freedom,” blue states have weaponized their workplaces.
“I imply, Letitia James in New York has each weapon in her arsenal that her common meeting may give her,” he stated within the podcast interview. He stated she makes use of them “to mess with folks’s lives, to prosecute President Trump, take him to court docket in civil regulation to attempt to seize his belongings and undervalue these belongings.”
“Missouri is uniquely positioned as a result of we have been so just lately a blue state,” he stated, “so it’s like a retreating military has left the battlefield and dropped their weapons and we’re selecting them up and studying the way to use them towards them.”
A spokesperson for James’ workplace stated that “any weaponization of the justice system ought to disturb each American” and that it stood behind its litigation towards Trump’s enterprise and would proceed to face up for New Yorkers’ rights.
Bailey stated within the podcast interview that he supported all efforts to research President Joe Biden, his household and his administration, and to uncover what Bailey known as the reality behind the COVID-19 vaccine, which he stated “appears to not be a vaccine in any respect.”
Bailey used his workplace to research the nonprofit media watchdog Media Issues for America after it reported that company adverts have been showing subsequent to extremist content material on the social media platform X.
Stephen Miller, a high aide to Trump in his first administration, posted that conservative state attorneys common ought to examine; Bailey rapidly responded that his crew was “wanting into the matter.” Weeks later, he issued a “discover of pending investigation” to Media Issues and ordered it to protect information. He later accused the group of utilizing fraud to solicit donations from Missourians to bully advertisers out of pulling out of X, and demanded inner information and donor data below Missouri’s shopper safety regulation. In a June 2024 interview with Donald Trump Jr., Bailey described the probe as “a brand new entrance within the warfare towards the First Modification” and tied it on to the 2024 election, accusing Media Issues of making an attempt to silence conservative voices.
Media Issues sued and a federal decide blocked the investigation as probably retaliatory. In early 2025, Bailey dropped the case in a settlement and stated he had not discovered proof of monetary or different misconduct by Media Issues. The group didn’t reply to a request for remark.
When Trump was awaiting sentencing after being convicted in a New York court docket of falsifying enterprise information to hide hush cash funds to a porn star, Bailey requested the U.S. Supreme Courtroom to elevate a gag order on the previous president and delay his sentencing till after the 2024 election, arguing the restrictions stored Missouri voters from listening to Trump’s message. The Supreme Courtroom rejected his request in an unsigned one-page order with out rationalization. A New York decide later postponed the sentencing till after the election, writing that he wished to keep away from the looks, nonetheless unwarranted, of political affect.
Trump may have confronted as much as 4 years in jail, however a decide issued an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction in place however sparing him any penalty or fantastic. Trump stated the conviction was a “very horrible expertise” and a humiliation to New York. He’s interesting.
Bailey additionally fought to maintain a lady in jail even after a state court docket decide declared her harmless. Even after the state Supreme Courtroom ordered her launch, Bailey’s workplace informed the jail warden to ignore the court docket’s order. A state court docket overseeing the case scolded Bailey’s workplace in a listening to, saying, “I might counsel you by no means try this.”
Authorized consultants and different observers of the workplace stated state attorneys common historically didn’t act primarily as partisan warriors. Most have been centered on defending the state in court docket and defending customers.
Scott Holste, who served as a spokesperson for Jay Nixon, a average Democrat who served because the Missouri lawyer common from 1993 to 2009, remembers a starkly completely different strategy from Bailey’s. For instance, in late September 2008, the high headlines on Nixon’s web site centered on robocall guidelines, lawsuits over mortgage fraud and shopper suggestions for college students.
“We have been stridently apolitical in our information releases and in the best way we operated,” Holste stated. “Our job was to serve all Missourians, to not make political factors.”
Within the days earlier than the August 2024 Republican major, two of the three tales featured on Bailey’s homepage focused the Biden administration over immigration and protections for LGBTQ+ college students. The third highlighted a consumer-fraud prosecution.
To his supporters, Bailey is fulfilling marketing campaign guarantees — a conservative performing like a conservative, stated state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Republican from Branson.
Voters see a pacesetter defending their freedoms by combating insurance policies corresponding to variety and fairness, which they usually equate with racism, and masks mandates, which they view as authorities overreach, Seitz stated. “And,” he added, “we now have a populist president who appreciates that.”
Toth, the retired head of the nationwide AGs affiliation, traced the shift in how state attorneys common act to the 1998 multistate settlement with the tobacco trade, when practically each state joined a landmark deal that required cigarette makers to pay greater than $200 billion, curb promoting geared toward youngsters and fund anti-smoking campaigns. It additionally confirmed attorneys common how a lot energy they might wield.
Over time, the newfound energy has raised the profile of lawyer common workplaces throughout the nation, turning them right into a springboard for greater workplace. That greater profile has fueled politicization.
Democratic attorneys common are not any strangers to utilizing their workplaces to battle political battles. California Legal professional Basic Rob Bonta, for instance, has filed quite a few lawsuits difficult insurance policies of the Trump administration on immigration, environmental laws and federal funding. Whereas Bonta maintained these fits have been primarily based on the regulation, critics characterised the coordinated authorized motion as politically motivated resistance.
Dan Ponder, a political science professor at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, stated that because the state has shifted to the precise, the GOP major, quite than the overall election, is now the actual contest for statewide workplace.
He pointed to actions corresponding to Schmitt opposing crucial race concept and reviewing public faculty textbooks. “That will have been exceptional 20 years in the past,” Ponder stated, “however now you possibly can’t lose since you’re combating the quote-unquote good battle.”
Peverill Squire, a political science professor on the College of Missouri, stated that from the time of Bailey’s appointment to the place in January 2023, he in all probability had solely two audiences. The primary have been voters he wanted to defeat Will Scharf, a candidate already in Trump’s orbit, within the 2024 Republican major for lawyer common.
“After which as soon as he secured his election, then I feel his viewers was actually Trump,” Squire stated.
Former Missouri Republican Social gathering Chair John Hancock stated voters appeared to reward Bailey’s strategy. Bailey bought practically as many votes as Trump and Gov. Mike Kehoe within the 2024 common election — and greater than Hawley or any of the Republicans who gained the workplaces of lieutenant governor, treasurer or secretary of state.
“So clearly the work he was doing in that workplace was supported,” Hancock stated. “I don’t take horrible shock when politicians do political issues.”
Kehoe has appointed Catherine Hanaway, a former Missouri Home speaker and U.S. lawyer, to succeed Bailey as lawyer common. Hanaway has stated she intends to run the workplace in a special fashion. She informed the Missouri Impartial she had extra curiosity in Medicaid fraud, shopper safety and violent crimes.
Her workplace stated she was not accessible for an interview with ProPublica.
Filed Beneath: andrew bailey, tradition wars, donald trump, eric schmitt, fbi, josh hawley, missouri
