Moms for Liberty (M4L) is reeling.
If tanking in school board elections across the country wasn’t hard enough to spin, now the group is embroiled in a sex scandal involving a co-founder and a rape allegation against her husband.
The scandal involves Bridget Ziegler, who has confessed to participating in a threesome, along with a rape investigation by the Sarasota police into her husband – M4L paid consultant Christian Ziegler who also chairs the Florida Republican Party.
On Tuesday M4L co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice issued a statement hardly acknowledging they know their consultant and tiptoeing away from their fellow co-founder. But both Zieglers have been integral to the growth of M4L from its inception right up to the news of the police investigation and their threesome.
The December 5 statement was the second from M4L about the controversy. The first was a tweet on November 30, portraying Bridget as a “strong woman” being victimized, and announcing “We stand with (Bridget Ziegler) & every other badass woman.” They have deleted that tweet.
Now here’s the December 5th distancing:
“Bridget Ziegler resigned from her role as co-founder with Moms for Liberty within a month of our launch in January of 2021, nearly three years ago. She has remained an avid warrior for parental rights across the country.
It sounds like “Bridget, we hardly knew ye,” but that’s not the case. Her departure has never been explained, but likely involved the realization that having Christian Ziegler’s wife out front would interfere with the creation story that Moms for Liberty and their coaches at the right-wing Leadership Institute wanted to publicize as just grassroots, nonpolitical *plucky moms arising*. Christian was then vice-chair of the Florida GOP and credited with Donald Trump’s Florida victories in 2016 and 2020. The Zieglers prominence at M4L would bathe the grassroots narrative in suspicion, but Bridget did remain integrally involved in M4L.
In February 2022, she tweeted a photo of her and Descovich getting ready to drive to the state capitol to lobby for the “Parental Rights in Education Act,” better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill:
In July 2022 Bridget was gushing about her upcoming appearance at the M4L 2022 national summit in Tampa:
On February 1, 2023, having been recruited by Leadership Institute’s Morton Blackwell to lead school board training for right-wing candidates, Bridget tweeted about working with Moms for Liberty in Iowa:
In 2023, Bridget was again advertised as a speaker at the M4L national summit:
The Washington Post reported on December 1 that “The group’s spokeswoman, Sierra Kostick, confirmed that Bridget Ziegler retains a spot on the nonprofit organization’s advisory board.”
Christian has also been an integral part of Moms for Liberty. In October 2021 he boasted to the Washington Post about how M4L had attracted young women into the Florida Republican Party, which he promised to deploy as foot soldiers for Gov. Ron DeSantis’s 2022 re-election campaign.
In October 2022 the online publication The74 reported that M4L’s Florida SuperPAC paid $21,357 to Christian Ziegler’s consulting company, Microtargeted Media. The 2023 M4L national summit featured Christian Ziegler teaching a workshop on messaging to M4L members. Interestingly, there is no public record yet about what Christian Ziegler, or his company, have been paid since the 2022 Florida school board races.
The December 5th statement says Descovich and Justice are “truly shaken to read of the serious, criminal allegations against Christian Ziegler. We believe any allegation of sexual assault should be taken seriously and fully investigated.” It did not acknowledge that their co-founder Bridget Ziegler admitted in a police interview to participating in a threesome with her husband and his alleged victim a year ago. Recent reports show that the October 2, 2023, alleged rape occurred after the victim and Bridget and Christian Ziegler agreed to another threesome that day. Police reports state that “When (Christian) Ziegler told her in one message that his wife was no longer available, she (the victim) replied, “Sorry I was mostly in for her.” And “According to the affidavit, the woman told Sarasota police that Ziegler then showed up at her apartment uninvited and raped her.”
Moms for Liberty has spent three years now accusing teachers of being groomers and pedophiles. It has intentionally and repeatedly demonized and traumatized LGBTQ+ teenagers.
Other people’s children.
The hypocrisy alone should shower them in shame. Their cruelty to children should consign them to political oblivion. Descovich, Justice, and, Ziegler need to close down Moms for Liberty. Now.
