(PresidentialHill.com)- Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-MO) has handed St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner an ultimatum: resign by noon on Thursday or be removed from office.
Bailey tweeted the news in a short sequence on Wednesday evening, threatening to use his official authority to force her out of her position if she did not resign freely.
The first tweet said, “he was giving Kim Gardner until tomorrow at noon to resign. If she did not comply, his office would immediately initiate removal procedures by filing a “writ of quo warranto.”
He stated that as attorney general, he must defend the citizens of St. Louis, and that includes doing all he can to ensure that crime victims are treated fairly and that justice is served in their cases. He said the disorder in St. Louis, Missouri, that Kim Gardner has produced by ignoring her responsibilities as the mayor shall be remedied to the best of his office’s abilities.
On Saturday, the accident that maimed Janae Edmondson, a 16-year-old volleyball player from Tennessee, prompted Bailey to take action. (Edmunson lost both of her legs.)
Edmondson was returning to her hotel after attending a volleyball tournament in St. Louis with her family and was hit by a vehicle. Daniel Riley, then 21 years old, is accused of driving the automobile while he was under house arrest with a GPS bracelet awaiting trial for an alleged armed robbery in August of 2020.
After receiving a GPS monitor, he allegedly broke the rules of his monitoring 40 times in the seven months after his trial was initially set to begin in July 2022. As a result, Gardner’s office decided to postpone the trial. The most recent infraction occurred during the preceding five days of the incident.
KSDK, an NBC station in the area, reported that the circuit attorney’s office had not asked the court to revoke Riley’s bond. According to a document by Gardner’s office, the judge was to fault since they knew about the offenses yet still let Riley out on bail.
Since she was elected in 2016 on a “criminal justice reform campaign,” Gardner has come under criticism for, among other things, neglecting to prosecute some severe crimes and ending all prosecution of what she deemed “low-level” offenses.
