The State Attorney’s Office in Sarasota said on Wednesday it will not file criminal video voyeurism charges against former Republican Party of Florida chairperson Christian Ziegler.
The Sarasota Police Department, during an investigation into a rape allegation against Ziegler, began looking into whether he committed video voyeurism after discovering footage of the sexual encounter through his phone. Police opted against charging Ziegler with sexual battery after they said the video appeared to show consensual sexual activity between him and his accuser. But they forwarded the potential video voyeurism case to the State Attorney’s Office for the 12th Judicial Circuit.
In a memo dated Wednesday, assistant state attorneys said that during interviews with the woman in the video, she said that she did not recall consenting to the video but that it “was possible” she could have consented.
The memo said the video did not capture any explicit statements showing that the woman consented to the recording. It noted that there were inconsistencies in the woman’s account of the video being taken, which appeared to be the result of “substantial intoxication and trauma that the victim was experiencing.”
The woman had been drinking alcohol leading up to the sexual act that was recorded, the memo said, and was “unable to recall many details surrounding the sexual encounter.”
According to the memo, prosecutors decided that there was not enough evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Ziegler violated any video voyeurism laws.
The decision by the state attorney’s office brings an apparent end to an investigation that in January cost Ziegler his job as Florida’s GOP chairperson.
Ziegler’s attorney Derek Byrd said in an emailed statement Wednesday that his client is relieved to be cleared of criminal wrongdoing and that Ziegler has remained quiet out of respect for the investigation.
“On day one, we said that Mr. Ziegler was completely innocent,” Byrd said. “We asked everyone not to rush to judgement, and reminded everyone to presume Mr. Ziegler innocent - as the Constitution instructs. Unfortunately, many did not award that courtesy to Mr. Ziegler, damaging his family, career, and reputation throughout this process.”
The investigation attracted national attention in part because of Ziegler’s position as well as that of his wife, Bridget Ziegler, a conservative education activist who sits on the Sarasota County School Board. The Zieglers confirmed as part of the investigation that they’d previously had a three-way sexual encounter with the woman.
Prosecutors wrote in the memo that the woman did not have a “malicious personal motivation” in reporting the incident and said that she never attempted to substantially change her account of what happened to try to convince law enforcement to charge Ziegler. The woman was fully cooperative with prosecutors, they wrote.
The memo said that during a Nov. 2 interview, Ziegler said that he and the woman had a conversation about recording a sexual video so that his wife could watch. He said that the woman later sent him a message using Instagram’s “vanish” mode asking if he had shown his wife the video. But prosecutors could not obtain any such message.
“The Victim’s expressed inability to recall whether she consented to recording the sexual activity along with her inconsistencies pertaining to key details of the event leave the State unable to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the video in question was filmed without her knowledge and consent,” the memo stated.
