Politics
Video contradicts Fabián Basabe’s claim he wasn’t told of Judge’s campaign ties to opposing lawyers
Last week, embattled Republican state Rep. Fabián Basabe demanded the disqualification of the Judge who presided over the sexual harassment case he lost, arguing the Judge never disclosed ties he had with two lawyers representing the plaintiffs.
Video of a pre-trial hearing recorded more than a month before jury selection shows that isn’t true.
During a June 6, 2026, Zoom hearing, viewable below, Judge J. Lee Marsh said clearly that Katie Viker — who represented the plaintiffs alongside fellow lawyers Cindy Myers and Marie Mattox — serves on his active re-election committee.
“Ms. Viker is also — I’ll make the disclosure, I don’t know if she’ll be on it, this one or not — she’s also on my campaign committee,” Marsh said. “But again, I’m going to call balls and strikes. That’s my job. That’s the oath of office I have taken.”
Basabe appears to have been present during the disclosure, as he asked Marsh a question about an expanded witness list soon after.
Documentarian Billy Corben, who recorded the Zoom meeting and was responsible for much of the courtroom footage during the trial, told Florida Politics he distinctly remembers Marsh disclosing Mattox’s involvement in his re-election effort as well.
Corben said his team hadn’t begun recording the meeting when Marsh made the earlier disclosure. He noted Marsh said “also” when referring to Viker’s involvement and “again” when asserting he’d “call balls and strikes” as indicators of the prior, unrecorded disclosure.
Basabe said Friday that he had “no knowledge” of Mattox or Viker’s relationship with Marsh “prior to or during the trial.” He said he only learned of it after finding posts on Marsh’s campaign page, which he screenshotted on July 27, seven days before he said the post vanished from the website.
Florida Politics found that post still up on Marsh’s Facebook page, containing nine pictures of a sparsely attended event at Marsh’s law office and the caption, “Such a wonderful night at Marie A. Mattox, P.A. Thank you to Marie, Cindy, Katie, Kristen, and the entire team! The night wouldn’t have been complete without dancing!! Karin and I appreciate your support and everyone who is getting out the vote. Vote to Re-Elect Judge Lee Marsh on August 18th!!”
Myers told Florida Politics she was the Cindy to whom Marsh referred in the post, but that she is not on Marsh’s re-election committee.
On July 15, more than three years after Basabe’s former aide Nicolas Frevola and ex-intern Jacob Cutbirth sued him, jurors found Basabe liable for sexual harassment, battery and defamation, awarding the two men $450,000 in damages.
Basabe represented himself during the trial, against common wisdom and Marsh’s advice, after his lawyer Gus Harper officially withdrew from the case in March 2025. Harper, who continued to appear in the courtroom through the mid-July verdict — leading some to posit that he was coaching Basabe by text — received a pair of $10,000 payments from Basabe’s campaign — one on July 9, the day jury selection began, and another on July 15, the day the jury found the lawmaker liable.
The trial in question spanned three days last month, during which Marsh repeatedly admonished Basabe for referencing subjects and evidence stricken from the case, saying it was “staggering how blatant” the lawmaker violated his directions and threatening to declare a mistrial.
Basabe ultimately rested without calling a single witness.
After losing, Basabe hired a new legal team led by Peter Ticktin — a friend of President Donald Trump who represented hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters and pressed for emergency powers to allow Trump broad control over elections — and demanded a new trial or reduced damages. He contended that procedural and evidentiary errors denied him a fair trial.
Myers and Mattox responded to the motion last week, calling it “long on page numbers” but “woefully short on specifics,” arguing that any perceived prejudice Basabe suffered in the trial “arose from his decision to represent himself.”
The motion Basabe’s legal team filed Friday says Florida law does not require proof of judicial bias in the case, only that circumstance around the case could cause a reasonable person to fear they could not receive a fair and impartial hearing. Canon 3 of the Code of Judicial Conduct elaborates on that tenet.
And state law does allow parties to seek disqualification based on a fear that judicial prejudice will prevent a fair trial. However, guidelines published by the Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee also state plainly that a lawyer’s contribution to, or work on, a Judge’s campaign does not require the recusal of the Judge when that lawyer appears before them, citing the 1990 Florida Supreme Court decision Mackenzie v. Super Kids Bargain Store Inc.
In a more recent case, Cini v. Cabezas (2022), the 3rd District Court of Appeal held that a law firm’s participation as one of 16 hosts of a fundraiser during a Judge’s ongoing re-election campaign did not, without more evidence of potential bias, require recusal. The court emphasized the “timing, nature, and extent” of the lawyers’ participation, contrasting those considerations with cases requiring recusal where the lawyer was the Judge’s campaign Treasurer, co-Chair or an active committee member during a contested campaign.
Marsh is in a contested campaign. Division of Election records show Viker contributed $150 to his campaign in March, and Myers gave the same sum July 25.
Of more than 220 donations that Marsh’s campaign listed through Aug. 13, 150 came from lawyers, law firms and lobbying practices, the overwhelming majority of which were based in the Judge’s jurisdiction.
Basabe is running for re-election in House District 106, which covers a coastal strip of Miami-Dade between Miami Beach and Aventura and remains 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.
Two Democrats — former Miami-Dade School Board Member Lucia Báez-Geller and lawyer Ashley Litwin Diego — are competing in an Aug. 18 Democratic Primary to face him in the Nov. 3 General Election.
Five men have accused Basabe of sexual impropriety: Frevola, Cutbirth, an unidentified man who claimed during the trial that Basabe drugged and raped him in 2003, a House aide who said Basabe drunkenly pulled him into his bedroom at his Shiloh home and an aide-turned-lobbyist who said in sworn testimony that the lawmaker propositioned him for a threesome.
Basabe, who vowed to resign in 2024 if any of the allegations of sexual impropriety “ever prove true,” has denied any misconduct.
Meanwhile, multiple officials have rescinded endorsements, and five of the seven Miami Beach City Commissioners have called for him to step down.
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