{"id":339155,"date":"2026-07-14T01:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T01:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/339155\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T01:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T01:25:08","slug":"jury-hears-opening-statements-in-fabian-basabe-civil-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/339155\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury hears opening statements in Fabian Basabe civil trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text text--small text--normal text--primary\">Published:\u00a0July 13, 2026 at 4:46 PM<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">MIAMI \u2014 Opening statements began Monday in the civil trial for South Florida lawmaker Fabian Basabe. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Basabe is a Republican in the Florida state House of Representatives, but he is being sued by two former employees, a legislative aid and an intern.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Both men say they were victims of sexual harassment, battery and defamation at the hands of Basabe. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The lawsuit was first filed about three years ago but is now making its way in front of a jury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Basabe, who is up for re-election later this year, is actually representing himself during the trial, moving forward without a lawyer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">He has long denied the allegations, pointing to a pair of prior investigations brought on by the Florida House of Representatives to look into the claims, both of which were dismissed after findings of no wrongdoing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The victims have also sued the Florida House of Representatives. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">A stream of a portion of Monday\u2019s hearing can be seen below: <\/p>\n<p>\ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-article-body__copyright\">Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com &#8211; All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" data-chromatic=\"ignore\" alt=\"Terrell Forney\" class=\"c-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/https:\/\/author-service-images-sandbox-us-east-1.publishing.aws.arc.pub\/wplginc\/7b28e33c-d75f-4d1a-87.jpeg\"  width=\"100\" height=\"100\"\/>Terrell Forney<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-author-bio__author-description\">Terrell Forney joined Local 10 News in October 2005 as a general assignment reporter. He was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, but a desire to escape the harsh winters of the north brought him to South Florida.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published:\u00a0July 13, 2026 at 4:46 PM MIAMI \u2014 Opening statements began Monday in the civil trial for South&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":339156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-339155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}