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Several of the individuals implicated by U.S. congresswoman Nancy Mace in her dramatic speech from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this month are pushing back against her allegations.
On Thursday (February 27, 2025), attorneys Eric Bland and Ronnie Richter published an open letter to Mace on behalf of their client, Brian Musgrave.
Musgrave was one of four men – including her former fiancée, Charleston, S.C. entrepreneur Patrick Bryant – accused of all manner of horrific abuses against Mace and other women during the congresswoman’s “scorched earth” speech from the floor of the U.S. House on February 10, 2025.
“We’re talking about rape, nonconsensual photos and nonconsensual videos of women and underage girls, and the premeditated, calculated, exploitation of innocent women and girls in my district,” Mace said.
During her remarks, Mace also held up a poster with photos of Musgrave, Bryant and two other alleged participants in the purported abuse, labeling them as “predators.”
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In their letter to Mace, Bland and Richter noted that while they were “struck by your conviction that something inappropriate happened to you (and perhaps to others)… Brian’s only connection with the events you described in your address is that he happens to own an interest in the beach condominium where these events allegedly took place.”
The attorneys flatly denied his involvement in any of the acts described by Mace.
“You upended Brian’s life when you accused him falsely of being a rapist, a predator, and a sex trafficker,” Bland and Richter wrote in their letter (.pdf). “He is none of those things. Brian is a loving husband to Jen, his wife of 22 years and a loving father to his two children. For reasons we still cannot quite fathom, you chose to sweep Brian into allegations of drugs and sex crimes involving your ex-fiance and others.”
Meanwhile, another one of the individuals named by Mace in her speech took to X as news of the letter from Musgrave’s attorneys began circulating.
“Hey Nancy Mace, I’m sure you’re a ‘no comment’ on this — gotta protect that privilege, right?” Charleston, S.C. businessman Eric Bowman wrote. “You might want to huddle up with your co-conspirator Melissa Britton to figure a new strategy. Only nine days left to retract and apologize.”
Melissa Britton is a Charleston, S.C. businesswoman who runs a company called Bracari. She is also Bowman’s ex-wife. According to Bowman, her company has contracts with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
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“This is a full-blown conspiracy cooked up by two deranged exes,” Bowman wrote. “They’re trying to weaponize law enforcement for their own gain. Maybe someone should start looking into her and her friends VA contracts – especially since Nancy sits on the VA oversight committee.”
In their letter to Mace, Bland and Richter argued the congresswoman may not have been protected from liability related to her claims simply because she made them from the floor of the House.
“As you were not advancing any legislative initiatives and were merely there to push a personal narrative, we question whether the protection exists,” they wrote.
Accordingly, they invited Mace to either “show us evidence in the form of metadata” linking Musgrave to the alleged criminal activity or “retract your allegations… and issue an apology.”
“Refuse either of these options and we will bring an action to test the limits of your protection,” Bland and Richter wrote.
A spokeswoman for Mace doubled down on the allegations.
“Please refer to congresswoman Mace’s speech on matters pertaining to Brian Musgrave,” the spokesperson said.
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RELATED | NANCY MACE’S ‘SCORCHED EARTH’ SPEECH
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Sources close to the allegations referred to the letter from Musgrave’s attorneys as “witness intimidation,” referring to an ongoing criminal investigation into the allegations.
“Congresswoman Mace is a victim, and they know there is an investigation,” one source said. “They probably should not be communicating with her, let alone threatening her in writing.”
Two hours after Mace’s floor speech, the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) – the Palmetto State’s top law enforcement agency – confirmed it was conducting an “active and ongoing” investigation.
“SLED opened an investigation regarding allegations of assault, harassment and voyeurism on December 14, 2023, after being contacted by the United States Capitol Police,” agency public information director Renée Wunderlich said in the statement. “The subject of the investigation is Patrick Bryant.”
