DOJ halts partnership with Missouri in St. Louis, Schmitt says, but not Kansas City

Federal prosecutors in St. Louis have stopped working cases with Missouri because it is suing the state over its new gun law, Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office said, but their counterpart federal officials in Kansas City are keeping the partnership intact.

The U.S. Attorneys in both Kansas City and St. Louis, as well as the U.S. Justice Department, filed suit against Missouri in federal court Wednesday seeking to overturn the Second Amendment Preservation Act, a far-reaching state law passed last year that bars state and local police from helping to enforce certain federal gun restrictions.

In the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas City, the Biden administration alleges the state law is unconstitutional and “severely impairs federal criminal law enforcement operations” to fight gun crime in Missouri. Since the law’s passage last summer, police departments across the state have withdrawn from partnerships with federal agents to investigate gun and drug crimes, and some departments have stopped sharing ballistics evidence with the federal government.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who has been defending the law in another case pending before the Missouri Supreme Court, accused the federal government Wednesday of using the new lawsuit as “pretext” for withdrawing from a partnership in which attorneys in Schmitt’s office were sworn in as federal prosecutors to charge crimes in federal court.

The partnership, Safer Streets Initiative, has led attorneys to charge 390 defendants in federal court since 2019, Schmitt’s office said, including cases of illegal gun possession.

“Unfortunately, the Biden DOJ has used this lawsuit as a pretext for them to pull the plug on our successful and innovative federal-state crime fighting partnership, the Safer Streets Initiative,” Schmitt said in a statement. “My office has fought to continue the initiative, but this initiative has been suspended solely because of the Biden Administration’s actions.”

Teresa Moore, interim U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri in Kansas City, said in a statement Thursday that the three Missouri attorneys deputized to serve in her office remained in place.

“As part of the Safer Streets Initiative, they are working in my office to prosecute dozens of active federal cases against defendants charged with illegally possessing firearms and illegal drug trafficking,” Moore said. “I remain committed to working alongside state and local law enforcement partners.”

Schmitt’s office then explained that only Sayler Fleming, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis, had withdrawn from the partnership. The office provided a letter dated Monday from the Justice Department to one of the Missouri assistant attorneys general, terminating his work in Fleming’s office.

Chris Nuelle, Schmitt’s spokesman, said the attorneys were told “their engagement with the Safer Streets Initiative has been suspended due to a conflict with the litigation.”

Fleming’s office could not be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear why the two federal law enforcement offices in Missouri had taken opposite tactics in light of the lawsuit, but Nuelle slammed the differing approaches.

“It’s apparently a conflict in one district, but not the other,” he said. “This is complete incompetence from the Biden Administration ... We’re surprised and pleased that we’re able to continue the initiative in the Western District, and we welcome that continued partnership.”

Fleming was appointed by the Trump administration in late 2020. Moore was appointed by Biden’s administration in December.

The Second Amendment law has sparked confusion and frustration among state and federal law enforcement since its passage.

The act declares “invalid” many federal gun regulations that don’t have an equivalent in Missouri law. These include statutes covering weapons registration and tracking, and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.

State and local police are prohibited under the act from helping federal agents enforce any of the “invalid” laws, or from hiring former federal agents who had enforced them. Police departments are subject to $50,000 lawsuits from private citizens who believe their Second Amendment rights were violated.

The Star reported last summer that as local police determined whether to continue working with federal agents, Western District U.S. Attorney’s office told departments that it would subpoena their officers for cooperation in cases “in hopes that compulsory attendance will afford you a measure of protection.”

Fleming’s office met with local police last June to ask whether they would still work with her.

“I am confident we will work through this,” she wrote then.

In addition to halting work with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, some police have shied from casework even tangentially related to the federal government, or to firearms, such as pulling out of federally funded regional drug task forces. Others say they continue to work with federal agents but only on the portions of cases unrelated to guns.

The cases Missouri assistant attorneys general were prosecuting under the Safer Streets Initiative were unaffected, Nuelle said last fall, because the new gun law shields only “law-abiding citizens.” The law defines “law-abiding citizens” as people allowed under Missouri statutes to possess a gun.