Media companies believe the public deserves to know the details of the investigation; the Zieglers disagree.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: July 24, 2024
Host: The Sarasota Police Department led the criminal investigation of alleged rape against former Florida Republican Party Chair Christian Ziegler. All charges were dropped in early March, but the case continues to be politically explosive because the digital evidence police detectives collected is still sitting in police computers. Now, the City of Sarasota is in a legally delicate place, torn between two lawsuits trying to achieve diametrically opposed outcomes.
Police Investigator: We’re looking into an allegation of sexual assault by your husband. Would it shock you to know that he might be in a relationship with her, or has had a relationship with her?
Bridget Ziegler: I don’t know that relationship, but I’m … if there were any extramarital things, it wouldn’t blow my mind with surprise, but as far as the sexual assault of any sort, I can’t … that surprises me.
Johannes Werner: That’s Bridget Ziegler. She is the wife of Christian and a sitting school board member, and this is her being questioned by a police detective. That recording was released by the Sarasota Police Department earlier this year in response to an open-document request. But there is also a trove of personal phone, Google search, and social media data that’s still sitting at the police department. A half-dozen media organizations, including the corporate owners of two local newspapers and a non-profit led by local open-government advocate Michael Barfield, as well as Barfield himself, filed a counterclaim against the city. They want the city to release the data, arguing it is public, and therefore subject to a public information request they filed. City Attorney Bob Fournier explains.
Bob Fournier: These cross claims are still, what you might call alive right now. And unless they can be settled, a hearing will have to be held on them in the future. So I want you to know that because that case is still out there. We’re still confronting these allegations from the intervenors that the city violated the public records act by refusing access to these documents.
JW: And then, there’s the suit filed by the Zieglers, after the charges were dropped, and a judge’s recent ruling in their favor. Following the dismissal of sexual battery charges against Christian Ziegler, he and Bridget in March filed a lawsuit to take back the electronic data Sarasota Police Department detectives had obtained from the couple during their investigation. On July 1, a judge ruled that the data is indeed private, and that the police department must destroy it.
But there’s also the cross suit, and that puts the City of Sarasota in a delicate situation. City Attorney Bob Fournier took more than half an hour yesterday to explain the intricacies of the city’s legal situation to the five commissioners.
BF: The situation put the city right in the middle because the city was the custodian of the ESI. So the city’s position essentially at the end of the day is just, we want to follow the law. If we know what the status of the records is, if they are held not public records, then they won’t be released if the court determines it’s private information, private records. On the other hand, if it’s declared to be a public record, well, it’s a lot more complicated than just releasing the information. Because first, a determination has to be made if it is a public record or if it’s a private record, and then if it is a public record, you have to determine whether it’s subject to a recognized exemption or not, and I have a summary of the recognized exemptions, and that’s 16 pages long, so this is no small task. And then if you determine that the record is subject to an exemption, you are required by law to identify and to cite the exemption for the benefit of the requesting party. So that you’re not just refusing to give them the record, that you’re telling them it’s exempt and if so, pursuant to what statute, what law. And then some records are not only exempt, but they’re confidential, which means that they’re confidential and for the benefit of a third party. And sometimes it’s advisable to simply waive an exemption if you want to disclose something that’s exempt.
But if it’s confidential, there’s a third party involved, and the third party conceivably could have a cause of action against the custodian for releasing information that was confidential. So I mentioned this to say, you know, we were in the middle of these efforts to go through this, and of course the requesting parties were somewhat impatient. And in their view, this was all public records and it should have all been released immediately.
JW: The Zieglers may still sue the city for compensation in connection to the search warrant Sarasota Police detectives sought and that the judge called “overbroad”. Fournier recommended the city not appeal the judge’s ruling in favor of the Zieglers, assuming this would make any monetary claims by the Zieglers less likely. The commissioners went along, deciding not to appeal. But now, it’s wait-and-see for the competing lawsuit to run its course. The city attorney explained that, while the media organizations’ suit is pending, the Sarasota Police Department cannot erase the Zieglers’ data.
Meanwhile, charges dropped or not, the evidence released surrounding the rape allegation was sufficient for critics to latch on to the fact that the couple led a secret life that contradicts the conservative principles they say they represent. All this has put on hold the political ambitions of the conservative power couple. Christian Ziegler is out of the political game, for now. Bridget Ziegler has so far weathered the storm, resisting calls to resign from the Sarasota School Board. She did, however, disconnect from Moms for Liberty, the organization she co-founded, and lost her job with a conservative education policy foundation.
Johannes Werner, WSLR News.
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