“We will carefully examine the facts contained in the indictment and answer the question as to whether or not the governor can lead our state while a felony case moves forward,” House Speaker Todd Richardson, a Poplar Bluff Republican, told the Kansas City Star. Greitens has admitted to the affair in 2015, before he took office as the chief executive of the Midwestern state. In a separate statement, Greitens' lawyers called the charges "baseless and unfounded," in a statement to the Post-Dispatch. ------

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 Missouri Gov. In his statement following the indictment, Greitens maintained that he "did not commit a crime," and said the charge was a "misguided political decision." As reported by the Two-Way in January, Greitens, a Republican, confirmed that he had an extramarital affair before he was elected in 2016, but he denied the allegations of blackmail. In 2015, the woman told her husband, who was secretly taping the conversation, that Greitens took the compromising photo of her at his home and threatened to use it as blackmail if she spoke about the affair. The indictment document says that Greitens “knowingly photographed” an unidentified woman in “a state of full or partial nudity without (her) knowledge or consent.”

“The defendant subsequently transmitted the image contained in the photograph in a manner that allowed access to that image via a computer.”

The transmission of the photo made the offense a felony rather than a lesser misdemeanor, according to The New York Times. Governor Eric Greitens was taken into custody and booked Thursday, according to the St Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper, after a grand jury issued the felony charge related to allegations that he blackmailed a woman with whom he was having an affair. “As I have stated before, it is essential for residents of the City of St. Louis and our state to have confidence in their leaders,” St Louis prosecutor Kimberly Gardner said in a statement. MISSOURI'S GREITENS ADMITS HE WAS 'UNFAITHFUL' BUT DENIES BLACKMAIL ALLEGATION

An investigation into Greitens' behavior was opened in January following his admiting to an affair, reportedly beginning in March 2015.
A grand jury indicts Missouri Governor Eric Greitens on charges of felony invasion of privacy by allegedly threatening to publish a nude photo of the woman he was involved with in a 2015 extramarital affair, if the woman ever disclosed the relationship. Governor Greitens denies the blackmail charge.