A man who previously claimed to have been sexually assaulted by a well-known Republican operative in Washington, DC, has since recanted his claims and expressed contrition.
A campaign staffer for then-Senate candidate Herschel Walker accused Matt Schlapp, the head of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering, of molesting him during a car trip in 2022 when the staffer, Carlton Huffman, drove Mr. Schlapp back to his hotel room.
The Carlton Huffman Incident
Mr. Huffman also said that Mr. Schlapp, who is wed to Mercedes Schlapp, a former Trump White House employee, had invited him to his hotel room.
Attorneys for the plaintiff first claimed in their lawsuit that the leader of CPAC and the American Conservative Union “placed his hand” on Mr. Huffman’s leg and “began aggressively fondling [his] genital area in a sustained fashion.”
A statement acquired by Politico through the CPAC chief’s spokeswoman states that Mr. Huffman “regrets that the lawsuit caused pain to the Schlapp family.”
The accusations made in his lawsuits were the product of a complete misunderstanding. Before it was published, the news organization confirmed the statement with Mr. Huffman.
A perplexing conclusion to a year-and-a-half-long process that damaged Matt Schlapp’s reputation—he oversees the yearly conservative assembly at National Harbor as the leader of the American Conservative Union—took place.
The charges were made anonymously at first, although Mr. Schlapp has always rejected them. Later, they were extensively described in an article that appeared in The Daily Beast.
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Matt Schlapp: Allegations and Accountability
In a video that The Daily Beast was able to get, Mr. Huffman claimed that Mr. Schlapp “put his hands on me in a sustained and unsolicited and unwanted manner.” The footage was allegedly shot on the actual night of the incident in 2022.
At his CPAC convention earlier this year, Matt Schlapp declined to comment when The Independent questioned him about the issue.
Despite publicly opposing the legality of abortion, Mr. Walker lost his Senate campaign when it was revealed through press reporting that two women he had dated claimed he had paid for them to undergo abortion procedures.
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