Two former staffers for Florida Rep. Fabian Basabe filed a lawsuit Thursday detailing allegations of sexual harassment and unwanted touching by the freshman Republican lawmaker.
The lawsuit says Basabe made repeated lewd sexual comments and advances toward a legislative aide and an intern, slapped the aide’s butt without his consent while they attended an elementary school career day, and groped and tried to kiss a Florida State University graduate student in a car before hiring him as an intern.
The suit filed in Leon County Circuit Court also repeats a claim by Basabe’s former legislative aide in Tallahassee, Nicolas Frevola, that Basabe slapped Frevola across the face and told him to stand in a corner at a private event in January.
Last week, a law firm hired by House Speaker Paul Renner to investigate that allegation found there was “physical contact” between Basabe and Frevola but said no witnesses could corroborate the slap and that it was “inconclusive” whether it had occurred.
Basabe denied any inappropriate conduct with Frevola, 25, or former intern Jacob Cutbirth, 24, and called the accusations “ridiculous” in a June 29 interview with CBS News Miami, saying the investigation by the law firm, Allen Norton & Blue, had “cleared” him. The Miami Herald and CBS News Miami have been jointly investigating Basabe’s conduct.
In a statement after the lawsuit was filed, an attorney for Basabe, Robert Fernandez, said they were still reviewing the complaint and did not respond to detailed questions about the claims.
“Representative Basabe will not be litigating this frivolous and meritless lawsuit in the media or giving it any more public attention than it deserves — which is none,” Fernandez said. “Representative Basabe looks forward to defending himself in court and we believe he will be fully vindicated once these allegations are scrutinized under the rule of law.”
Basabe, 45, is a former New York socialite who appeared on reality TV shows in the mid-2000s. He was narrowly elected in November to represent Miami Beach and other coastal cities in northeast Miami-Dade County, and faced backlash from some constituents during his first legislative session as he voted in lock-step with fellow Republicans on culture-war issues despite campaigning as a social moderate.
He has staunchly defended his legislative actions in Tallahassee, often in combative statements posted online.
After the investigative report was released last week, Basabe attacked Frevola in a lengthy statement on social media, decrying a “false accusation” made by “lazy, entitled, unscrupulous, self-involved, ungrateful, lying scum.”
Basabe also referred to Frevola and his mother, Janette Frevola, as a “conning, scheming mother and son duo” who have “a reported history of lawsuits against anyone who they think can or will pay.”
The Miami Herald and CBS Miami asked Basabe to provide details to support that claim, but he did not provide any examples. An attorney for the Frevolas said he was not aware of any such lawsuits. A review of court filings found no record of the type of lawsuits described by Basabe.
Janette Frevola ran unsuccessfully last year in the Republican primary for a state House seat in the Orlando area.
The lawsuit filed Thursday, which seeks in excess of $100,000 in damages, also accuses Basabe of defamation.
“As offensive as the statements [made by Basabe] are, it is even more shocking that they were made by a public official in response to an investigation of his misconduct while in public office,” the lawsuit states, adding Basabe’s social media post was retaliatory and intended to keep others from coming forward.
Sexual harassment claims
Cutbirth first met Basabe and Frevola at a bar in Tallahassee in December, the lawsuit says. Later in the night, he says he was asked to drive Basabe back to his hotel because Basabe had been drinking.
While Cutbirth was driving, Basabe “began to physically touch and grope him and to grab at him to try to kiss him,” according to the lawsuit. Cutbirth says he “repeatedly told Basabe to stop touching him” and refused Basabe’s request to come to his hotel room.
Weeks later, in late January, Cutbirth accepted a part-time internship in Basabe’s office. The lawsuit says Cutbirth saw the offer as an “apology” for the alleged incident in the car.
Once the internship began, Cutbirth says Basabe told him repeatedly to “flirt with him” while he was in the office and described him as “eye candy” in front of other people, according to the complaint. Basabe suggested Cutbirth should break off his engagement to his girlfriend and should “explore his sexuality by having sex with men,” the lawsuit states.
On one occasion, Basabe allegedly showed Frevola and Cutbirth a photograph of a naked man on his phone. And he told the pair he was a “bottom” and that Frevola and Cutbirth should be “tops,” the suit says.
In March, six weeks after starting his internship, Cutbirth says he quit “by walking out of the office and never returning” due to “pervasive sexual harassment.”
The lawsuit also details an alleged December incident that Frevola says took place while a different aide to Basabe was speaking to fifth-grade students during career day at North Beach Elementary School. Basabe told Frevola he wanted “all of that butt” before slapping Frevola’s buttocks in the back of the classroom, the lawsuit states.
