ST. LOUIS — A former assistant circuit attorney in St. Louis is accusing St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner of trying to smear her name in retaliation for her desire to cooperate with the Missouri attorney general.
Natalia Ogurkiewicz resigned from Gardner’s office on April 17 and says a police investigation about a sexual assault that was never proven is now making the rounds to local media outlets.
“This is coming out now, in my opinion, as number one, an attempt to try to scare me out of complying with the subpoena, number two, to try to scare me from saying anything or providing information publicly and number three, to shift the narrative to make sure that this narrative is not on the elected official and the problems in that office, but instead about the attorneys,” Ogurkiewicz said. “This is a smear campaign and it's a continuation of what we just keep seeing.”
Gardner’s office provided the following statement:
"We understand it is trendy to blame Kim Gardner and her office for things they didn't do, but this story is ridiculous even by those standards."
Responding to a subpoena
Ogurkiewicz has been outspoken about how Gardner created a “toxic work environment,” for her and other assistant prosecutors, giving them untenable workloads and no clerical or investigative support.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey has filed a lawsuit seeking to remove Gardner from office, and Ogurkiewicz told 5 On Your Side she has about 3,000 documents she would like to turn over to the Attorney General as part of a subpoena.
“I really think that the community should have access to the same kinds of information, and I just want to do my part in helping aide the democratic process by providing accessibility of information,” Ogurkiewicz said.
Ogurkiewicz is also at the center of a controversial case involving Daniel Riley — the man accused of striking 17-year-old Janae Edmondson with his car in February. He was supposed to be on house arrest for an armed robbery charge — and that case was supposed to go to trial in July 2022.
Ogurkiewicz was the attorney on that case, and a judge wrote the state was not ready to proceed to trial. Ogurkiewicz dropped the charges against Riley the morning of trial and refiled them, starting the clock over again. He continued to violate his bond, and there is no record of anyone from Gardner's office ever filing a motion to revoke Riley's bond.
Shortly after that accident, the Missouri Attorney General filed the lawsuit seeking to remove Gardner from office accusing her of not doing her job.
An attorney representing the Circuit Attorney’s Office is trying to have all of the subpoenas served upon Gardner’s subordinates, including Ogurkiewicz, quashed.
In a filing Tuesday, Ogurkiewicz’s attorney argued the circuit attorney’s office is not a separate entity that can be represented by an attorney without the approval of the Board of Alderman and the City of St. Louis.
Blackout drunk
One month after joining the Circuit Attorney’s office, Ogurkiewicz told police she was leaving a bar in Lafayette Square at about 10:25 p.m. when three men in a car stopped at the intersection where she was waiting to cross the street, got out of the car, pointed guns at her, shoved her up against a wall and fondled her.
She told police they ran off after she told them she was an attorney and they saw her lanyard showing she worked for Gardner’s office.
She said she called 911 and was put on hold, so she delivered a meal to her husband that she had picked up and called police once she got home at 11:42 p.m.
Police pulled surveillance footage from cameras in the area, and the footage showed there was no assault that took place.
Ogurkiewicz told police she was so intoxicated that she might not have remembered correctly where the assault happened.
“What happened here truly was that this happened,” Ogurkiewicz said. “I remembered it happened, but the night was starting to blend together.”
Ogurkiewicz disputes what a detective wrote in the report, saying she never told police to stop investigating the incident, and was never unable to say if the assault actually occurred.
"It happened," she said. "I don't think it happened where I had thought it happened, but it's actually very well studied that people can be certain about things, but yet mistaken. And that's what happened."
She admits she told police she was concerned her employer might fire her if they found out she had driven while intoxicated.
“That was a mistake,” Ogurkiewicz said. “And I know that.”
Police did not pursue false reporting charges against Ogurkiewicz.
She said she told two representatives from Gardner’s office about the incident, including Assistant Circuit Attorneys Rob Huq and Chris Hinckley, and was never disciplined.
Ogurkiewicz also sent an explosive resignation letter to Gardner, outlining multiple failures in the office.
"The narrative and the problem here is the office administration and the fact that it was not managed well, and all of the things that I put into my letter and the fact that there are so many efforts, including now a smear campaign against me to try to get me to stop producing information is something that should say something to people and it's something that people should be watching," she said.