The head of Florida’s Republican Party indicated Saturday he will not step down while facing an investigation into sexual assault, rejecting calls by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to give up his role as the party’s top operative.
In a letter to the state GOP, chairman Christian Ziegler did not address the allegation – which continued to send shockwaves through the state on Saturday as troubling new details about the investigation emerged – but suggested a conspiracy was afoot to leak details from the Sarasota Police Department probe.
“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 wrote.
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“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 wrote.
According to a search warrant affidavit, which CNN obtained from the Florida Center for Government Accountability, Ziegler and his wife Bridget planned a three-way sexual encounter with the alleged victim on the day of the alleged assault on October 2, and “when the victim learned that Bridget could not make it, she changed her mind and canceled with Christian.”
Bridget Ziegler, 41, a thrice-elected Sarasota County school board member, co-founded Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents’ rights organization that has led the efforts in Florida and beyond to remove books from classrooms they deem inappropriate for kids.
She has also served as a close ally of DeSantis in his crackdown on removing sexual orientation and gender identity from schools.
This year, DeSantis named Bridget Ziegler to the board that now oversees the Walt Disney Company’s special taxing district in Central Florida amid his clash with the entertainment giant over a state law that restricted how sexual orientation and gender identity could be taught in the classroom.
The letter came a day after DeSantis said Ziegler should step down as party chairman, telling reporters “I don’t see how we can continue with that investigation ongoing, given the gravity of those situations.”
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