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A police report detailed Bridget Ziegler, co-founder of Moms For Liberty, giving her husband directions as he prowled Sarasota bars seeking threesome partners.
Christian and Bridget Ziegler appeared in court to fight the release of embarrassing details of their libertine sex lives. But even as the famously conservative couple made their case to a Florida judge, another police record revealing scandalous details emerged.
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A police report detailed Bridget Ziegler, co-founder of Moms For Liberty, giving her husband directions as he prowled Sarasota bars seeking threesome partners. Those details were first reported byThe Florida Center for Government Accountability, one of the parties engaged in an ongoing fight on what records
“Don’t come home until your dick is wet,” Bridget told her husband in a digital message.
The revelations threatened to overshadow a complicated hearing the same day on whether the public should be entitled to see expansive information obtained from Christian Ziegler’s iPhone, which was seized by police in November as part of an investigation of a Sarasota woman’s claims he raped her, and later of whether he filmed a sexual encounter without the woman’s consent.
Sarasota police ultimately determined sex between the woman and Christian Ziegler was “likely consensual” based on a video obtained from his phone, so police did not seek a rape charge. But detectives recommended a charge of video voyeurism, but prosecutors determined therewasn’t evidence to bring the matter to trial.
While Christian Ziegler didn’t face criminal charges and was never arrested, he suffered political consequences. Most notably, the Republican Party of Floridafired him as State Chair.
Related: The Fall of the House of Ziegler: Moms for Liberty, a threesome, and a failed political dynasty
Over the course of the investigation, Bridget Ziegler admitted to police she had engaged in a threesome with her husband and the accuser in the past. She cut ties with the conservative Leadership Institute, but has retained her seat on the Sarasota County School Board in Florida.
While Christian Ziegler got his phone back from police in February, police still have a complete duplication of all the data contained on file, including more than 30,000 videos, 250,000 photographs and 12,000 text messages. Media outlets and public records advocates have sought the full contents of the phone to be released now that the criminal investigation has concluded.
The Zieglers have fought that, and in court on Thursday said the release would violate their right to privacy. A hearing touched on past privacy claims by Patriots owner Robert Kraft, right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh and porn star Kathy Willetts, all of whom had high-profile cases unfold in Florida.
But fundamentally, Ziegler attorney Matt Sarelson argued the data should not be considered public records. He said police erred in ever looking at private communication between a husband and wife, protected conversation that likely would not have been allowed as evidence in a criminal trial even if authorities pursued charges. He also argued that since Ziegler willingly offered the one-minute-44-minute second video of the sex, and detectives acknowledged it largely exonerated him of rape, there wasn’t a clear need to take the entre contents of the phone in the first place.
In court, those seeking the records pulled back their request to only seek information from the phone that pertained to the rate and video voyeurism investigations. But with a high-profile political figure who ultimately faced no prosecution after an accusation of a sex crime, attorneys for news media and public advocates argued in court that every piece of evidence considered in an investigation should become public now that the case has closed.
That apparently includes a running “F list” Christian Ziegler kept on his phone of every intimate partner he had dating back to middle school. That list includes the accuser, who has admitted to numerous sexual encounters with him over the course of several years. Sarelson argued none of the other individuals on that list should have their identities made public.
