ICYMI – Here’s another one of those cases where you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys because they both seem to be working the same side of the fence. William Tisaby used to be an FBI agent. Now he’s a private investigator. That is, he was. He’ll probably lose his license for that because he just pleaded guilty to tampering with physical evidence. The charge is a class A misdemeanor so he was only sentenced to “one-year probation with a possible discharge after three months.” That’s a pretty good deal considering he was originally charged with six counts of perjury too. They fell off because of the way St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner messed up.
Evidence? No, haven’t seen any
William Don Tisaby is described as an ex-FBI Agent. You have to do something especially serious to get drummed out of that outfit. Considering that the way the bureau runs these days makes Nixon’s plumbers look like amateur burglars it isn’t a surprise that Tisaby is charged with evidence tampering.
He was also charged with lying under oath but those charges went away when the behavior of the person who hired him came into question. The important thing is that Governor Eric Greitens “resigned in disgrace” over the whole fiasco.
Back on January 10, 2018, Missouri Governor Greitens delivered his State of the State speech. A few hours later a local news channel aired footage “of an angry husband secretly recording a conversation with his crying wife, who was confessing to having an affair with Greitens.”
Obviously, the Governor’s wife was not amused. He has kids, too. The woman on the tape “also told her husband that Greitens was blackmailing her into keeping silent by taking embarrassing photographs of her.” Greitens admitted the affair, called it consensual and denied the blackmail. The photos were crucial evidence.
Soon, a grand jury indicted the Governor “on a felony invasion of privacy charge for taking and transmitting the alleged photo.” A couple months later, Kim Gardner got involved. For a warm up act, she charged him with “a felony of tampering with computer data, for disclosing a St. Louis charity’s donor list to his own political fundraiser without the charity’s permission.” That’s when she hired Tisaby.
Under oath, he would later testify that “he took no notes during an interview with the woman who accused Greitens.” He swore up and down he did not ask her any “substantive questions” during the interview. He also testified “that he received no information or research help from Gardner’s office, and that he had not contacted Gardner’s office in advance.” Those were lies. Tisaby further testified “that Gardner never asked him to look for an expert to help locate the photo which Greitens had allegedly taken to blackmail the woman.” That’s where the evidence tampering comes in.
Can’t trust the FBI
Conservatives say this is a prime example of why nobody can trust the FBI anymore. They all seem to act this way. Tisaby’s perjury indictment spells out that “Gardner was present for his interview with the woman. The recorded interview shows Tisaby taking notes, and phone records show Tisaby shared more than a half dozen phone conversations with Gardner.”
Things get worse when it comes to the photos. “Tisaby did contact a digital forensic company regarding the photograph, and was involved in multiple calls with the company, and Gardner, to discuss obtaining the photo.” He eventually admitted in court that yes, he concealed and suppressed some evidence.
While jury selection was in full swing for the felony invasion of privacy charge against Greitens, lawyers for the governor started bringing up some touchy subjects to the judge. When it turned out that Gardner herself might need to take the witness stand, the charges were dropped like magic.
Two weeks later, Greitens resigned. It seems that along with the errant evidence, hiring an outside investigator was unusual. It would normally be “handled by the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.”
The evidence tampering agent was paid $250 an hour to “provide consulting advice to the Circuit Attorney’s office and conduct an independent criminal investigation of the governor.”
What he really did was anything Gardner asked him to do. Then, he made sure to help cover up her part in any of it because that would look bad. Expert FBI experience in action.
