Christian Ziegler, the former chair of the Florida GOP, will not face criminal charges following an investigation into a sexual assault allegation that derailed his political career.
Local police had decided not to proceed with sexual battery charges in January after they determined the sexual encounter was “likely consensual,” but they also concluded that he had recorded it without the permission of his accuser. Now, the state attorney’s office in Sarasota has said it has found insufficient evidence to file video voyeurism charges.
It was a scenario that the once-powerful figure in Republican politics had hoped for. His attorney, Derek Byrd, said Ziegler, who has denied the allegations, was “relieved to finally be completely cleared of the false allegations and any criminal wrongdoing.”
But it comes after Ziegler and his wife, Bridget, have had their reputations left in tatters.
According to a search warrant affidavit shared with NBC News, a longtime friend of the couple told Sarasota police that she had agreed to a sexual encounter with them in October, but then canceled after Bridget Ziegler backed out. The woman alleged that Christian Ziegler then went to her house and raped her. Both the woman and Bridget Ziegler told police that the three of them previously had a consensual sexual encounter.
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The accusations were especially damaging, as the Zieglers had built their careers as conservative warriors.
Christian Ziegler, who was elected to Florida GOP chair in February last year, championed his party’s anti-LGBTQ stance and publicly denigrated private citizens who criticized him. Bridget Ziegler, a Sarasota County School Board member, co-founded Moms for Liberty, a far-right organization that promotes anti-LGBTQ positions. (She has since left the group.) She supported Florida’s anti-LBGTQ “Don’t Say Gay” law, and Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed her to a board overseeing Disney theme parks after the company publicly opposed the legislation.
“These people for years have held themselves as paragons of Christian conservative values,” Florida state Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican, told The New York Times in December. “This is a huge breach of trust.”
Christian Ziegler withstood pressure from top Republican officials to resign as GOP chair until he was ousted in January. Bridget Ziegler, in the meantime, has continued to reject repeated calls for her to step down from the school board.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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