As Missouri lawmakers prepared to strip her of her authority, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner announced her resignation on Thursday.
Gardner has been chastised numerous times in recent weeks for running a dysfunctional office.
“The circuit attorney’s office appears to be a rudderless ship of chaos,” Missouri Judge Michael Noble said at one point last week, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Gardner slammed state senators who were supporting a bill that would have appointed a special prosecutor to do the work Gardner’s office does in her resignation letter.
“The most powerful weapon I have to fight back against these outsiders stealing your voices and your rights is to step back,” she wrote. “I took this job to serve the people of the City of St. Louis, and that’s still my north star.”
Gardner stated that her resignation would take effect on June 1.
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According to the Post-Dispatch, Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, a Democrat, said Gardner met with lawmakers on Wednesday to try to reach an agreement that would result in her departure and the repeal of the planned legislation.
“She was on speaker with some of her attorneys and we were just walking through the parameters of what it would or wouldn’t be,” Rizzo said. “We obviously came to a place where she would be willing to resign” if the legislation was dropped.
“There was an agreement in place that that would happen sooner than later,” he said.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican who has been trying to remove Gardner from office since February, said in a statement that she should not be allowed to stay in office for another month, according to KMOV-TV.
“There is absolutely no reason for the Circuit Attorney to remain in office until June 1st. We remain undeterred with our legal quest to forcibly remove her from office,” Bailey said. “Every day she remains puts the city of St. Louis in more danger.
“How many victims will there be between now and June 1st? How many defendants will have their constitutional rights violated? How many cases will continue to go unprosecuted?”
Gardner was elected in 2017. According to the Washington Examiner, organizations associated with far-left billionaire George Soros have contributed at least $150,000 to her campaigns.
In 2020, she made news when she prosecuted Mark and Patricia McCloskey for pointing firearms at a trespassing crowd in their gated community during the nationwide Black Lives Matter riots. Gardner was eventually removed from the case after it was decided by a court that she was pursuing it for “political purposes.”
According to Forbes, St. Louis has led the list of America’s most hazardous cities for the previous two years.
Gardner supporter Adolphus Pruitt, chairman of the local NAACP, described her dismissal as “a modern-day lynching,” according to the Post-Dispatch.
“It is unfortunate that all of the forces against Kim Gardner chose to make it impossible for the office to function in the way that it needed to and in so many ways, chased away any talent that might have wanted to work for that office,” Pruitt said.
Gardner’s high-profile term came to an end when a case involving court delays blamed on her office left a man named Daniel Riley homeless. Riley was the driver of a car that collided with a visiting girl in February, resulting in both of her legs being amputated, according to KSDK-TV.
Pressure mounted after Noble stated that she should be held in contempt for failing to appear in court on behalf of her office.
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Gardner had to go, according to St. Louis defense attorney Scott Rosenblum.
“This was overdue,” he said. “The office was running amok.”
Former assistant prosecutor Natalia Ogurkiewicz, who quit the officer last month, said Gardner “backed down so that the information would not get out, and the people in the city, the countless lives that she has ruined with all of this, they all deserve to have these answers.”
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, will appoint Gardner’s replacement.
