Republican Heavyweight Matt Schlapp Agreed To Pay $480,000 For Allegedly Raping Male Staffer

Woah this is wild news that I never saw coming.Show more

CNN, 3/27/24: The Republican operative who accused American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp of sexual assault last year received a significant financial settlement in exchange for dropping his lawsuit against Schlapp, multiple sources familiar with the case told CNN.

The $480,000 settlement was paid to Carlton Huffman through an insurance policy, according to a source familiar with the details. Schlapp’s legal team did not respond for comment when asked about the financial settlement, but on Tuesday said that Huffman dropped the lawsuit and Schlapp claimed he had been exonerated.

“From the beginning, I asserted my innocence,” Schlapp said in a statement. “Our family was attacked, especially by a left-wing media that is focused on the destruction of conservatives regardless of the truth and the facts.”

The original lawsuit filed by Huffman against Schlapp asked for more than $9 million in damages.

Schlapp runs the ACU, the organization most widely known for staging the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC. Schlapp and the group occasionally butted heads with Donald Trump before he was elected president in 2016, but have since become fierce loyalists. After serving in the George W. Bush White House as director of political affairs, Schlapp took over the ACU in 2014. His wife, Mercedes Schlapp, who was also named in the lawsuit, worked as Trump’s communications director for nearly two years, from 2017 to 2019.

At the time of the alleged assault, Huffman was working for the Georgia GOP and Republican Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign. Huffman told CNN that Schlapp made unwanted sexual advances, including groping and fondling his groin without consent, on the ride back from two Atlanta-area bars on October 19, 2022. Schlapp then allegedly invited Huffman, who was assigned to drive the ACU chairman, to join him in his hotel room. Huffman said he had declined the offer, and hours later reported the incident to senior campaign staff.

A former official on the Walker campaign told CNN he does not believe the settlement exonerates Schlapp.
“As far as I know the facts were never disputed,”