Miami Beach Republican Rep. Fabián Basabe continued his legal losing streak this week.
Leon County Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh denied Basabe’s bid to vacate the $450,000 sexual harassment verdict against him, rejected Basabe’s fallback request to slash the damages and refused to step aside from the case.
Marsh then entered a final judgment against the lawmaker.
The three orders hit the docket within three minutes of each other Thursday afternoon.
In denying Basabe’s motions, filed Aug. 17 by his new legal team, Marsh wrote that neither the motion nor the plaintiffs’ response offered any new evidence that would change his earlier rulings.
The issues were briefed thoroughly enough that a hearing was unnecessary, Marsh found, and there was no legal or factual reason to recede from what he already decided.
Marsh disposed of Basabe’s request that he disqualify himself in four sentences, ruling it legally insufficient under Florida law and the Florida Rules of Judicial Administration.
Legal sufficiency asks only whether a motion’s allegations, if true, would place a reasonable person in fear of an unfair hearing. Marsh made no finding on whether Basabe’s account was accurate.
Basabe argued that he learned only after the trial that two lawyers for the plaintiffs — Marie Mattox and Katherine Viker — sat on Marsh’s re-election committee. However, video of a June 6 pretrial hearing contradicted that claim, showing Marsh disclosing the connection to Viker with Basabe on the line.
Multiple people told Florida Politics that Marsh made a similar disclosure about Mattox the same day, but that it wasn’t captured on the video because recording started later. The video does not show Basabe registering or objecting to Viker’s involvement.
The final judgment awards former Basabe aide Nicolas Frevola $275,000 and former Basabe intern Jacob Cutbirth $175,000, plus statutory interest. Frevola’s mother, Janette Frevola, a plaintiff on the defamation claim, recovered nothing. Marsh reserved jurisdiction to rule on attorneys fees and costs.
Basabe has 30 days from Thursday to file a notice of appeal — a near certainty after his recent retention of lawyer Peter Ticktin, a longtime friend of Donald Trump who recently advocated for a declaration of national emergency that would enable the President to, among other things, ban mail-in voting and voting machines ahead of the Midterm.
A jury found Basabe liable for sexual harassment, battery and defamation on July 15 after roughly two hours of deliberation, capping nearly three years of litigation.
Frevola and Cutbirth accused him of slapping Frevola’s face at a post-inauguration event and his buttocks in a classroom full of elementary school students, groping and trying to kiss Cutbirth, making repeated unwelcome sexual remarks and defaming Frevola and his mother in a social media post.
Basabe represented himself, against Marsh’s advice and common wisdom, after lawyer Gus Harper withdrew in March 2025. He rested without calling a witness. Later, the lawmaker called his decision to forgo legal representation “a mistake.”
During the trial, Marsh repeatedly admonished Basabe for referencing stricken evidence, at one point remarking it was “staggering how blatant” the violations were and raising the prospect of a mistrial.
Harper, who attended the trial and appeared to some observers to be coaching Basabe, collected two $10,000 payments from Basabe’s campaign after withdrawing from the case — one the day jury selection began, another the day jurors returned their verdict.
Five men have now accused Basabe of sexual impropriety, including an anonymous witness who testified that Basabe drugged and raped him in Malibu in 2003, a House aide who said Basabe pulled him into a bedroom at his Shiloh home in an effort to sleep with him, and an aide-turned-lobbyist who said in sworn testimony that Basabe propositioned him for a threesome.
Basabe denies any misconduct. He vowed in 2024 to resign if the allegations “ever prove true,” but has continued to serve and run for re-election.
The political fallout has been steady. Multiple officials who backed his re-election have rescinded their endorsements, and five of seven members of the Miami Beach Commission have called for his resignation.
On Tuesday, Democratic voters chose former Miami-Dade School Board Member Lucia Báez-Geller to be Basabe’s challenger in the Nov. 3 General Election, siding with her over lawyer Ashley Litwin Diego by a 14-percentage-point margin.
Basabe has represented House District 106 since 2022, when he won the coastal Miami-Dade seat by only 240 votes. He improved in 2024, winning by approximately 4 points.
HD 106 covers a coastal strip of Miami-Dade between Miami Beach and Aventura. Trump carried the district by 9 points in 2024, according to MCI Maps, after former President Joe Biden won it by 10 points four years before.
Florida Politics ranked the HD 106 contest seventh on its list of the 11 races to watch ahead of the General Election.