Guest Author
Former Florida GOP chairman Christian Ziegler and his wife Bridget Ziegler, a Sarasota School Board Member and cofounder of the conservative group Moms for Liberty, have filed a lawsuit seeking to bar the release of records involved in the husband’s criminal rape investigation.
The once powerful Republican power couple sued the City of Sarasota and State Attorney’s Office specifically to prevent the release to the media text messages they sent to each other recovered by police during the now-closed investigation.
The Zieglers attached affidavits to the lawsuit claiming phone and text records and other content on social media accounts seized after the issuance of several search warrants were intended to be private and confidential.
The lawsuit, filed March 15, alleges the Zieglers “are concerned that other individuals and media outlets will most likely make, or have already made” requests for public records possessed by the two agencies.
The Zieglers seek to prevent the release of text messages between Christian and Bridget. The lawsuit also asks the court to order the “permanent destruction of all subject text messages” obtained by police in the investigation.
The investigation began with a complaint from a woman who alleged Christian Ziegler raped her at her apartment this past October. The couple had engaged in consensual threesomes with the woman twice before.
Some text messages between Christian and Bridget have already been released by the police department, among them an exchange from 2021 in which they discussed the alleged victim. In those texts, Christian related that he found the woman “hot,” but he suspected she was only attracted to Bridget, and cautioned his wife that she is an “alcoholic, nice person with some issues.”
“I just don’t want to feel like we ever take advantage of anyone (I know it’s always been consensual) but she seems … ‘broken,’” Bridget texted her husband back. “… And my nature is more likely to help her versus … ya know.”
Christian responded that it was time for them to “hunt for someone new.” The content of the remaining text messages in the possession of police is unknown.
It was this past Oct. 2 that Christian Ziegler began texting the alleged victim about having another threesome, but the woman canceled when she learned Bridget wasn’t able to make it. Christian arrived at her apartment anyway, where the woman claimed he raped her while she was too intoxicated to consent. Christian admitted having sex with the woman, but said it was consensual and produced a video he’d taken of the brief sexual encounter to back up that assertion.
After the Florida Trident broke news of the investigation on Nov. 30, 2023, the scandal quickly engulfed the Republican power couple. Bridget at the time was a close ally of Gov. Ron DeSantis and a darling of Florida’s conservative movement. She championed anti-LGBTQ policies, including the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, book bans, and right-wing culture wars.
The couple’s fall from power was swift. Christian Ziegler was removed as chair of the Republican Party of Florida in January 2024. The Leadership Institute quietly removed Bridget Ziegler as Vice President of School Board Programs in December 2023. Despite widespread calls for her resignation from the school board, she remains in her elected seat.
Christian Ziegler was not charged with any criminal offense after the Sarasota Police Department and the State Attorney recently concluded no criminal charges would be filed for video voyeurism due to Christian Ziegler videotaping the sexual encounter allegedly without the woman’s knowledge.
Both police and the State Attorney cited inconsistencies in the victim’s memory of events based on “substantial intoxication and trauma that the victim was experiencing” as a factor in their decision, while also finding she had no “financial, political, or malicious personal motivation to report this incident and initiate a police investigation into [Christian Ziegler].”
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About the Author: Michael Barfield focuses on the enforcement of open government laws. He serves as an investigative reporter and FLCGA’s Director of Public Access. He regularly assists journalists across the country with collecting information and publishing news reports obtained from public records and other sources.
28 comments
Impeach Biden
March 18, 2024 at 8:00 pm
Idiots. Both of them.
Andy
March 18, 2024 at 8:38 pm
GOP, transparency and accountability, what ‘MOMS FOR LIBERTY’ wants us to teach in schools?
Harry
March 20, 2024 at 12:18 am
Great point. A married couple in their private lives sharing consensual, intimate moments is just like LGBTQ+ pornography pictured and described in textbooks in a school library, accessible to any 8 year old child who barely know how to spell sex. But hey, it apparently makes sense to a person of your intelligence.
Dont Say FLA
March 20, 2024 at 9:11 am
Rape is a consensual, intimate moment?
You must be Nancy Mace with your position of “absent a conviction in criminal court, and absent all appeals being lost and the criminal conviction standing against all challeges, no sexual interaction alleged to have been rape is a rape”
For Harry and Nancy Mace, rape is a consensual, intimate moment until proven otherwise in a criminal court of law
IOW, like when Democrats skated by on claims about what the meaning of the word “is” is, today’s GOP skates by on denying that the meaning of the word “rape” is.
That’s our MAGA G0P. Yessiree Bob. That is Trump’s G0P.
Rape is not rape unless properly and fully adjudicated in a criminal court of law plus all relevant appellate courts too.
Except for Nancy Mace of course. She claims she was raped, and that’s good enough for her.
Jonathan Muller
March 20, 2024 at 10:28 am
And yet you have no problem with Democrats queering off your children in schools LGTBQ programs…lol. Teachers are not qualified to do their own areas of teaching, much less, gender dysphoria… Just like police are not to straighten out alcoholics assertions after blackouts.
Dont Say FLA
March 18, 2024 at 8:53 pm
If the Ziegler File records were released, kids might read them.
