Florida GOP Chair Facing Rape Investigation Plays Trump Card Amid Former President’s Silence
Trump's sex scandals are being invoked as a defense by embattled Republican Party of Florida Chair Christian Ziegler
Published 12/08/23 05:00 AM ET|Updated 12/08/23 08:32 AM ETMarc Caputo
Nearly every top elected Florida Republican has called on their state party chair, Christian Ziegler, to step down as police investigate whether he raped a woman who was once involved in a threesome with his wife.
But Ziegler won’t quit. He’s protesting his innocence, predicting he won't be criminally charged and daring the Florida GOP’s executive board to try to oust him at an emergency Dec. 17 meeting.
The inspiration for Ziegler’s defiance: former President Donald Trump, the presidential primary’s frontrunner and the only top Republican leader in Florida who has not weighed in on Ziegler’s scandal.
In private conversations, Ziegler has pointed to Trump’s silence as an indicator of tacit support, those who have spoken to him tell The Messenger. They say he accused Republicans who want to boot him from office of hypocrisy because they’re not denouncing Trump -- even though he was recently held liable for sexually abusing a woman in 1996. Trump was also criminally charged recently in a case involving hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels, whom he had sex with while his wife was pregnant.
Ziegler’s denials, counter-accusations and intransigence also reflect the Trump’s admit-no-wrong and fight-all-comers style of politics. It’s a Trump legacy that gives a measure of discomfort to some Republicans, including those who support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the presidential primary and fear that Trump’s baggage makes him a weak general election candidate.
In Southwest Florida, Lee County GOP Chair Michael Thompson told The Messenger he had a heated conversation with Ziegler when he told him to step aside last week. Thompson said he was irritated when Ziegler referenced Trump's sex assault case, which bothers Trump's team as well.
“Oh, you’re a big Trump guy. But it’s ok for Trump? You don’t call on him to resign but you want me to step down?” Ziegler said, according to Thompson, a member of the state executive committee.
Thompson said he told Ziegler that his case and Trump’s are “completely different.”
“Trump wasn’t the president of the United States and accused of rape at the same time,” Thompson said he told Ziegler. “He wasn’t even in office, you were. And President Trump wasn’t doing threesomes, either.”
Christian Michael ZieglerChristian Ziegler, Republican State Committeeman
Echoing other Republicans, Thompson said he believes Ziegler is innocent of rape, but Ziegler wasn’t forthcoming about the ménage à trois relationship the alleged victim previously had with Ziegler and his wife, Sarasota County School Board Member Bridget Ziegler. She's a co-founder of the national conservative group Moms for Liberty that has targeted LGBT-related issues in education. The scandal is a distraction for a party that wants to ensure a GOP victory next November, Thompson said, adding that Ziegler has threatened him and others who want him to step aside.
"This guy is a sociopath," said Thompson.
Ziegler has declined to comment.
Thompson said Republicans believe the rape case against Trump is “a political hit job” because Trump was tried in civil court in liberal New York City decades after the alleged conduct; there was no clear evidence; and the lawsuit only happened because the Democratic governor and state assembly changed the statute of limitations under a law that Trump accuser E Jean Carroll, a liberal columnist, lobbied for. She won a $5 million judgment in May after a jury determined Trump probably sexually assaulted her and then defamed her when she accused him of the crime in 2019.
In Ziegler’s case, the accuser is not involved in politics and has known him for about two decades, according to a Sarasota Police Department search warrant affidavit seeking data from Ziegler’s smartphone and Google accounts.
Both Zieglers were supposed to meet up with the woman Oct. 2 for a threesome, but Mrs. Ziegler couldn't make it, the affidavit said. It said that the alleged victim indicated she did not want to have sex alone with Mr. Ziegler and preferred sexual relations with Mrs. Ziegler.
"Sorry I was mostly in for her," the woman, according to the affidavit, said in a digital message to Mr. Ziegler at 2:24 p.m.
About five minutes later, Mr. Ziegler showed up at the woman’s apartment and, though the alleged victim told police she “had been drinking tequila all day," he had sex with her against her will on a stool in her apartment. He left within 38 minutes of arriving, the affidavit says.
Ziegler, sources tell The Messenger, told others he shot video of the encounter and that he asked police to obtain the original video from his Google account because it will help cast doubt on her account concerning their sexual encounter. The Florida Center for Government Accountability, which broke the story last week of the allegations, reported Thursdaythat sources said the video is brief, potentially exculpatory and shows the alleged victim telling "Ziegler to climax in her mouth rather than on her new shirt."
