Fort Mill man exonerated in sex-crime probe says Nancy Mace’s allegations upended his life

CHARLESTON — The phone message arrived as Brian Musgrave was driving to a hardware store to pick up some birdseed.

A Wall Street Journal reporter wanted to know his reaction to U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace accusing him and three other men of sex crimes in a speech scheduled for that night. The married father of two said he had no idea what the reporter was talking about.

His first instinct that day in February 2025 was that it was a spam call.

Hours later, Musgrave learned the allegations were all too real as Mace labeled him a predator in a fiery speech on the House of Representatives floor that detailed claims of sexual assault and trafficking. He soon found his life upended by the stain of accusations he insisted were not true.

“I’m not sure if there’s anything else that could have been alleged that could have been more awful than what was said about me,” Musgrave, a software company CEO from Fort Mill, near Charlotte, told The Post and Courier Oct. 20.

“This isn’t someone saying, ‘Brian doesn’t put the lid on tight on the mustard in the fridge,’ or ‘Brian oftentimes exceeds the speed limit on the highway by approximately 7 mph,’ ” he said. “I mean, this is horrible, horrible stuff.”

After an unsuccessful bid to take Mace to court over defamation claims, Musgrave, 53, received some help in restoring his reputation last week from an unlikely source: the chief prosecutor in the case.

After the three other men implicated by Mace were charged with sex crimes, 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson of Charleston released a memo on Oct. 14 that cleared Musgrave of wrongdoing. In the memo, sent to state investigators in August, Wilson wrote that “not a scintilla of evidence” supported Mace’s allegations against Musgrave, and that her “smears” against his name undermine her credibility as a witness.

Two other chief prosecutors concurred with Wilson’s assessment, with 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett calling Mace’s allegations against Musgrave “outrageous,” “reckless,” “brutal and baseless.”

Read the full article at The Post and Courier.