Matt Schlapp allies ramping up smear campaign against his accuser

Close allies of Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, are starting to ramp up a behind-the-scenes smear campaign against the former Herschel Walker campaign aide who has accused the conservative gadfly of sexually assaulting him during a visit to Georgia.

The unnamed victim recently filed a $10 million assault and defamation lawsuit against Schlapp, but that hasn't stopped a prolific GOP fundraiser mentioned in the suit from serving notice to the Daily Beast, which broke the story, that the victim and his wife can expect a counteroffensive.

As the Beast's Roger Sollenberger writes, Caroline Wren — who has ties to Donald Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), organizers of the "Stop the Steal" rally and Kari Lake — is unabashedly letting it be known that information is being collected about the alleged victim and his wife as they go through a difficult divorce.

The New York Times recently reported that Schlapp's wife Mercedes, a former Trump White House official, is already running her own smear campaign. The Daily Beast is reporting that Wren appears to be working overtime as an attack dog to defame the accuser.

With Wren calling the pushback against the accusation "Exciting," she added in a text to the Beast, "Any statement I give you will include [the accuser’s] name. So if you intend to keep him anonymous then an on the record statement from me is pointless.”

"To be clear, I only asked about his marriage because any 39-year-old adult straight male I know would punch another adult male if they tried to touch them against their will, not go home and record a series of tik tok videos to release to the press three months later while claiming to want to be ‘anonymous," she continued, with the report adding that the videos were not posted to Tik Tok and were only later shared to bolster his accusations.

"Wren, whom the accuser has served with a records retention notice, also texted this reporter a list of 'Things I’m excited to add to the preservations request.' The list included claims that were factually false—his position with the Walker campaign, for instance—along with other disparaging remarks about his past, which she has echoed in tweets that the lawsuit called 'defamatory,' and which the accuser says are lies," Sollenberger wrote before adding, "Wren also claimed in the texts that she herself had never asked Schlapp whether the accusation was true. 'I’m quite certain that Matt’s side of things will come out in court,' she said. (The staffer filed his lawsuit about six days later.)"

The report adds that the victim's wife is coming to his defense and is furious with the attacks.

“This is politics. Let’s be real. This kind of stuff doesn’t normally happen with people treating you kindly. People lose their jobs when they make accusations like this. You hear stories of people getting fired when they go to their boss with these kinds of accusations,” she said. “But it’s worse because he’s got to tell the campaign, and it’s about somebody very powerful who is supporting their guy.”

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