The Republican Party of Florida formally removed Christian Ziegler as chairman. The executive committee for the party voted to expel the embattled chair. Sources in the room say a handful of votes were cast against a motion to remove the chair.
Ziegler, who has been embroiled in a sex scandal for months, did not show up for the vote, a difference from a few weeks ago when he pleaded his case to the party's state executive committee.
The party now must decide on a replacement for chair, with RPOF Vice Chair Evan Power and National Committeeman Peter Feaman emerging as the primary choices. The decision will likely be resolved at a special meeting underway in Tallahassee.
Ziegler lost his job as chair less than a year after winning an election over Power.
All this happens as Ziegler remains under active criminal accusation for sexual battery and video voyeurism. A longtime acquaintance accused Ziegler of raping her in a Sarasota apartment on Oct. 2. Ziegler maintained the sex was consensual.
But many say confessionals the Zieglers already made to police will haunt, if not end, any political ambitions for him and his wife, Sarasota County School Board member Bridget Ziegler.
When approached by police about the accusation, court documents indicate Ziegler produced a two-and-a-half-minute video of the encounter he made on his cell phone.
Police have since obtained the video as evidence, and suggested it contradicts key portions of the victim's account. But the video also raises questions whether he filmed the sex without the woman's consent.
Meanwhile, the woman told police she scheduled a three-way sexual encounter that day with both Christian and Bridget Ziegler. When Christian Ziegler told her in a digital message that his wife could not attend, she told him not to come over. Surveillance video verifies he showed up minutes later anyway.
Bridget Ziegler, a Sarasota School Board member and co-founder of the conservative Moms for Liberty, confirmed to police she and her husband engaged in a threesome with the woman more than a year prior. She has not been accused of any crime, but the sexual confession drew her directly into the scandal.
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