We certainly can’t have kids reading what Moms For Liberty do in their spare time, now can we?
Left lies to themselves
March 19, 2024 at 10:30 pm
At least they’re the right kind of freaks.
Crazy Nancy Macey
March 18, 2024 at 9:01 pm
Remember if there’s no criminal conviction, there’s no rape and thus no rapist. Except when I say I was raped, of course. There may not any conviction in my case. There may not even be an accused rapist in my case. In my case all I got is a story about something from 30 years ago. However, I was definitely raped and the unnamed, uncharged, un-indicted, un-convicted guy who “raped” me is most definitely a rapist, while E Jean Carroll was never raped and because her named, accused, and found guilty in criminal court rapist Donald J Trump is not a rapist and SHAME on YOU for saying Trump is a rapist! Only I get to call somebody a rapist absent a criminal conviction. Nobody else can say what I say! SHAME ON YOU!
Left sux and thinks men can have babies
March 19, 2024 at 10:34 pm
Jean Carrol finds rape exciting, her words.
Harry
March 20, 2024 at 12:28 am
Don’t worry about E Jean Carroll. She’s too busy wondering where she and her NY celebrity girlfriends will start a clothes buying spree with all the money. Of course, E Jean will be psychologically traumatized and incapacitated throughout this shopping euphoria by the exciting rape she psychically endured a hundred years ago in that department store she barely remembers in a fitting room she can’t find.
Jonathan Muller
March 20, 2024 at 10:42 am
Good call. E. Jean Carroll is a total nut job. She paints trees and rocks side her “Mouse House ” Delusional nutjob enabled by Democrat Lawbreakers.
Jonathan Muller
March 20, 2024 at 10:34 am
You sound like the crazy one. Most sane people find the insane quite unsexy. You’ve never been laid. Guaranteed.
Dont Say FLA
March 20, 2024 at 2:09 pm
I concur, Nancy Mace gone batshit. She used to seem pretty reasonable for a Republican, but something happened to her in the last year.
I think it was Trump that happened to her. I guess she wants to be VP to Trump, so now she saying crazy things.
GOP Presidential Candidate Mr Biggest Victim Ever. Slogan “Everyone is out to get me because they’re out to get you.”
GOP VP Candidate, Miss Biggest Victim Ever. Slogan “You weren’t raped but I was!”
LOL @ Crazy Iced GOPs
PeterH
March 19, 2024 at 12:01 am
So much winning! And it’s only Monday!
rick whitaker
March 19, 2024 at 1:38 pm
if ANY pics, recordings, video, sworn testimony, or physical evidence concerning these 2 white christian nationailist maga cultist, is out there, pleaes make it public.
Brother John
March 19, 2024 at 9:53 pm
👆 This guy talks in buzzwords like they’re a magical incantation.
rick whitaker
March 20, 2024 at 1:30 pm
brother john, buzz words work very well. the far right has been using them effectively for years. so what’s your point?
Jonathan Muller
March 20, 2024 at 10:30 am
Are you going to jerk off to it, and fantasize about the man, pervert?
rick whitaker
March 20, 2024 at 1:27 pm
jonathan, no, i’m not going to fantasize about a gop maga hypocrite getting caught, i just don’t want the story to go away at all. the more that comes out and the longer it takes for that to drip out, the better. i look at it from a political, moral, sort of way, not a trashy maga sort of way as you stated. the maga gop cult needs all the exposure it can get.
My Take
March 27, 2024 at 1:09 am
Who put their what into whom? And where?
Thruple Man
March 19, 2024 at 4:00 pm
Guess they aren’t so open now, huh?
tvw
March 20, 2024 at 12:15 am
absurd…its between the three of them…small ball stuff…
rick rosenberger
March 20, 2024 at 8:11 am
Being a Chirstian nation, having been founded on judeo christian principals, It seems to me political heavy weights like the ziegiers should not be participating in such behaviors. As leaders how can they justify themselves before the God of Truth?
I may be wrong but have they no fear of God? who will execute judgment on all, and convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness which they have committed in such an ungodly way?
rick whitaker
March 20, 2024 at 1:18 pm
rick rosenberger, you sound like you know god well. get me his phone number next time you see or talk to him. by the way, this is NOT a christian nation as you say. me and all my family members don’t believe in that jesus god bull shit fairy tale crap. but, we are americans born and raised, so how does that fit in with your white christian maga cult statement
Josh Green
March 21, 2024 at 3:28 pm
The United States is in no way, shape, or form a Christian nation. The entire notion of a theocratic state is honestly repulsive. This isn’t Iran. Go live in the Middle East if you want to live like that.
Dont Say FLA
March 20, 2024 at 8:35 am
If that beach wasn’t so fugly, Ms Bridget wouldn’t have to be out there finding carpets to munch on
Henry Lerner
March 26, 2024 at 11:52 am
I bet Moms for Liberty meetings are just nothing but big old swinging bukkake parties.
Jojo
March 31, 2024 at 12:59 pm
Some pretty nasty comments from people. When they are caught out in the rankest form of hypocrisy,I guess the knee jerk reaction is to defame the other side.
The truth hurts doesn’t it guys?
Comments are closed.