Miami Beach’s Basabe embarrassed his constituents and should end reelection bid | Opinion

Republican Miami Beach state Rep. Fabian Basabe’s civil trial was a made-for-social-media spectacle. His lack of judgment in representing himself in court in Tallahassee, minus a law degree, and the laughable and embarrassing moments it produced are obvious red flags for his constituents.

He should finally wise up and drop his reelection bid in November now that a jury on Wednesday found him liable in the case and awarded $450,000 in damages to his former aide and a former intern. The two young men accused him of sexual harassment, battery and defamation.

If Basabe doesn't leave voluntarily, House District 106 voters should send a strong message and vote him out. Two Democrats — Lucia Baez-Geller and Ashley Litwin Diego — are running in the Aug. 18 primary to challenge him in the general election.

This wasn’t a criminal trial, so Basabe, a former reality TV figure, wasn’t found guilty of sexual harassment and other accusations. But a civil jury found that the evidence presented to them was compelling enough to award the two young men damages. The testimony heard in the trial alone should be a no-go for voters.

Former aide Nicolas Frevola testified that Basabe slapped him in the face and told him to stand in a corner at a private event in 2023, and that Basabe slapped his butt without his consent a month prior. A former Basabe intern, Jacob Cutbirth, accused the Republican of trying to kiss him and touch him inappropriately and of making unwelcome sexual comments. Frevola and his mother also alleged that Basabe defamed them in a statement he posted on Twitter after a Florida House investigation into the 2023 incident came back with a finding of “inconclusive.” A second investigation the Florida House commissioned was unable to corroborate harassment claims by Frevola and Cutbirth.

In that post, Basabe called mother and son “lazy, entitled, unscrupulous, self-involved, ungrateful, lying scum.” During the trial, Basabe doubled down, testifying that Frevola “was always a loser.”

Jurors clearly didn’t buy that. They awarded $100,000 each to Frevola and Cutbirth on the sexual harassment count and $75,000 each on the battery count, the Herald reported. Frevola was also awarded $100,000 on the defamation count. “This man has destroyed his life for no reason at all,” Frevola’s mother, Janette, testified, the Herald reported. The jury found Basabe liable for defaming both Frevola and his mother in the Twitter post but only awarded damages to the son.

Basabe’s disturbing behavior toward his subordinates, as described in the trial, should disqualify him from winning a third House term representing a district that runs from Aventura to Miami Beach.

And then, there was Basabe’s strange behavior in the courtroom. He’s not a lawyer and it showed, resulting in a series of blunders that prompted Leon County Judge Lee Marsh to say it was “staggering how blatantly” Basabe was violating court orders. "If an attorney had done half of what you’ve done,” Marsh said, “they would have been sanctioned, sir.”

When Basabe took the stand, the plaintiffs’ lawyer asked him “Have you ever been accused of drugging and raping anyone?” Basabe paused for 10 seconds before asking the judge for a sidebar — a private conference between the judge and attorneys — because, he said, “I want to object and I don’t know how.”

Among the issues that came up during the trial: testimony by an anonymous witness, a man identified only as “TS,” who claimed Basabe drugged and raped him in 2003 — the Herald first reported about his account in 2024. The plaintiffs’ lawyer wanted the testimony to be heard by the jury, but Marsh ruled that it could confuse the jury and ruled against letting the anonymous man testify.

Basabe has denied the man’s claim and said in a statement after the jury’s finding: “I believed representing myself was the right thing to do because I am innocent” and said that the allegations were subject of investigations and ethics proceedings "that concluded without substantiating the misconduct alleged against me.”

He added, “Looking back, representing myself was a mistake.”

Indeed, it was. Jurors took just two hours to reach their verdict. Now Basabe must do the right thing: end his reelection bid. Do that for the good of his party and, above all, for the good of District 106.