The suit makes claims of civil battery for the alleged classroom incident and in connection with Cutbirth’s allegation that Basabe groped and tried to kiss him in the car.
Attorneys for Frevola and Cutbirth said they will also be filing separate complaints for each of them with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission seeking a formal investigation.
Basabe is married to the heiress of the La Perla lingerie fortune, Martina Borgomanero, and has publicly avoided questions about his own sexual orientation since being elected.
Intern told bar owner his concerns
During his internship with Basabe, Cutbirth continued to work part-time at 926 Bar and Grill, an LGBTQ-friendly bar in Tallahassee. There, Cutbirth shared his unease about Basabe’s behavior with the bar’s owner, Carl Bengston, the owner said in a phone interview last week.
Bengston said Cutbirth initially believed the internship would be “great for his future.” But a couple of weeks after starting, he said Basabe had made comments that made Cutbirth uncomfortable, such as asking whether he was a “top or bottom.” Bengston, who is gay, said he had to explain what that meant to Cutbirth, who is straight.
“It just raised a bunch of red flags to me,” Bengston said. “I’ve met people I would refer to as predatory, and what I was hearing from Jacob in some of these comments was sounding like he was dealing with a person that I would describe as predatory.”
When Cutbirth quit the internship in March, Bengston said, “I remember telling him that was probably the best move he could make.”
“It takes a lot for my skin to crawl, and it was making my skin crawl,” said Bengston, adding that he suggested Cutbirth remove himself from the situation by seeing if he could intern with a different elected official.
The day Cutbirth quit, March 7, he texted a group of friends and told them he had been sexually harassed, according to the lawsuit and a copy of the message provided by Cutbirth’s attorney.
In the interview last week, Basabe said he did not know why Cutbirth stopped working for him, but suggested Cutbirth was having family problems he needed to address.
Cutbirth had briefly interned for state Sen. Debbie Mayfield, a Republican from Vero Beach, in 2021. In an interview this week, Mayfield said she had “no issues” with Cutbirth and considered him to be honest and trustworthy.
“I never experienced any issues or problems where he was not telling the truth or being honest,” Mayfield said.
Employees signed NDAs
Basabe had Frevola and Cutbirth sign non-disclosure agreements, according to the lawsuit and copies of the documents reviewed by the Miami Herald and CBS Miami. Frevola and Cutbirth said they believed the NDAs were required for their employment.
Asked earlier this year if he required his House staff to sign NDAs, Basabe didn’t respond directly but said it may have been part of “an application package.”
“Whatever is in there, is in there,” he said. “I don’t deal with the hiring process.”
The Florida Legislature does not require employees to sign NDAs. The documents signed by Frevola and Cutbirth appear to be unique to Basabe, featuring a heading that reads, “Fabian Basabe and Family.”
“You will be exposed to information regarding Basabe family members and the business of Basabe,” the document reads. “Basabe desires that all such information be preserved as confidential and not disclosed to any third party.”
Basabe acknowledged the NDAs in an interview last week, calling them “a pretty standard thing.”
“It’s something personal, has nothing to do with Tallahassee,” he said. “You enter my home and, you know, people get ideas, and I just don’t appreciate people taking advantage of it.”
Lawyers say investigators ignored claims
Attorneys for Frevola and Cutbirth say they told investigators with Allen Norton & Blue about Basabe’s alleged sexual harassment several weeks ago, while the probe into the slap claim was still ongoing.
But they said the firm declined to dig into the claims, citing the “narrow scope” of the investigation. The harassment claims were not mentioned in the three-page report issued last week, despite a footnote saying investigators were “not limited in their inquiry in any manner by House leadership.”
In an email last week to the investigators and the Florida House General Counsel, an attorney for Frevola – his uncle, Al Frevola – said they “ignored and failed to investigate” the sexual harassment allegations.
“I am compelled to point out the absolute failure of the process and the significant shortcomings of your ‘investigation’ and ‘findings,’ ” he wrote.
Attached to the email was a five-page written statement by Nicolas Frevola, detailing his allegations of sexual harassment by Basabe.
According to his attorney, Frevola had previously detailed those claims in a May phone call with investigators, who then asked if he would repeat them in a sworn statement with a court reporter present. The attorney asked if Frevola could instead provide a sworn written statement, he said, but didn’t hear back from investigators before the report was released.
A spokesperson for the Florida House said in a statement the “new allegation” was “brought forward after the completion” of the investigation into the slap allegation.
The spokesperson said an unspecified outside law firm — not Allen Norton & Blue, which conducted the first probe — will now conduct a “thorough” investigation into the sexual harassment claims. “The Florida House has a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment,” the statement said.
CBS News Miami reporter Jim DeFede and Miami Herald Tallahassee Bureau reporter Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
