How the FBI’s Andrew Bailey Helped Lead Missouri Into the Tradition Wars — ProPublica

After a combat with a Black scholar in a St. Louis suburb left a white scholar badly injured in March 2024, Missouri Legal professional Normal Andrew Bailey blamed their college district for unsafe circumstances, despite the fact that the incident occurred after lessons and greater than a half-mile from campus.

Bailey seized on the combat as proof of what he referred to 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 scholar 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 weak.

In response, the college board’s legal professional mentioned Bailey had misrepresented primary details: 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 college, these officers wouldn’t have dealt with an after-hours, off-campus combat. Lastly, police discovered no proof that race performed a task within the combat.

The legal professional normal’s workplace took no additional motion.

“He was simply attempting to get consideration,” mentioned college board President Sylvester Taylor II.

The authorized skirmish was the form of publicity-getting transfer that outlined Bailey’s two years and eight months as Missouri’s legal professional normal earlier than his shock choice final month by President Donald Trump as a co-deputy director of the FBI, in keeping with consultants who research the work of attorneys normal.

As Missouri’s prime legislation enforcement officer, Bailey repeatedly waded into fights over variety, gender, abortion and different hot-button points, whereas casting conservatives and Christians as beneath siege by the “woke” left.

Bailey had pledged initially of his tenure in early 2023 to not use the state’s open public data legislation “as an offensive software” to demand bulk data from college 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 college districts that their variety initiatives or dealing with of gender and sex-education points violated the legislation.

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 mentioned will seemingly 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 legal professional normal marketing campaign and served in numerous roles on his employees.

Bailey’s actions as legal professional normal, in keeping with authorized observers, stood aside from the workplace’s core, nonpolitical duties: defending the state towards lawsuits and dealing with felony legal 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 legal professional normal, 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 in the course of the Sixties had degraded the therapy of girls 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 Court docket 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 college districts that had enforced masks necessities in the course of the pandemic.

In 2022, he joined a small group of conservative attorneys normal in withdrawing from the Nationwide Affiliation of Attorneys Normal, a bipartisan group that had lengthy coordinated multistate investigations in instances towards industries starting from tobacco to opioids. In a letter posted to the social media platform now often called X, Schmitt joined Texas Legal professional Normal Ken Paxton and Montana Legal professional Normal Austin Knudsen in arguing that NAAG had taken a pointy “leftward shift” and that continued membership was insupportable. Neither Hawley nor Schmitt, by way of 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, mentioned in an interview that the claims within the letter had been “utterly unsupported by details.” Republicans, he added, had been concerned “in each side of the group.”

The transfer mirrored a broader shift in what number of attorneys normal 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 battle points as legal professional normal.

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have reported how Paxton has remodeled the legal professional normal’s workplace into an company that appears much less centered on conventional duties like representing different state workplaces in court docket to at least one preoccupied with combating tradition wars. His workplace has more and more used the state’s highly effective client safety legal guidelines to analyze organizations whose work conflicts along with his political beliefs. On the similar, he is began more and more outsourcing main instances to non-public legislation corporations.

Paxton’s workplace has mentioned many of the situations when it declined to signify a state company had been attributable to sensible or authorized limits — some companies selected their very own attorneys; others had been barred by statute. He’s additionally argued that sure instances would have required reversing earlier positions or advancing claims he considered as unconstitutional. He’s defended hiring exterior legislation corporations, saying his workplace lacks the sources to tackle highly effective industries like tech and prescribed drugs. Paxton didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Bailey, although far much less distinguished nationally, match squarely inside this mould. Earlier than leaving for the FBI, he spoke overtly about defending Missourians from what he referred to 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 yr, he mentioned that whereas conservative states usually attempt to restrict the facility of their attorneys normal to “maximize freedom,” blue states have weaponized their workplaces.

“I imply, Letitia James in New York has each weapon in her arsenal that her normal meeting may give her,” he mentioned within the podcast interview. He mentioned she makes use of them “to mess with folks’s lives, to prosecute President Trump, take him to court docket in civil legislation to attempt to seize his property and undervalue these property.”

“Missouri is uniquely positioned as a result of we had been so not too long ago a blue state,” he mentioned, “so it’s like a retreating military has left the battlefield and dropped their weapons and we’re choosing them up and studying the way to use them towards them.”

A spokesperson for James’ workplace mentioned 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 mentioned within the podcast interview that he supported all efforts to analyze President Joe Biden, his household and his administration, and to uncover what Bailey referred to as the reality behind the COVID-19 vaccine, which he mentioned “appears to not be a vaccine in any respect.”

