https://flcga.org/florida-gop-chair-chr ... ois-lover/Christian Ziegler, Florida’s GOP chairman and husband of Sarasota County School Board member and Moms of Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler, is under criminal investigation after a woman filed a complaint with the Sarasota Police Department alleging the longtime Republican official had raped her.
The complaint was filed on October 4 and the alleged sexual battery occurred inside the woman’s home in Sarasota on October 2, according to the police report. Among the few words that went unredacted in the report are “rape” and “sexual assault complaint.”
The woman, according to sources close to the investigation, alleged that she and both Zieglers had been involved in a three-year consensual three-way sexual relationship. The incident under investigation by Sarasota police occurred when Christian Ziegler and the woman were alone at the woman’s house, without Bridget Ziegler present, the sources conveyed. The Zieglers have risen in the ranks of GOP politics in recent years.
Sources also corroborated that a search warrant was executed on Christian Ziegler’s cell phone and that investigators continue to conduct a forensic examination of the electronic device. Christian Ziegler is also alleged to have secretly videotaped the sexual encounters between the couple and the woman, sources said. A copy of the search warrant affidavit released late Friday night confirmed Christian Ziegler admitted to videotaping the alleged rape, which he characterized as consensual sex with the woman, and had a longstanding relationship with the woman. Bridget Ziegler told police she engaged in a threesome with the woman and her husband one time last year.
The Zieglers are one of Florida’s top political power couples in the GOP. Christian Ziegler is a longtime Republican Party official who served as vice chairman of the state party prior to his election as chair in February. Prior to that he was a Sarasota County Commissioner who ran on a “family values” platform. Bridget Ziegler has become a star within the MAGA movement who was personally endorsed for her school board seat by Florida Governor and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, who also appointed her in March to the state board that oversees the special district previously overseen by Disney World prior to DeSantis’s politically motivated feud with the entertainment company.
She is perhaps best known as the cofounder of the right-wing group Moms for Liberty, which has supported book bans in public schools across the country. Bridget Ziegler personally helped lay the groundwork for DeSantis’ Florida Parental Rights In Education Act (known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law) that disallows instruction on “sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through the third grade. She stood behind DeSantis as he signed the bill. Following in the Moms For Liberty model, Ziegler has been a leading anti-trans activist and “critical race theory” opponent who has said her aim is to bring “religious values” into public schools that she claims are “indoctrination centers for the radical left.” “Bridget Ziegler, we should have her in every county in Florida,” DeSantis said in one speech. “We have to do a better job in these school board races.”
Bridget Ziegler is currently a salaried vice president at the conservative Leadership Institute, which recently opened an office in Sarasota. At the Institute she oversees a school board training program that she said “teaches trains moms and dads how to run for school board, win, and then govern!” Christian Ziegler has longstanding ties to both DeSantis and former President Donald Trump, who called out Ziegler’s name in a recent speech earlier this month during the “Florida Freedom Summit” in Kissimmee and said he was doing a “fantastic job.” Ziegler, as the state’s GOP chair, has remained officially neutral on the race.
I'm not sure where to begin commenting on this or how to stop once I start.