Attorney: St. Louis Republican ‘set up’

March 9, 2001

A St. Louis attorney, Thomas A. Federer, has accused local Democrats with “setting up” another activist Republican attorney — charged with soliciting sex from a minor — who Federer says was about to uncover local election corruption.

Federer, whose brother, Bill Federer, made an attempt to unseat Dick Gephardt, the Democratic House minority leader, in last November’s election, said he believes attorney and local Republican elections director Kevin Coan was framed by political enemies because “he was getting too close to uncovering more corruption in our [St. Louis] elections system … and he was investigating the controversial [Nov. 7] election.”

In an e-mail to WorldNetDaily, Federer added: “He had to be taken out.” During his post-election investigation, Coan had already turned up 161 “active” voters in St. Louis districts prior to this week’s mayoral primary whose addresses led to vacant lots or boarded-up buildings.

St. Louis is traditionally heavily Democratic and is currently led by Democrat Mayor Clarence Harmon.

Coan was arrested last week by police across the river in Alton, Ill., for allegedly trying to pay a 14-year-old girl for sex. Authorities say Coan made his solicitation over the Internet, but the “girl” he allegedly solicited was in fact a male Alton police officer who had set up a sting operation in a chat room.

Federer said Coan “had received an anonymous call at work saying his wife had fallen ill while she was shopping at a [Alton] market, and that the caller was asked by her to call him.”

Coan “left right away and, when he got there, he was arrested for supposedly sending his picture to the undercover agent by e-mail,” Federer said.

“How likely would an attorney do that?” he asked. “I’ve never known Kevin to be anything but an upright gentleman and an aggressive Republican in a city and political system locally dominated by Democrats.”

Equally odd, Federer said, was that “his picture being arrested was on the front page of the Post-Dispatch,” a St. Louis daily newspaper. “Funny how the media got across the river so quickly to get that picture.”

Federer said he believes someone may have gotten access to Coan’s computer at work “and sent these messages to a jurisdiction … that they knew was investigating Internet sex.”

He said police had seized Coan’s computers at home and at work.

Meanwhile, a grand jury continues to investigate charges that voter fraud may have occurred in St. Louis during the Nov. 7 election.

“Combine abandoned voting machines, unguarded ballot boxes, confusion over poll closing times, accusations of criminal collusion and throw in a misleading phone-banking message by Jesse Jackson, and you end up with election practices that have thrown St. Louis, Mo., into chaos during what is proving to be the most hotly contested election in American history,” WorldNetDaily reported Nov. 11.

Also, reports said the grand jury is looking into 3,800 suspect voter registration cards, many that bear the names of prominent local citizens — both alive and dead.

And, there is still fallout over an election-night decision by Circuit Court Judge Evelyn M. Baker to require St. Louis polling stations to remain open three hours longer than state law permitted, because local Democratic leaders complained that a shortage of election officials and voting booths, along with outdated voter registration rolls, had caused many St. Louisans to lose their right to vote.

Baker’s decision was overturned within the hour by an appeals court, but the polls were still open for a while past the 7 p.m. deadline.

A day earlier, on Nov. 6, now-Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-Mo., son of incumbent Democratic House member William Clay, announced that the polls would be open late to accommodate voters.

Democrats alleged that up to 33,000 registered voters had been improperly removed from voter registration rolls.

In St. Louis, registered voters who do not participate in the previous year’s election are automatically removed from rolls if they do not respond to notices sent by the election board.

Federer hinted that Gephardt’s “political machine” may have something to do with Coan’s arrest. Both he and his brother have a history of animosity with Gephardt.

A group affiliated with Federer charged Gephardt in October of pressuring local TV stations into dropping a Federer campaign ad showing Gephardt’s commitments to “radical homosexuals.”

Eventually, a U.S. court of appeals ruled that Federer could run the ads, but the ruling wasn’t issued until just days before the election. Until then, Federer had to pull them.

Also, Federer was sued by C-SPAN because the footage used by the candidate featured C-SPAN coverage of Gephardt delivering a speech and vow of support to a homosexual group.

C-SPAN dropped its suit in December and did not ask him to pay any damages if he would agree to drop an appeal he had filed against C-SPAN in the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The countersuit was also dropped.

Missouri Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a former senator who was defeated by the late-Gov. Mel Carnahan in November, have pledged to look into the alleged chronic voter corruption in St. Louis.

“The effort to clean up the St. Louis vote fraud scandal is bigger than any one individual,” Bond spokesman Ernie Blazar said Monday.

“The people of St. Louis and the entire state are entitled to honest elections in the city,” added Missouri Secretary of State Matt Blunt, in a statement. “The new discovery of fraudulent registration cards for March 6 and irregularities detected in November have cast doubt on the integrity of the process. …”

On Monday, more than 30 federal, state and local observers were on hand to monitor the mayoral primary. Ashcroft sent a pair of Justice Department observers.