Another Republican is a closeted sex predator

Matt Schlapp stars in a nasty scene

Last October 19th, a male staffer in Atlanta, working the campaign of Hershel Walker, was asked to drive around a visiting Republican activist.

Matt Schlapp is the well-known head of the American Conservative Union and famous for running the annual CPAC conference. He’s Catholic, married with five children, and oversees a political machine that helps set the agenda for Republican politics.

After a campaign event, the two men headed to a restaurant.

The staffer—in his 30s and also married—had ideas of working in politics, and thought it might be an opportunity to ‘network’. Schlapp is close with everyone from George W. Bush to Donald Trump. He’s a ‘mover and shaker’.

After dinner, they went to a local bar. The staffer realized—their legs were touching? And Schlapp was getting friendlier than expected.

The staffer decided it was time to go.

“Are you uncomfortable looking at me?” Schlapp asked.

They drove about twenty minutes to Schlapp’s hotel, and Schlapp was groping him the whole time—or as the staffer said said, he “grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length.”

At the hotel, Schlapp invited the staffer up to his room, and the staffer declined. Instead, he went home and recorded a video describing the experience. “To my shame, I did not say ‘no’ or ‘stop,’” he said in the video.

The next day, he told the campaign about it. Another staffer was assigned to take Schlapp to the airport.

Schlapp seems to have expected it be kept quiet.

He would have had reason to think so. First, the young man wanted to be in Republican politics—and blabbing about the great leader might not seem like a great move.

Second, in the story as presented, Schlapp did the sexual assault when there were no witnesses. The two were driving.

Third, Schlapp seemed to expect the Walker campaign would cover for him—and indeed, the campaign did not make any statement on its own.

Fourth, no conservative media would pay attention to such a story—and conservatives mostly only trust conservative media.

The staffer decided to talk to liberal media.

That was an unusual move. When The Daily Beast broke the story, Schlapp was silent—as Republicans mostly shrugged.

Even the unpredictable right-leaning Scott Adams was dismissing the charge as having “no credibility” — breaking it down this way:

“There are no other witnesses. So you have an anonymous source in a political moment and he’s a political guy and it’s reported by The Daily Beast. That’s everything that signals a fake story.”

Later in the day, NBC News updated the story with the recording the staffer had made, and confirmation from the Walker campaign that they’d been notified of the scene the next morning.

Hershel Walker’s gay son put the subject on blast.

A wildcard in his father’s campaign, Christian Walker has been conservative, but critical of Republican handling of sexual issues.

In his teardown, he narrates Schlapp’s apparent life of duplicity:

“When he’s on campaign trips away from his wife and children he’s trying to hook up with men. This is insane. Typical predator, preys on this poor little staffer who’s trying to work his way up in Republican politics, then gets assaulted by one of the top guys in the industry. Family values?”

In right-wing media there was mostly silence.

That includes from Matt Schlapp. He continued on, as in his political commentary on the contest for the speakership in the House, without so much as mentioning the Daily Beast allegations.

Matt Schlapp has a famous “power marriage” with his wife Mercedes. Both are staples of Fox News and the Republican circuit. She continued her political commentary, not commenting on the accusations.

That Schlapps are often “queer-coded.”

That’s my impression as I look over media coverage of them. They’re “opportunists” in a 2018 profile in the New York Times. The same year, Kathy Griffin, in a tweetstorm, called them “D.C.’s most spineless power couple” and “a bunch of suck-ups.”

Griffin recalled a scene at an event in which she was talking with Mercedes Schlapp while “Matt just stood there gingerly holding his drink and sucking up some sort of clear alcohol…through a tiny straw like a gossipy little bitch.”

I’d read that to say she firmly believes Schlapp is gay.

Matt Schlapp oversees an activist group that attracts many young Republican men.

Is CPAC a kind of honeytrap—run by a closeted gay man who is practiced at dangling political access to young Republican men in exchange for sex?

I trace his career in media pieces going back to 2001, when he got started in politics in Witchita, Kansas. His one key skill has been in mobilizing college students for politics.

That would be a career that puts him in proximity to, and in authority over, young straight men.

And is there suggestion that he’d abused this trust? Milo Yiannoupolos, the gay Republican with a long, difficult history with the party, updates on Telegram:

“Matt Schlapp tried to touch me, too, at his offices in 2016/17 when we were negotiating my headliner spot at CPAC. I recoiled, made a joke about him being the wrong skin color, and added that if he tried it again I would slap him and go public. Maybe that had something to do with him colluding to wreck my career, I don’t know.”

Schlapp’s accuser sued him for $9.4 million.

As noted in the lawsuit, he had named himself as Carlton Huffman in a Tweet and been discussed online. Another GOP operative dismissed him as a “scam artist” who works against Republicans.

Looking up his history I am puzzled. He broadcasts himself as a ‘conservative patriot’, but is fiercely anti-Trump, as per letters to the editor he writes to North Carolina newspapers over the years (in 2018, 2021 and 2022 for example). It’s a profile I don’t understand.

Another surprise awaited. Huffman was accused of sexual assault against two young women.

Two weeks later, Huffman dropped his lawsuit and recanted.

As reported, he’s made a statement to Matt Schlapp:

“I am discontinuing all of my lawsuits. 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,” Huffman said. “The Schlapps have advised that the statements made about me were the result of a misunderstanding, which was regrettable. Neither the Schlapps nor the [American Conservative Union] paid me anything to dismiss my claims against them.”

Then reported the next day: Shlapp actually paid Huffman nearly a half-million dollars through an insurance policy.

It leaves, to put it mildly, a puzzle as to what actually happened, or who these men are—other than Republicans. 🔶