Matt Schlapp’s Accuser Was Paid to Drop Sexual Assault Suit
When conservative icon Matt Schlapp announced Tuesday that the sexual battery and defamation lawsuit against him had been dropped, he and his allies were quick to note that the ordeal ended without him or the American Conservative Union—the right-wing organization he runs—paying his accuser a single dollar.
But what Schlapp didn’t disclose was that the Republican operative who sued him was, in fact, paid to drop the lawsuit, according to two people with knowledge of the payout. It was just that the money came from ACU’s insurance company, these two people told The Daily Beast.
(Minutes before this article published, CNN ran a story also revealing that the lawsuit was dropped only after Schlapp’s accuser was paid $480,000 from ACU’s insurer—an amount one of the sources confirmed to The Daily Beast.)
While Schlapp’s financial victory lap on a technicality apparently drew the attention of his accuser, it wasn’t the only thing that may have been misleading.
Schlapp’s accuser, former Herschel Walker campaign staffer Carlton Huffman, has also taken issue with the content of a conciliatory statement that a Schlapp spokesperson provided to media outlets in Huffman’s name, these sources said. The verbiage in that statement was not what Huffman had agreed to as part of the settlement, they said.
Hours after the news broke on Tuesday, these sources said, Huffman’s counsel notified Schlapp’s legal team that some of Schlapp’s personal statements and social media posts celebrating the lawsuit’s resolution appeared to be in breach of the agreement’s non-disparagement clause. Those posts have since been taken down, including one where Schlapp, citing a Washington Examiner report on his personal Twitter account, wrote that he had been “cleared” of wrongdoing and that Huffman had “apologized.”
The new allegations suggest that the legal battle—an increasingly contentious dispute that played out under intense media scrutiny for more than a year—might be heating back up almost as soon as it ended.
Huffman filed the lawsuit last January, about 10 days after he first came forward anonymously in The Daily Beast, alleging that Schlapp had “pummeled” his crotch while he chauffeured the conservative influencer to Schlapp’s hotel after a boozy night in Atlanta.
Huffman’s suit also targeted Schlapp’s wife, conservative commentator Mercedes Schlapp, whom Huffman accused of defaming him in a smear campaign after he went public. In December, Huffman added the ACU itself as a defendant, contending that the organization—which hosts the influential CPAC annual gatherings—was liable for negligence after the revelation of two prior accusations of sexual misconduct against Schlapp. A related defamation suit that Huffman had filed in federal court against Schlapp associate Caroline Wren was also withdrawn this week, court records show.
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/matt-schlapps-accuser-was-paid-to-drop-sexual-assault-suit?
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