Eight months into his term as Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey withdrew his office from defending a state agency being sued by a legislator’s son for disability discrimination.
A few months earlier, his campaign and an affiliated political action committee accepted more than $150,000 in donations connected to a witness in the case.
Incensed by what he saw as the state’s top attorney using his office for political benefit, Lucas Cierpiot — whose brother Patrick filed the original lawsuit and whose father is GOP Sen. Mike Cierpiot — filed a formal complaint accusing Bailey of violating attorney conduct rules.
Bailey’s spokeswoman, Madeline Sieren, noted in an email that the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel dismissed Cierpiot’s complaint without investigating. And legal experts interviewed by The Independent aren’t so sure taking money from a witness would warrant sanctions.
But Cierpiot remains convinced the attorney general violated ethics rules. He’s now asking the Missouri Supreme Court to intervene and order an investigation.
“No attorney can ever collect money from a case witness,” Cierpiot’s filing says. “The fact that there is not a rule spelling this out in-letter is due to the fact that it is so obvious.”
While Bailey’s office was still in charge of the case, his campaign for reelection launched.
The first donor to his fledgling campaign committee was Michael Ketchmark, who gave $2,825, the maximum that an individual can donate. By the end of January 2023, Bailey would receive a combined $16,950 from individuals with the last name Ketchmark or employed by the law firm Ketchmark & McCreight P.C.
According to Patrick Cierpiot’s lawsuit, Ketchmark is a material witness in his case because he spoke to Gov. Mike Parson’s chief of staff in an attempt to keep Cierpiot from being fired from the Missouri Department of Economic Development.
Ketchmark is a prominent attorney and donor in Missouri politics, including giving huge contributions to Parson. Patrick Cierpiot said he has known Ketchmark for 30 years.
In an email, Ketchmark said he has not been called as a witness by the state in Patrick Cierpiot’s or any other case. Court records in Kansas show Cierpiot called Ketchmark as a witness. Ketchmark did not respond to a question about whether he spoke to the governor’s staff on Cierpiot’s behalf.
“I have no idea why Patrick was fired, and the fact that Patrick listed me as a witness does not stop me from supporting a political candidate,” said Ketchmark, whose law firm this year alone gave the PAC supporting Bailey $1.1 million.
Attorneys contacted by The Independent said there is not a specific rule in Missouri barring Bailey from accepting donations from a witness. But Peter Joy, who teaches legal ethics at Washington University in St. Louis, said it creates a public confidence issue.
“In terms of public perception,” Joy said, “it raises a lot of questions.”
When someone is running for prosecutor or attorney general, Joy said, it’s a “delicate balance” between being a lawyer and a politician.
“They still owe their primary obligation to the oath that they took to fulfill their elected office,” Joy said, “but … they have a campaign committee that’s soliciting people for contributions and they’re attending fundraisers and they’re speaking before groups where they’re hoping to generate funds to run their campaign and get votes, eventually, to retain their office.”
Lucas Cierpiot’s filing is the latest in a series of accusations of unethical behavior by Bailey, who narrowly avoided being questioned under oath last month about his contact with a defendant in the state’s case against Jackson County. One of Bailey’s deputies lost his law license in that dispute, according to a filing from Jackson County’s attorneys.
Last year, Bailey’s office withdrew from defending the Missouri State Highway Patrol in a lawsuit filed by companies that operate video game machines that offer cash prizes. The patrol investigated the machines, believing that they were illegal means of gambling.
The withdrawal came after Bailey’s PAC accepted large campaign contributions from political action committees linked to a lobbyist for the two companies that brought the lawsuit against the state — Torch Electronics and Warrenton Oil.
It’s also the second time Bailey has been the focus of a formal complaint about the behavior of his office. Earlier this year, the Hazelwood School District lodged a formal complaint about Bailey after his office falsely blamed the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion program for the off-campus assault of a student.
Patrick Cierpiot sued the Missouri Department of Economic Development two years after he was fired from the department. He said he requested accommodations after breaking his wrist in a bicycle wreck because he was struggling to write and type to keep up with his workload but was fired instead. In its response, the state accused Cierpiot of fraud.
In Cierpiot’s amended lawsuit in May 2022, he named Ketchmark as having urged a Parson staffer not to fire him.
The following January brought the Ketchmark-affiliated donations to Bailey’s campaign. Later in the spring of 2023, Ketchmark’s law firm donated $125,000 to the pro-Bailey Liberty and Justice PAC.
A few weeks after that, Liberty and Justice received an in-kind donation from the firm totaling $9,216.53. Bailey helped raise money for Liberty and Justice PAC, which, in turn, supported his successful GOP primary run for a full term as attorney general.
Bailey’s campaign and the PAC received a combined $151,166.53 in cash and in-kind donations from Ketchmark, his relatives and his law firm and associates while Bailey was defending the state in the Cierpiot lawsuit.
In August 2023, Bailey’s office withdrew from the case and allowed the department to hire a private law firm to handle it. At that time, Sieren told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that Bailey didn’t have a conflict of interest and his office was looking to outside firms to handle “complex cases.”
Lucas Cierpiot filed his complaint four months later in December 2023. It was dismissed by the Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel in March. Cierpiot asked for further review, but the case was dismissed again in May.
In response, Cierpiot filed a motion with the state Supreme Court last month asking that it order an investigation.
The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel responded to Lucas Cierpiot’s filing with the Missouri Supreme Court, saying he could not insist on an investigation. It went on to say Cierpiot’s complaint didn’t allege a violation of the rules of professional conduct because it outlined donations from Ketchmark’s firm to the PAC, not from Ketchmark himself to Bailey’s campaign committee.
“Corporations are legal entities separate and distinct from their officers and shareholders,” the response filing says.
The filing, signed by Chief Disciplinary Counsel Laura Elsbury, claims that before declining to investigate Cierpiot’s allegations, officials “independently verified that (Ketchmark) had not contributed to (Bailey’s) campaign committee.”
But that was wrong. Ketchmark did contribute to Bailey’s campaign committee.
Elsbury said in an email she could not comment on the pending issue. Lucas Cierpiot did not immediately return a request for comment.
In an interview, Patrick Cierpiot said he doesn’t think it is right for an attorney to take money from a witness.
“If it’s okay for Andrew Bailey to solicit and accept money from a case witness,” Patrick Cierpiot said, “then the Missouri courts are completely blown open for corruption.”
This story was originally published by the Missouri Independent, a States Newsroom.
