CPAC founder Matt Schlapp settles sexual assault suit for nearly $500K: report
Matt Schlapp, who heads the American Conservative Union, reportedly paid nearly a half-million-dollar settlement to make a sexual assault accusation go away, CNN reported.
Schlapp paid his accuser 40-year-old Carlton Huffman $480,000 by tapping into an insurance policy, a source close to the matter told the network.
On Tuesday, Huffman said he decided to drop the lawsuit against Schlapp claiming it was a "misunderstanding."
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“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."
CNN's reporting that Schlapp paid a significant sum to Huffman screams of contradiction.
For Huffman himself added in the same statement: "Neither the Schlapps nor the ACU paid me anything to dismiss my claims against them.”
CNN cited multiple sources privy to the allegations lodged by Huffman that there was in fact a financial settlement completed via an insurance company.
When the network reached Huffman, he didn't deny the monies made through an insurance policy, saying only, “I am only legally allowed to say five words, and that is ‘We have resolved our differences.’ Those are the only five words that I’m legally allowed to say.”
Huffman, who earned a rep as a staple in North Carolina GOP politics, was suing both Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes for $9.4 million in damages for sexual battery and defamation.
He originally accused Schlapp of “aggressively fondling” his “genital area in a sustained fashion” while he drove Schlapp back to his hotel from a bar while working a campaign event for failed candidate Herschel Walker.
“I’m not backing away,” Huffman said last year. “I’m not going to drop this. Matt Schlapp did what he did, and he needs to be held accountable.”
After the squashing of the lawsuit, Schlapp publicly waved his clean hands, stating: “From the beginning, I asserted my innocence."
"Our family was attacked, especially by a left-wing media that is focused on the destruction of conservatives regardless of the truth and the facts," he then added.