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(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
If you had just saved yourself and your family from the ordeal of expensive, humiliating litigation with someone accusing you of sexual assault, would you:
A. Shut the hell up; or
B. Run your mouth all over the media in a way that implied your accuser had recanted his allegations and walked away with nothing.
If you answered A, congrats. And if you answered B, HI, MATT SCHLAPP!
On Tuesday, the conservative lobbyist and head of the American Conservative Union announced on social media that Carlton Huffman, the former Republican staffer who claimed Schlapp “grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length,” was dropping his battery and defamation suit.
Huffman, who worked for failed Senate candidate Herschel Walker, claimed that Schlapp made unwanted advances in October of 2022, while being ferried around Georgia. He sued in January of 2023, after which Schlapp’s wife Mercedes, a Trump White House comms official, and Caroline Wren, a major “Stop the Steal” figure, both made public comments disparaging him and suggesting that he was part of a liberal campaign to take down a conservative man of Jesus.
Schlapp, whose organization hosts the conservative hate jamboree CPAC, continued the martyrology on Tuesday.
“Our family was attacked by a left-wing media that is focused on the destruction of conservatives regardless of the truth and the facts,” he said on Twitter, adding that his family had “learned that the left is waging a relentless war against those of us who still hold fast to the principles of America’s founding and the liberty that has endured throughout our 248-year history.”
Schlapp’s counsel also put out a statement, purportedly attributed to Huffman, saying, “The claims made in my lawsuits were the result of a complete misunderstanding, and I regret that the lawsuit caused pain to the Schlapp family. Neither the Schlapps nor the ACU paid me anything to dismiss my claims against them.”
This hilariously lawyered missive was functionally a treasure map, with a giant LOOK HERE FOR PAYOFF arrow. And it took less than 48 hours for it to emerge, thanks to both CNN and the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger, that Huffman had been paid $480,000 by ACU’s insurance company. Which is, indeed, not a direct payment from the Schlapps or the ACU — but it’s not particularly exonerating either.
DB reports that Schlapp’s litigation had already cost ACU more than $1 million in legal fees, and that the silver-haired conservative was desperate to avoid the trial scheduled for June, particularly after other accusers came forward. Moreover, the statement attributed to Huffman was “not what Huffman had agreed to as part of the settlement.”
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.”
It’s odd that Mercy Schlapp, a professional comms flack, would fail to anticipate that Schlapping their yaps would net the family two more unpleasant news cycles. Perhaps she was too busy inveighing against “woke weed,” even as her husband — who definitely 100 percent NEVER pummeled any dude’s junk — blamed the Key Bridge collapse on covid lockdowns.
CNN Exclusive: Conservative bigwig Matt Schlapp agreed to hefty settlement to end sexual assault lawsuit [CNN]
Matt Schlapp’s Accuser Was Paid to Drop Sexual Assault Suit [Daily Beast]
Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she produces the Law and Chaos substack and podcast.
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