Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey straightens his red tie before a congressional hearing.Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty
When Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey was sworn into office in 2023, then-Gov. Mike Parson joked that he had extracted a “blood oath” from the new appointee not to run for higher office too quickly. The state’s previous two attorneys general—Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt—had both used the position as an interim step to the US Senate, jetting off to Washington within a few years of taking power in Missouri. Bailey would be the governor’s third attorney general in six years, and, in Parson’s words, an attempt to bring “some stability” to the office.
Yet Bailey, an Army combat veteran who had worked since 2019 as general counsel in the governor’s office, promptly transformed himself into a MAGA attack dog, prone to exceeding the powers of his office as he pursued a hyper-conservative agenda on abortion and other social issues. His legal antics often failed in court, but they did get him noticed—and now, apparently, rewarded. On September 8, the pencil pusher-turned-culture warrior will follow in his predecessors’ footsteps and board a plane to DC, accepting his appointment from President Donald Trump to be co-deputy director at the FBI.
Bailey will share the job with its current occupant, ex-Secret Service agent and right-wing podcaster Dan Bongino. But their unusual “co-deputy” arrangement may not last long. According to the New York Times, Bongino appears to have lost his stature after a conflict with other Trump administration officials, including US Attorney General Pam Bondi, over unreleased files regarding deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. (Some commentators have dubbed Bailey Bongino’s “babysitter.”) Kash Patel, another MAGA provocateur, remains as the FBI’s head honcho.
“He has been more than willing to take on a lot of battles, some of which are bad legal arguments, but good politics.”
As he joins a presidential administration that prizes loyalty to Trump above all else, Bailey has already proven himself to be a good soldier. In Missouri, “he has been more than willing to take on a lot of battles, some of which are bad legal arguments, but good politics,” says Peverill Squire, political science professor at the University of Missouri. “He was one of the attorneys general that the Republicans, and certainly the Trump administration, could count on to contest the things that they wanted to contest.”
It’s not just Bailey’s willingness to parrot Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen. After New York jurors convicted Trump of 34 felony counts for falsifying records in a sex scandal cover-up, Bailey brought a moonshot case directly to the US Supreme Court in July 2024. He asked the justices to delay Trump’s New York sentencing until after the election and block a gag order preventing Trump from speaking about people connected to the case, arguing that Missourians had a right to hear the candidate. The justices swiftly denied the case in an unsigned order.
Perhaps as a result of these acts of fealty, Bailey was briefly considered last fall for the role of US Attorney General in the incoming Trump administration. But Trump instead nominated former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew after sex trafficking and drug allegations. He then followed by nominating his former lawyer, ex-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Meanwhile, Bailey had used his powers to go to war for the MAGA agenda. In February, he sued Starbucks, alleging the company was discriminating against straight, white men after it set diversity goals and created a mentorship program for employees of color. (Bailey claimed “Missouri consumers pay higher prices and wait longer for goods and services” as a result of the program; a judge is currently considering whether to dismiss the case.) He opened an investigation into the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for reporting on extremist content on Elon Musk’s X, until a court ordered him to stop, finding Bailey was violating the First Amendment and “retaliating against a media organization for protected speech.”
Judges have likewise had to halt his sweeping demands for the unredacted medical records of transgender children and his unilateral attempt to impose an “emergency regulation” that would have made it nearly impossible for adults to medically transition. On top of all that, as ProPublica has reported, he’s repeatedly prosecuted and threatened Democratic officials—including St. Louis County executive Sam Page, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, and Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas—on dubious legal grounds, such as charging Page with “stealing by deceit” for using public money to mail voters an informational flyer that Bailey deemed to be biased.
Bailey’s track record in Missouri indicates that he will be willing to use the FBI’s powers to pursue political investigations on Trump’s behalf, says Paul Nolette, a Marquette University professor who studies the politics of state attorneys general. “I would expect he would be very willing to push the envelope on whatever tools the FBI has, which is considerable for investigations,” Nolette says. “The various kinds of rules and procedures that investigators are supposed to follow, I would imagine, are going to go by the wayside. If Trump wants something, then I think he’s going to be much more compliant in that area.”
“The point is to bring some crazy lawsuits, just way out of left field, because it looks good to the audience he’s trying to appeal to.”
And while Bailey’s cases are often smacked down in court, he’s been extremely effective at establishing himself on the national stage as a right-wing legal warrior in the mold of Ken Paxton, the high-profile attorney general for the state of Texas, Nolette says. “A lot of what they’re doing is generating a lot of high-profile culture war-type activities, and using their office in order to pursue them,” Nolette says. “It doesn’t really matter, at the end of the day, if their investigation gets stopped, or they lose in court. That’s not really the point. The point is to bring some crazy lawsuits, just way out of left field, because it looks good to the audience he’s trying to appeal to.”
That includes Bailey’s dramatic anti-abortion legal stunts. According to Squire, Missourians likely will most remember Bailey for his repeated efforts to impede the 2024 state constitutional amendment that overturned the state’s abortion ban. First, Bailey gummed up the paperwork for months, refusing to certify a routine fiscal note and delaying the gathering of signatures to get the amendment onto the ballot, until the state Supreme Court ultimately ordered him to stop stonewalling. After voters approved the amendment, Bailey fought its implementation bitterly. In the spring, the conservative-dominated legislature passed a measure giving him new powers to intervene when courts block laws. Then he went straight to the state supreme court, asking it to restore Missouri’s recently blocked abortion restrictions—only to be chided by the justices for skipping over the appeals process.
Bailey has also helped lead a legal effort to block nationwide access to the abortion pill mifepristone. After the Supreme Court last year ruled that anti-abortion activist doctors didn’t have standing to sue the FDA over its 25-year approval of the medication, Bailey and two other Republican state attorneys general intervened, with the complicated argument they had standing because abortion lowered “birth rates for teenaged mothers,” causing a population loss in Missouri that led to “diminishment of political representation and loss of federal funds.”
Bailey “used every tool of his office to attack patients, harass providers, and try to erase our constitutional rights,” says Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes, in a statement. “That’s not leadership—it’s an abuse of power. Now, he’s being rewarded with more power, this time on a national stage. If Andrew Bailey can do this much damage in Missouri, imagine what he’ll do with federal power.”
As Bailey heads off to Washington, he’ll be replaced by Catherine Hanaway, a former Speaker of the Missouri House of Representatives and a “conventional conservative,” according to Squire. Upon her appointment, the National Right to Life Committee issued a statement lauding her as a “well-established fighter for life,” akin to Bailey.
“She’ll probably be less interested in trying to lead the parade than join in it,” Squire predicts. Then again, that’s what many observers had said about Bailey. Time will tell if Hanaway also ends up with a plum job in Washington.