Bailey used his workplace to analyze the nonprofit media watchdog Media Issues for America after it reported that company adverts had been showing subsequent to extremist content material on the social media platform X.

Stephen Miller, a prime aide to Trump in his first administration, posted that conservative state attorneys normal ought to examine; Bailey rapidly responded that his workforce was “wanting into the matter.” Weeks later, he issued a “discover of pending investigation” to Media Issues and ordered it to protect data. He later accused the group of utilizing fraud to solicit donations from Missourians to bully advertisers out of pulling out of X, and demanded inside data and donor info beneath Missouri’s client safety legislation. In a June 2024 interview with Donald Trump Jr., Bailey described the probe as “a brand new entrance within the battle towards the First Modification” and tied it on to the 2024 election, accusing Media Issues of attempting to silence conservative voices.

Media Issues sued and a federal choose blocked the investigation as seemingly retaliatory. In early 2025, Bailey dropped the case in a settlement and mentioned 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 data to hide hush cash funds to a porn star, Bailey requested the U.S. Supreme Court docket 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 Court docket rejected his request in an unsigned one-page order with out clarification. A New York choose later postponed the sentencing till after the election, writing that he wished to keep away from the looks, nevertheless unwarranted, of political affect.

Trump may have confronted as much as 4 years in jail, however a choose issued an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction in place however sparing him any penalty or high quality. Trump mentioned 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 choose declared her harmless. Even after the state Supreme Court docket ordered her launch, Bailey’s workplace instructed 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 do this.”

Authorized consultants and different observers of the workplace mentioned state attorneys normal historically didn’t act primarily as partisan warriors. Most had been centered on defending the state in court docket and defending shoppers.

Scott Holste, who served as a spokesperson for Jay Nixon, a reasonable Democrat who served because the Missouri legal professional normal from 1993 to 2009, remembers a starkly completely different method from Bailey’s. For instance, in late September 2008, the prime headlines on Nixon’s web site centered on robocall guidelines, lawsuits over mortgage fraud and client ideas for college students.

“We had been stridently apolitical in our information releases and in the way in which we operated,” Holste mentioned. “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 appearing like a conservative, mentioned 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 mentioned. “And,” he added, “we’ve a populist president who appreciates that.”

Toth, the retired head of the nationwide AGs affiliation, traced the shift in how state attorneys normal 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 aimed toward kids and fund anti-smoking campaigns. It additionally confirmed attorneys normal how a lot energy they might wield.

Over time, the newfound energy has raised the profile of legal professional normal workplaces throughout the nation, turning them right into a springboard for greater workplace. That greater profile has fueled politicization.

Democratic attorneys normal are not any strangers to utilizing their workplaces to combat political battles. California Legal professional Normal 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 had been primarily based on the legislation, critics characterised the coordinated authorized motion as politically motivated resistance.

Dan Ponder, a political science professor at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, mentioned that because the state has shifted to the appropriate, the GOP major, quite than the final election, is now the true contest for statewide workplace.

He pointed to actions corresponding to Schmitt opposing crucial race principle and reviewing public college textbooks. “That may have been exceptional 20 years in the past,” Ponder mentioned, “however now you possibly can’t lose since you’re combating the quote-unquote good combat.”

Peverill Squire, a political science professor on the College of Missouri, mentioned that from the time of Bailey’s appointment to the place in January 2023, he in all probability had solely two audiences. The primary had been voters he wanted to defeat Will Scharf, a candidate already in Trump’s orbit, within the 2024 Republican major for legal professional normal.

“After which as soon as he secured his election, then I feel his viewers was actually Trump,” Squire mentioned.

Former Missouri Republican Get together Chair John Hancock mentioned voters appeared to reward Bailey’s method. Bailey acquired practically as many votes as Trump and Gov. Mike Kehoe within the 2024 normal election — and greater than Hawley or any of the Republicans who received the workplaces of lieutenant governor, treasurer or secretary of state.

“So clearly the work he was doing in that workplace was supported,” Hancock mentioned. “I don’t take horrible shock when politicians do political issues.”

Kehoe has appointed Catherine Hanaway, a former Missouri Home speaker and U.S. legal professional, to succeed Bailey as legal professional normal. Hanaway has mentioned she intends to run the workplace in a special fashion. She instructed the Missouri Unbiased she had extra curiosity in Medicaid fraud, client safety and violent crimes.

Her workplace mentioned she was not obtainable for an interview with ProPublica.