The Governor publicly accused Renaud of crimes even if he had been informed by the state's cybersecurity specialist informed other state officials that Renaud had not hacked anyone.

 Parson, who is a Republican, ignored calls from Missouri state officials to publicly thank Renaud for saving their bacon.

Basically, what happened St Louis Dispatch reporter, Josh Renaud, had discovered that the state's website was exposing the Social Security Numbers of teachers and other school employees in the HTML code of the state's site. He informed the state who fixed the flaw, and he delayed publishing the article until after the flaw was fixed. The article was published on October 14.

The state's database was "misconfigured," which "allowed open-source tools to be used to query data that should not be public."

Parson clearly read the newspaper article and shot from the hip without asking his office or engaging brain. Accusing people of a crime they clearly did not commit is defamation in any country, even in the US. We doubt that Parson will say he is sorry and give Renaud an award for his service to the State.  

In fact, 12 hours ago he was still insisting that the unfortunate hero had broken the law.  He cynically used the incident to raise money for his campaign bringing in about $85,000 thanks to an ominous video doubling down on the hacking accusations. 

Parson originally claimed during a press conference that the incident would cost the state $50 million as opposed to the $800,000 that is now being spent. Despite the ridicule Parson got from cybersecurity experts, he still insisted on a police investigation into the matter which will no doubt waste a lot of tax payer money before the reporter is exonerated.