AG Bailey using Missouri taxpayer money to fight Trump’s NY conviction is odd justice | Opinion

What does “justice” mean to Andrew Bailey?

It’s hard to figure out from his public actions. Last week, Missouri’s attorney general announced that he’s filing a lawsuit against the state of New York for its prosecution — and conviction by a citizen jury — of Donald Trump in the hush-money case involving his brief affair with a porn star to interfere with the 2016 election.

Apparently, it’s not fair for the Empire State to enforce its own laws.

“The blatant assault on our democratic process by radical progressives in New York has no place in a free and fair election process,” Bailey said in a social media post. He called the prosecution of Trump “unconstitutional lawfare” and vowed that he would “always stand” with the former president.

Trump, of course, has his own presumably well-compensated attorneys appealing the conviction. He’s a billionaire, supposedly. And you don’t often see state-level prosecutors — which Bailey is — rush to the defense of criminal defendants halfway across the country from their own jurisdiction.

But Bailey just volunteered to aid Trump’s defense, funded by Missouri taxpayer dollars.

That would be odd enough on its own, though entirely keeping with Bailey’s approach to the office of attorney general. He frequently takes on high-profile right-wing culture war fights — targeting a media outlet that criticized Elon Musk, sending letters threatening Target for Pride month displays, suing Planned Parenthood for hypothetical violations of state law — that don’t do much to serve Missourians but do earn him a lot of face time on Fox News and other right-wing media outlets.

Sounds a lot like “lawfare,” doesn’t it?

Bailey is so relentless with his politicization of his public post that it starts to feel silly pointing it out over and over again. But he keeps doing it over and over again, so here we are.

And it’s almost understandable. Bailey was appointed to his job. He’s running right now to be elected in his own right — and facing one of Trump’s own lawyers in the August primary. Man’s got to make an impression somehow.

Still, you wonder what Missourians would think if New York sued the Show-Me State to prevent it from enforcing its own laws. What’s good for the goose, right?

And also: There’s still that question of justice.

Keeping innocent Sandra Hemme in prison

Why? Because at the same moment he was suing New York to keep Trump out of prison, Bailey was also working to keep an almost-certainly innocent woman behind bars.

Earlier this month, a judge found that Sandra Hemme — who has spent 43 years in prison for a 1980 murder in St. Joseph — had established evidence of “actual innocence” in the crime and ordered her to be released from prison within 30 days. The judge ruled that evidence from the crime pointed instead to another suspect, a now-deceased former police officer who served prison time on unrelated charges.

Bailey, naturally, is trying to block Hemme’s release from prison.

“Ms. Hemme is a sixty-four year old woman whose family is desperate to reunite with her,” her attorneys at the Innocence Project told the Associated Press.

Unfortunately, New York won’t sue Missouri to free Hemme. That’s not how things are done.

And Bailey, of course, is just the latest in a long line of Missouri attorneys general who have worked to keep people in prison despite well-founded claims of innocence. It is a sordid and dishonorable history.

That record is particularly stark when you realize that there is precisely one criminal defendant in the United States who gets Bailey’s full-throated advocacy, backed by the full might and power of the Missouri attorney general’s office: the former president of the United States.

Which gives us a clear picture of Bailey’s priorities. Impunity for the rich and powerful and Republican. Grinding, relentless prosecution — whether or not it’s deserved — for everybody else.

That’s “justice” for Andrew Bailey. But it’s not real justice at all, is it?

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.