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(Photograph by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Photographs)
If you happen to had simply saved your self and your loved ones from the ordeal of pricy, humiliating litigation with somebody accusing you of sexual assault, would you:
A. Shut the hell up; or
B. Run your mouth everywhere in the media in a approach that implied your accuser had recanted his allegations and walked away with nothing.
If you happen to answered A, congrats. And for those who 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 previous Republican staffer who claimed Schlapp “grabbed my junk and pummeled it at size,” was dropping his battery and defamation swimsuit.
Huffman, who labored for failed Senate candidate Herschel Walker, claimed that Schlapp made unwanted advances in October of 2022, whereas being ferried round Georgia. He sued in January of 2023, after which Schlapp’s spouse Mercedes, a Trump White Home comms official, and Caroline Wren, a serious “Cease the Steal” determine, each made public feedback disparaging him and suggesting that he was a part of a liberal marketing campaign to take down a conservative man of Jesus.
Schlapp, whose group hosts the conservative hate jamboree CPAC, continued the martyrology on Tuesday.
“Our household was attacked by a left-wing media that’s centered on the destruction of conservatives whatever the fact and the info,” he said on Twitter, including that his household had “realized that the left is waging a relentless warfare in opposition to these of us who nonetheless maintain quick to the rules of America’s founding and the freedom that has endured all through our 248-year historical past.”
Schlapp’s counsel additionally put out a press release, purportedly attributed to Huffman, saying, “The claims made in my lawsuits have been the results of an entire misunderstanding, and I remorse that the lawsuit precipitated ache to the Schlapp household. Neither the Schlapps nor the ACU paid me something to dismiss my claims in opposition to them.”
This hilariously lawyered missive was functionally a treasure map, with an enormous LOOK HERE FOR PAYOFF arrow. And it took lower than 48 hours for it to emerge, because of each CNN and the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger, that Huffman had been paid $480,000 by ACU’s insurance coverage firm. Which is, certainly, not a direct cost from the Schlapps or the ACU — however it’s not notably exonerating both.
DB reviews that Schlapp’s litigation had already value ACU greater than $1 million in authorized charges, and that the silver-haired conservative was determined to keep away from the trial scheduled for June, notably after different accusers got here ahead. Furthermore, the assertion attributed to Huffman was “not what Huffman had agreed to as a part of the settlement.”
Hours after the news broke on Tuesday, these sources mentioned, Huffman’s counsel notified Schlapp’s authorized group that a few of Schlapp’s private statements and social media posts celebrating the lawsuit’s decision seemed to be in breach of the settlement’s non-disparagement clause. These posts have since been taken down, together with one the place Schlapp, citing a Washington Examiner report on his private Twitter account, wrote that he had been “cleared” of wrongdoing and that Huffman had “apologized.”
It’s odd that Mercy Schlapp, an expert comms flack, would fail to anticipate that Schlapping their yaps would web the household two extra disagreeable information cycles. Maybe she was too busy inveighing in opposition to “woke weed,” at the same time as her husband — who positively one hundred pc 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 the place she produces the Legislation and Chaos substack and podcast.
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