Fabián Basabe’s campaign kept paying former lawyer’s firms through $450K sexual harassment verdict

Although Rep. Fabián Basabe represented himself in the sexual harassment, battery and defamation case he lost this month, his campaign continued making payments to his former lawyer and the lawyer’s firms through the day jurors rendered their $450,000 verdict.

State records show Basabe, who is seeking re-election in House District 106, paid his ex-lawyer Gus Harper’s Tallahassee law firm, Gardner Bist King & Wood, $25,000 during the 2024 election cycle and $28,674 this cycle.

Basabe’s campaign also reported two $10,000 payments to the Harper Law Firm, which Harper owns, on July 9 — the day jury selection began — and July 15, when jurors found Basabe liable.

Altogether, Basabe’s campaign reported paying the two firms $73,674 across the two election cycles reviewed.

The campaign reports describe the expenditures only as legal services and do not establish whether the payments covered the civil case, campaign-related work or other matters. Basabe’s campaign reported no other payments to Harper or either firm during the two election cycles reviewed.

Florida law requires campaign accounts to be used only for authorized candidate expenditures made to influence an election. It does not expressly address legal bills arising from civil claims against an officeholder, though the Division of Elections has approved using campaign funds to pay legal fees and costs associated with contesting election results.

Whether the payments were permissible depends on what services they purchased and whether those services were campaign-related.

Neither the timing of the payments nor Harper’s prior representation of Basabe establishes that the money paid for work on the civil case.

Harper withdrew as Basabe’s lawyer in March 2025, writing that Basabe “desires to represent himself.”

Former Basabe aide Nicolas Frevola and ex-intern Jacob Cutbirth sued Basabe in July 2023, accusing him, among other things, of slapping Frevola’s face and buttocks, groping and attempting to kiss Cutbirth, making repeated unwelcome sexual comments to both men, and defaming Frevola and his mother in a social media post.

A separate suit the plaintiffs brought against the House, which they accuse of insufficiently investigating their claims against Basabe, remains pending. The two 2023 investigations by the House — one into the face-slapping incident, the other into the accusations of sexual impropriety — resulted in an “inconclusive” finding and “no evidence” of wrongdoing, respectively.

Since the trial concluded, Basabe has cited his decision to forgo legal representation as a major contributor to the verdict, though Frevola and Cutbirth’s lawyers questioned whether he received assistance while representing himself.

In one of many standout exchanges while Basabe was on the witness stand, lawyer Katherine Viker asked Basabe if Harper — whom multiple sources told Florida Politics they saw in the gallery before and during the trial — was coaching Basabe by phone.

Basabe denied that was the case, but declined Viker’s request to show his phone to the jury.

On Wednesday, Deerfield Beach-based lawyer Peter Ticktin, a longtime friend and advocate of President Donald Trump, filed a motion asking Judge Lee Marsh to set aside the verdict, order a new trial or reduce the damages, arguing a cascade of procedural and evidentiary errors during the trial denied him a fair trial.

In 2024, Basabe vowed to resign immediately if any of the allegations against him “ever prove true.” He said this week, in a statement he said he composed while he “was driving,” that he “will continue serving … while this legal process moves forward.”

Meanwhile, numerous state and local officials who previously endorsed Basabe have rescinded their support. More than one has called for him to resign, as have five of seven members of the Miami Beach Commission, on which Basabe briefly sought a seat in 2021.

HD 106 covers a coastal strip of Miami-Dade County between Miami Beach and Aventura. It is considered to be among Florida’s most flippable districts, having gone to Trump by 9 percentage points in 2024 and to former President Joe Biden four years earlier by 10 points, according to MCI Maps.

Basabe, a former reality TV personality and socialite, defeated former Bay Harbor Islands Mayor Jordan Leonard in 2022 by less than a percentage point to succeed term-limited Democratic Rep. Joe Geller — who has since replaced Báez-Geller, no relation, on the Miami-Dade School Board — in HD 106.

He won re-election by a 4-point margin two years later.

This cycle, former Miami-Dade School Board Member Lucia Báez-Geller and lawyer Ashley Litwin Diego are competing in an Aug. 18 Democratic Primary for the right to challenge Basabe in the Nov. 3 General Election.