A former Democratic prosecutor in St. Louis admitted she shouldn’t have used thousands of dollars in public funds to pay herself back after getting fined for mistakes while prosecuting a Republican governor, federal authorities announced Wednesday.
Kim Gardner resigned under fire last year after being elected the city’s first Black circuit attorney in 2016. She will avoid federal criminal prosecution for misusing the $5,004 in public funds as long as she pays them back and follows other rules of a pretrial diversion agreement. She signed the agreement over the summer and it was finalized this month.
