The documented cruelty and hypocrisy from this “family values” GOP power couple in Florida is jaw dropping. As I reported a few days ago, a woman who says she was in a three-year threesome with the Zieglers has accused the oxymoronically-named Christian Ziegler of raping her after she turned down an appointment for sex with him and his wife, each of whom are “Don’t Say Gay” law supporters.
That was stomach-churning enough. Now, ABC Action News has obtained the affidavits in support of search warrants for Christian Ziegler’s iPhone and files associated with his Gmail account.
Ziegler and his wife — Sarasota School Board Member Bridget Ziegler who helped found Moms of Liberty — had made plans to have sex with the woman two days before, according to the affidavit. But when Ziegler's wife could not make it at last minute, the other woman canceled responding in text message, "Sorry I was mostly in for her."
But just five minutes later, when the woman opened her front door to go take her dog, she found Ziegler in the hallway outside her apartment.
"Christian entered the apartment, bent the victim over the bar stool" and raped her, Det. Angela Cox wrote in the affidavit.
The victim told detectives that Ziegler didn't wear a condom and told her, "I'm leaving the same way I came in."
There’s some pretty damning evidence in support of the woman’s claim. ABC Action News also reported that video surveillance caught Ziegler arriving at her apartment complex, leaving 38 minutes later, and that she went to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, where a sexual assault kit was completed.
Subsequent text messages and phone calls from Christian Ziegler, monitored and recorded by police, indicate he was at the very least involved in an extramarital affair with the woman, whom he repeatedly referred to as his “friend.” In one call, after she accused him of forcing her to have sex with him, he said, “I didn’t. You invited me in, that's it. I did not at all and never want you to feel that way." That’s hardly a denial that they did not have sex.
A chilling 911 call from a worried friend asking police to check on the alleged victim, reported her friend had said she had been raped and is now “scared to leave her house.”
As for “Don’t Say Gay” Bridget, she reportedly confirmed to detectives that the three of them had had sex together, but claimed it had only happened once.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has called for Christian Ziegler to step down from his chairmanship – because his position is not good for GOP politics. “I don’t see how he can continue with that investigation ongoing, given the gravity of those situations,” DeSantis said. “I hope the charges aren’t true. I’ve known him, I’ve known [his wife] Bridget, they’ve been friends. But the mission is more important.” I didn’t see a word about the importance of personal morality or repugnance for the kind of behavior DeSantis and the Zieglers claim is so immoral it shouldn’t be discussed in schools.
As for Christian Ziegler, he’s playing the victim while cagily not denying any breach of family values. He waited until the second page of his “explanation” to merely call the criminal allegations false: “We have a country to save and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for this process to wrap up.” He did not say he there was no threesome, no extramarital sex, no gay sex. He did say, “My family is rock solid. My wife is behind me 150%.”