Citing the video and other facts of the case, Ziegler told others, quitting his party post would look like an admission of wrongdoing, even though he's innocent.
The alleged victim's identity is not public; she cannot be reached.
Republican Party of Florida sources say Trump advisers have communicated to members of the party's executive board that Trump is not supporting Ziegler and he does not want his name invoked in the scandal. Ziegler, a political consultant and former Sarasota County commissioner, has close ties to Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.
When Ziegler secured his state party chairmanship in February, Trump claimed a measure of credit for the victory by highlighting a Politico article that called it a “win” for the former president. Ziegler defeated party member Evan Power, whose wife worked for DeSantis’s political operation at the time. DeSantis ostensibly stayed neutral in the race, as did Trump until Ziegler won.
“We won a big Chairmanship in Florida over the DeSantis Reps, but actually, it’s a win for ALL. That’s the way we want it. Christian will be a great Chairman!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform.
Power, who would not comment for this article, is vice chair of the Florida GOP and called for the Dec. 17 meeting to oust Ziegler.
State Rep. Michelle Salzman said Ziegler doesn't seem to understand that, even if he's exonerated of the rape accusation, party members want him to step aside because he campaigned, consulted and governed as a "family values conservative."
"He put himself on this pedestal as a stanch conservative Christian and he won his race as chair based on that platform, but it's not equivalent to his actions," she said.
The day after the news of the alleged rape and threesome broke, DeSantis became the first statewide elected official to call on Ziegler tostep aside on Nov. 30, followed by Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott on Tuesday and then state Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, state Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and state Attorney General Ashley Moody.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is the only statewide elected official to not call on Ziegler to step down and instead told The Messenger Wednesday that the decision was up to him and the state GOP’s executive board. None of the Republican congressional delegation members, some of whom Ziegler has consulted for, are publicly standing by him. His local GOP in Sarasota County formally called on him to quit as has the state party’s Faith and Mobilization Committee.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried said the GOP's chaos and Ziegler's attitude are the product of the Trump GOP.
“Trump raped a woman. He’s not going to denounce another rapist in his party,” said Fried, who called Republicans hypocrites for failing to live up to their “family values” rhetoric. “This is Trump’s Republican Party.”
Trump advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity say he doesn’t like denouncing fellow Republicans based solely on accusations, and he doesn’t want to weigh in here because he doesn’t have any appointees on the state party board, unlike all the other statewide elected officials. In addition to running for president, Trump is facing four separate and unrelated criminal cases along with the Carroll defamation suit and another civil suit to wipe out his Trump Organization family business in New York.
“Trump’s a little busy,” deadpanned one Trump confidant. “And he doesn’t like to join the mob with stuff like this, and frankly he values people who stand their ground like Ziegler is.”
One Florida executive committee member who spoke to Ziegler and is organizing opposition to him did not want to go on record with The Messenger because, he said, Ziegler has become threatening and "delusional."
The official said party officials overwhelming believe Ziegler needs to step down because he’s a distraction. Some want him to take a leave of absence, but he has so far refused.
Party rules don’t spell out procedures for removing a chair, so members have been told by legal counsel that they’ll have to follow Roberts Rules of Order, which could require them to form an investigative committee, perform an investigation and then hold a trial before voting to remove him. Executive board members plan to strip him of his salary and authority so that he’s a chair in name only until they remove him.
“Trump’s not coming to save Christian. So Christian can fight and lose,” the official said. “He can say he’s playing the Trump card, but the Trump card works for Trump. There’s no Ziegler card.”
Joe Budd, another Republican Party of Florida executive committee member, said he wants Ziegler to step down and believes Trump should call on him to do so.
“But you have a weakened [former] president with issues in his own past,” said Budd, who is supporting DeSantis in the primary. “So how could he stand there and call for Christian’s resignation? It’s just Trump out there reminding people who he is.”
Florida GOP executive committee member John Vacchiano said the overwhelming number of party members he has spoken to want Ziegler to quit and are ready to vote him out. Vacchiano heads the party’s faith committee that called for him to step down. Like Budd and Thompson, Vacchiano said he believes Ziegler’s denial about committing rape, but his admitted conduct -- threesomes with his wife – are not in keeping with the "family values" image the party wants to project.
Asked about the scandals involving Trump that Ziegler has privately raised, Vacchiano said “everything with Trump was a prior-presidency issue” that voters weighed. In contrast, he said, Ziegler’s scandal occurred while he was in his party office.
“This isn't about Trump. This about Christian,” said Republican Party of Florida Executive Committee Member Shawn Foster. "He needs to step aside. He doesn't have to step down. But we need to move forward and focus on the future."
