The four men branded rapists and sex traffickers by Representative Nancy Mace want to inspect the lawmaker’s tattoos – to look for defamatory statements hidden in her body art, Daily Mail can reveal.
Mace, 47, is believed to have had as many as nine new designs inked across her skin in the past two years to represent her status as an alleged survivor of abuse.
The GOP firebrand has described the discreet etchings – mostly inspirational words and phrases – as her ‘stress tattoos’, according to one former staffer.
They include a mysterious script snaking around the congresswoman’s left side, which was just visible in a December 2023 photo of Mace – who announced this week she’s running for South Carolina governor.
Now, lawyers for several of the men she labelled ‘predators’ in an explosive House speech in February want to know exactly what the tats say as they prep their next legal moves.
‘They will absolutely request to see all of the tattoos during discovery as the words could be defamatory,’ a source familiar with their thinking confirmed to Daily Mail.
Mace took to the House floor to accuse her former fiancé Patrick Bryant, 51, and his associates Eric Bowman, 45, John Osborne, 44, and Brian Musgrave, 51, of ‘rape, illegal filming of women, photographing of women, and sex trafficking’.
She claimed she had found more than 10,000 videos of the ‘gutless, evil’ acts after gaining access to Bryant’s phones and locating a trove of images from a supposed secret camera.
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, 47, may land in hot water over her tattoos, one of which can be seen on her left ribcage, as the four men she accused of being rapists and sex traffickers want to see what they say
Her ex-fiancé Patrick Bryant is one of four men Mace took to the House floor to accuse them of ‘rape, illegal filming of women, photographing of women, and sex trafficking’
Mom-of-two Mace said she was one of multiple victims whom the four friends recorded without permission, though she’s never made her evidence public and none of the four have faced criminal charges.
Her remarks were shielded from legal action by the Constitution’s ‘speech and debate’ clause but the protection doesn’t extend to anything said or written outside Congress.
‘There’s a rumor that Nancy and another woman she is claiming as an alleged victim have had matching tattoos,’ our source continued, but her rep denied this.
Communications director Sydney Long issued a statement to Daily Mail saying: ‘Congresswoman Nancy Mace is a fighter who has walked through hell and back.
‘And the fact that anyone would fixate on her physical body after the severe physical abuse she’s endured is extremely offensive.
‘Congresswoman Mace has been very open about her PTSD diagnosis and how she chooses to heal is her decision alone.’
But the source close to the four men said: ‘If there’s any hint of a coordinated campaign to take down these men, their lawyers will demand to see it, irrespective of whether it’s written in an email, a text or tattooed on someone’s skin.
‘Early polls suggest Mace has a slight edge in the Palmetto State’s gubernatorial primary in a crowded field that includes Alan Wilson, South Carolina’s longtime Attorney General, and US Rep. Ralph Norman.
South Carolina businessman Eric Bowman, 45 was also accused by Mace, who claimed he retaliated by posting a barrage of ‘vile, contemptible, and repugnant character attacks’ on X
Mace also publicly accused her ex-fiancé’s associates John Osborne (left) and Brian Musgrave, who filed a federal lawsuit against her saying her claims weren’t true and that they destroyed the lives of himself and his family
She goes into the race already ensnared in multiple lawsuits stemming from her notorious ‘scorched earth’ speech.
The two-time divorcée sued Bowman for libel in May, claiming he responded to her allegations by posting a barrage of ‘vile, contemptible, and repugnant character attacks’ to X.
She’s also the target of a federal lawsuit filed by Musgrave, who denies sex trafficking and says her accusations wrecked the lives of himself and his family.
His complaint claims Mace spoke to Bowman and her former campaign manager Wesley Donehue about hacking into Bryant’s phone after their 2023 split.
The pair were in the midst of a $5 million property dispute over their shared homes in Washington, D.C. and the Isle of Palms, South Carolina, and Mace wanted ‘leverage’, Donehue said.
She allegedly told another colleague, John Mason Long, she had fitted an Apple AirTag device to Bryant’s car which he ‘later discovered and confronted her about.’
‘Recruiting others to assist in hacking a phone or gathering incriminating evidence for personal pursuits is not within the course of scope of one’s employment as a member of the United States Congress,’ Musgrave’s suit argues.
Of the four men accused by Mace, Bryant is the only one who has been investigated by SLED, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Department.
He denies any wrongdoing and has not been charged with a crime.
The pair got engaged in summer 2022, but Mace claimed in late 2023 that she had broken things off with the software entrepreneur after catching him on a dating app.
When asked about his former boss’s breakup in an April 28 deposition, Donehue said: ‘She was losing a lot of weight, she was getting what she called stress tattoos.’
Bryant was at Mace’s side when she celebrated victory in the GOP primary election for a South Carolina US House seat in June 2022
Bryant got down on one knee to propose to Mace in May 2022, but the bloom quickly went off the rose and they split the following year
Mace is also alleged to have discussed tattoos with a former girlfriend of Bryant whom she sought out to ask if he had ever been violent.
‘Nancy made multiple allegations against Patrick, including that he engaged in acts of sexual assault and intimate partner violence,’ the woman said in a sworn statement seen by Daily Mail.
The affidavit, which is yet to be filed in connection with a specific case, goes on: ‘She [Mace] did not reference breaking up with Patrick due to finding his profile on a dating app, which was the reason she had given to the media previously.’
She also stated that she’d never had tattoos, but since the purported assault, she had gotten nine (9) tattoos so she could ‘feel the pain’.
The daughter of a United States one-star general, Mace grew up on military bases and was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel, the storied South Carolina military college, in 1999.
She made a run at the Senate in 2014 but lost to Lindsey Graham in the primary before becoming a social media director for the Trump 2016 campaign.
After representing the 99th district in the South Carolina House from 2018 to 2020, she beat Democrat incumbent Joe Cunningham to become the first Republican woman to be elected to the US Congress from the Palmetto State.
As the battle between the congresswoman and the four men rages, she announced last week that she’s running for South Carolina governor
Mace notably teamed up with Matt Gaetz and six other GOP rebels in the headline-grabbing 2023 ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
And last November she took aim at Delaware Democrat Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person to be elected to the US House of Representatives, insisting lawmakers should use the bathroom corresponding to their biological sex.
Bryant, Bowman and Osborne are also being sued for battery, conspiracy and inflicting emotional distress by a Jane Doe who says she was raped and photographed while incapacitated on a couch at Bowman’s home in October 2018.
The victim said she learned about the attack when Mace contacted her to say she had ‘found a video on Bryant’s phone of her being sexually assaulted by Osborne.’
Bowman has denied that any such attack took place and told Daily Mail that Mace’s sex trafficking accusations are ‘outrageous’.
Osborne told The Post & Courier: ‘The claims are categorically untrue, and it is completely unfair to be looped into such accusations.’
