Missouri Auditor’s Office gets information needed to finish Kim Gardner audit – Missourinet

After months of trying, the State Auditor’s Office has served a subpoena to former St. Louis prosecuting attorney Kim Gardner. The subpoena is in relation to an ongoing state audit of her administration that began under former State Auditor Nicole Galloway.

Gardner resigned last year after heaping caseloads, heavy staffing turnover, and a teenage athlete losing both legs in a St. Louis traffic crash by an armed robbery suspect who violated bond many times.

State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said his office has met with Gardner to finish the interview phase of the audit.

“That’s a big development for us,” Fitzpatrick told Missourinet. “It’s something that needed to happen, really for us to try to complete the field work in this audit that’s been going on since June of 2021. And now that that is done, we’re moving on to analyzing all the information we have so that we can begin drafting the report and try to get this thing wrapped up.”

According to Fitzpatrick his office served a subpoena to St. Louis University for records about Gardner’s nursing school schedule and another subpoena intended for her.

“There’s a requirement in law that she, you know, that the circuit attorney in St Louis, spend their full time or dedicate their full time and efforts to the job of circuit attorney. And so, the concern was, if she was attending nursing school classes and clinicals during the times that she would otherwise be working, that she was potentially in violation of that,” he said.

Fitzpatrick said he hopes to have the audit wrapped up this year.

“We don’t anticipate needing to speak with her again,” he said. “At this point, we have all the records from (the) circuit attorney’s office that we have asked for. We’ve been able to speak with everybody we want to speak with.”

Gardner served as St. Louis Circuit Attorney from 2017 to 2023.

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