March 28, 2024

Matt Schlapp announced the defamation lawsuit against him had been dropped, saying that the ordeal ended without him or the American Conservative Union—the right-wing organization he runs—paying his accuser a single dollar. That's not how it works, though: ACU's insurance company wrote the check. Via the Daily Beast:

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.”

Please note: Matt's groping tendencies are an open secret in D.C. circles, and he already has lawsuits with the same kind of sex assault complaints filed by others since the Huffman story first broke.

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