“SLED has conducted multiple interviews, served multiple search warrants, and has a well-documented case file that will be available for release upon the conclusion of the case,” Wunderlich added in her February 10 statement. “Once the investigation is completed, it will be sent to a prosecutor for review.”
Reached for comment this week, Wunderlich reiterated “SLED’s investigation is active and ongoing.”
“At this time, there is no additional information to provide,” Wunderlich said. “More information may be available on this matter in the future.”
While SLED has only named Bryant as a subject of the inquiry, the agency’s public statements haven’t expressly ruled out other potential subjects.
Mace is one of the frontrunners for the 2026 Republican gubernatorial nomination in South Carolina. Her top opponent? Attorney general Alan Wilson, whom she repeatedly slammed in her remarks.
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THE LETTER…
(Bland Richter)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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8 comments
Stevie Wonder told me he saw this coming from way back.
Now I’m not weighing in on the merits of what Mace is saying, because I have no idea. But there are aspects of how she presented this storyline that seems highly unfair and prejudicial. This tactic of some members of a legislative body is starting to come more into the public’s attention – the fact that a congressman, Senator or state legislature member can say pretty much anything they want on the floor of the body or in a committee hearing without any legal repercussions if it is false or outright libelous. Legislative immunity is a real thing, and while it has some reasonable grounding in protecting free speech, I think it’s becoming apparent that the outer limits of this privilege need to be reigned in by the judiciary – because most of the law pertaining to the full contours of the privilege exists in caselaw and not in statute. Members of the legislative branches can create a storm of lies from their legally protected status by obfuscating issues, cherry picking or even falsifying or altering documents, presenting video montages of edited testimony, rampant use of hearsay (even double and triple hearsay) in official hearings, shutting down witnesses who hold first-hand knowledge or subject matter expertise, depriving officials who come before them from having the assistance of legal counsel, and directly lying out of their own mouths. All the while the private citizen standing on the outside – or executive branch member hauled before some committee hearing and placed under oath has very little legal tools at their disposal to bring consequences to those who abuse their privileges. But as it stands for now, legislative members can do these types of things with absolute impunity unless the body itself holds an ethics hearing and publicly reprimands the offending member or removes them from their committee assignments – but that is both unlikely and tepid even if it should happen. It appears that we may have seen some prime examples of such conduct in the news this week in some of our very own tempestuous state senate hearings – but I’ll leave that for the investigative journalists to figure out. Hopefully they will do their job.
They are using legislative privileges to witch hunt Treasurer Curtis Loftis. I watched that hearing as my Senator was there and I was appalled at the obvious lying, obstructing, malicious and deceitful actions of the Senators. My divorce was acrimonious as my X had no money and I did. Her low rent lawyers acted the same way that those Senators did and they were even mean to my 7 year odd twins. Cruel people with legislative immunity are a threat to anyone in their way.
It appears that Rep. Mace is now in a position to have to either ‘put up or shut up’. From where I sit, she took advantage of (1) the late hour – avoiding much of the potential flack she would’ve gotten from members, some of whom I think (or hope) would’ve called for a point of order to shut her up. And (2) the so-called ‘immunity of the well’ of the House chamber – I’ll leave that issue to Mssrs. Bland & Richter.
What she said was idiotic but a little known “privilege” of speaking from the house floor is that she is totally immune from arrest or lawsuit from anything she says. May be why theses attorneys haven’t attempted to file anything yet
And congaree catfish it’s in the constitution, otherwise known as the speech and debate clause, not In case law “and for ANY SPEECH or Debate in either house, they shall not be questioned in any other Place” Place includes any court or by any jackleg civil attorney. I would surmise that based on this clause Mace may be able to file a lawsuit against Bland et al for harassment
Wow. The comment section here is like the old thing about all the monkeys banging on a typewriter. I want my $8 a month back. Every time I read an article on this opinion blog my brain dies a little bit. Your ideas are definitely stupid but the writing is like kindergarten. Please stop.
Why can’t Allen Wilson use his General police force to investigate what she says happened? They help SLED investigate other things like the missing woman Alexis.