Who is Patrick Bryant? What to know about the man Nancy Mace accused of sexual abuse

Congresswoman alleges former fiance guilty of sex crimes in extraordinary address to House of Representatives. South Carolina Republican Representative Nancy Mace delivered a shocking speech in the House of Representatives on Monday evening in which she accused her ex-fiance Patrick Bryant and three of his business associates of engaging in sex crimes. Mace, 47, spoke for almost an hour and claimed that, in November 2023, she had discovered a digital cache of more than 10,000 videos and photos that showed Bryant and others abusing numerous women, including herself.

“I accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable,” she told the House. “We are talking about rape, nonconsensual photos, non-consensual videos of women and underage girls, and the premeditated, calculated, exploitation of women and girls in my district.”. The MAGA congresswoman claimed she had found a video of a naked woman who was not aware she was being filmed, only to realize that it was herself.

“I was horrified. I was humiliated. I was violated,” she said. Bryant, a Charleston-based entrepreneur, co-founder of the software development firm Code/+/Trust and previously a chairman of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, responded to Mace’s allegations by telling the Associated Press: “I categorically deny these allegations. “I take this matter seriously and will cooperate fully with any necessary legal processes to clear my name.”.

The Independent has reached out to Bryant for further comment. After graduation and a stint in software sales, Bryant started his first venture Go To Team, a broadcast video services provider, which commenced his career in software development. Mace was previously married to lawyer and Air Force Reserve officer Chris Niemic between 1999 and 2002 and then contractor Curtis Jackson between 2004 and 2019, with whom she had two children.

She and Bryant reportedly dated for two years before becoming engaged in May 2022 when he proposed to her during the filming of a campaign commercial as she sought reelection to the House. Mace made headlines in July 2023 when she told a racy anecdote involving Bryant at the 13th Annual South Carolina Prayer Breakfast about arriving on time for the event only because she had declined his early morning sexual advances.

“Patrick, my fiance, tried to pull me by my waist over this morning in bed,” Mace told her Christian audience. “And I was like, ‘No, baby we don’t got time for that this morning, I’ve got to get to the prayer breakfast, and I’ve gotta be on time.”. As the crowd chuckled nervously, Mace conceded she had overshared but added: “He can wait! I’ll see him later tonight.”. “Well, a bunch of media wrote about it, but, you know, infidelity can be a very painful thing,” she told anchor Howard Kurtz.

“I caught him being unfaithful. He was on a dating app, and so I dumped him.”. She continued: “I would encourage any woman that’s in the same situation, just walk away and try to make the best life that you can for you and your family and do the right thing. “But it’s been a very, very painful couple of weeks for me and my children.”. The newspaper reported at the time that the broken engagement had left the couple fighting over a $3.9m beachfront property with six bedrooms and a swimming pool and a $1.3m house in Washington D.C. that both had equity in.