JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt is highlighting the Office’s biggest accomplishments from 2019-2022.
“I am extremely proud of the results our Office has obtained through our tireless work the last four years,” said Attorney General Schmitt. “We’ve fought hard to protect and defend the constitutions of the United States of America and of Missouri. We’ve worked with law enforcement to return our streets to the rule of law and protect our citizens from crime. We have fiercely represented the most vulnerable of our citizens from those who would prey on them for their own gain. We fought for the people who entrusted this office with everything that we had to give. It has been the honor of a lifetime to which I can only say, thank you Missouri.”
In 2019, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced the “Safer Streets” Initiative to combat violent crime rates in Missouri’s major cities. The Safer Streets Initiative was an unprecedented cooperative partnership between the U.S. Attorney’s office, the Attorney General’s office, and various law enforcement agencies. These special prosecutors handled federal crimes, specifically homicides, carjackings, and gun crimes, working with federal partners to take violent offenders off the streets.
The Attorney General’s Office designated Assistant Attorneys General as Special Assistant United States Attorneys (SAUSAs). AGO SAUSAs, originally split between Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri, have pursued 709 charges against 416 defendants. These charges include robbery, carjacking, distribution of a controlled substance, and assault on a law enforcement officer. Thus far, AGO SAUSAs has secured guilty pleas or supervised release revocations (SRR) against 190 offenders.
In 2019, Attorney General Eric Schmitt launched the SAFE Kit Initiative and recruited the Honorable Judge M. Keithley Williams to lead the initiative. The Attorney General’s Office and Judge Williams completed an exhaustive inventory of all untested sexual assault kits across the state in late 2019. The Office then began gathering, shipping, and testing untested sexual assault kits using a private laboratory.
Once kits were returned and were eligible to be uploaded into the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), the Office worked with the Missouri State Highway Patrol to upload those DNA profiles into CODIS and provide information to prosecutors when “hits” were identified in that database. To date, the Office has shipped 4,236 kits to the lab to be tested, with an additional 209 kits being shipping using municipal funds, for a total of 4,445 kits sent to the lab to be tested.
The Office has sent to the lab for testing 85% of untested kits identified in the first and second inventories. Just over 90% of all law enforcement agencies in Missouri have cleared their backlog of untested kits, and 86% of medical facilities have cleared their backlog of untested kits. Uploading DNA profiles from tested kits into CODIS has already resulted in 2 convictions in Boone County and St. Francois County, with 10 more cases set to go to trial.
In 2019, the Missouri Attorney General’s Office put together the Human Trafficking Task Force to create an environment in which law enforcement can identify, respond to and investigate human trafficking cases with maximum impact. The Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force conducted a multitude of successful “operations” in conjunction with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, federal agencies, and local law enforcement. One of these operations, led by Missouri and called “Operation United Front” involved 12 state attorneys general and was one of the largest operations of its kind.
Housed in the Office’s Criminal Division, the Special Prosecution Unit boasts a deep bench of seasoned prosecutors who aid local prosecutors across the state in complex criminal cases. Once invited in by the local prosecutor, these assistant attorneys general use their expertise and the resources of the Attorney General’s Office to obtain convictions in complex homicide, rape, and other criminal cases. Since 2019, the Office’s Special Prosecution Unit has obtained 125 convictions across the state of Missouri.
The Office worked to aggressively litigate lawsuits against Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiary Janssen, Purdue Pharmaceutical, and major distributors Amerisource Bergen, McKesson, and Cardinal Health to ensure that Missourians receive the maximum amount of money to fund resources for opioid treatment and abatement. As the cases progressed, working with other states, Missouri finalized a settlement with Johnson & Johnson and the major distributors in July of 2021, and launched the “Fighting Addiction, Saving Lives” program to press local subdivisions and counties to sign on to the settlement to unlock the full amount. The Office achieved that full sign-on and fought to obtain just over a half of a billion dollars from that settlement, which will be paid directly into a fund created by the legislature and will be used strictly on grant programs for opioid treatment and abatement. Because of the Office’s work on these important cases, millions and millions of dollars will fund critical infrastructure to ensure that those struggling with opioid addiction get the help that they need and that their families are supported.
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office has been an avid defender of Missourians’ and Americans’ First Amendment rights, especially in regards to safeguarding their right to freedom of speech. Attorney General Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry filed a landmark lawsuit on May 5, 2022 against top-ranking officials in the Biden Administration for allegedly colluding with social media companies to censor free speech on their platforms. Missouri obtained an order from the Court allowing the depositions of top-ranking officials in the Biden Administration, including Dr. Fauci and FBI Agent Elvis Chan, which revealed a collusive relationship between the federal government and social media companies to violate Americans’ right to free speech.
Attorney General Schmitt took several decisive actions to preserve Missourians’ Second Amendment rights over the last four years. He filed amicus briefs in support of upholding the Second Amendment rights of Americans, specifically by challenging state restrictions on lawful possession of firearms. Perhaps most notably, Attorney General Schmitt led a coalition of 23 states in filing an amicus brief in New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Corlett at the United States Supreme Court in opposition to New York’s “subjective-issue permitting” system. The Supreme Court struck down the unconstitutional law in June 2022.
Attorney General Schmitt prioritized upholding protections for Missouri farmers throughout his tenure. In 2021, the Office filed an amicus brief challenging the legality of overreaching restrictions put on pork producers for any pork sold in California. The Office also prevailed in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals defending a challenge to a Missouri law that prohibits falsely labelling and advertising “fake meat” products. In addition, Missouri has taken several steps to halt the Biden Administration’s attempts to weaponize the federal government against farmers. The Office has filed suit over federal energy policies that burden farmers, like the ban on drilling on federal land, the ban on future issuing of oil and gas leasing licenses, and the ban on natural gas transportation by rail. General Schmitt also pushed back against the Biden Administration’s overreaching interpretation of the Waters of the United States rule.
Defending Missourians against the threat of governmental overreach at all levels was a top priority of the Office. Attorney General Schmitt led the fight nationally to oppose vaccine mandates. Missouri was the first state to file suit to halt the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) vaccine mandate on private employers, and led a coalition in opposing the vaccine mandate on healthcare workers. Missouri also filed suit against the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandates for federal contractors, public transportation, and the Head Start program. Missouri obtained important victories in these cases, the most notable being the United States Supreme Court granting its request to block the Biden Administration’s vaccine mandate on private companies.
Over the past four years, the Office’s Consumer Protection Section worked on over 300,000 consumer complaints and also processed $500,000,000 in total payments. The Financial Services Section obtained 3,740 judgments modifying existing child support orders to ensure that children receive the right amount of support, and also processed over $9,000,000 in payments over the past four years. The Labor Section, in providing legal services for the State Treasurer in his capacity as custodian of the Second Injury Fund and the Missouri Office of Administration as custodian of the Central Accident Reporting Office, saved taxpayers over $50,000,000 and obtained 54 convictions for workers compensation fraud. The Governmental Affairs Section closed a total of 4,377 cases and obtained favorable judgments or orders in eight Sunshine Law cases.
The Criminal Appeals Section filed a total of 1,949 briefs and closed 3,531 cases. The Medicaid Fraud Control Unit obtained over $24,000,000 in civil settlements and over $13,000,000 from indictments and convictions, safeguarding Missouri taxpayer dollars. The Office also achieved historically low expenditures from the Legal Expense Fund.