Man Accusing Matt Schlapp of Sexual Assault Was Paid to Drop Lawsuit

On Tuesday, conservative leader and Trump ally Matt Schlapp claimed that the sexual battery case against him had been dropped, and that it hadn’t cost the American Conservative Union a dime. But that’s not the whole story.

Sources familiar with the situation that spoke to CNN confirmed that a $480,000 settlement was paid to Carlton Huffman, a former staffer for the 2022 Herschel Walker Senate campaign, through an insurance policy. In the days following the end of Walker’s campaign, Huffman alleged that Schlapp had “pummeled” his crotch while he chauffeured the conservative icon back to his hotel in Atlanta and that his wife had defamed him in an attempt to swipe away the allegations. Huffman originally sought $9.4 million in damages. The workaround settlement got Schlapp the best of both worlds—his accuser’s bought silence and the wiggle room to tell the press that he was off scot-free. But not entirely.

Since the lawsuit was dropped, Schlapp has claimed online that he was “exonerated” and “cleared” of wrongdoing, and that Huffman had “apologized”—a detail that went too far and threatened to breach the agreement’s nondisparagement clause, resulting in a warning from Huffman’s legal counsel and the subsequent removal of those posts from Schlapp’s social media feeds, according to The Daily Beast.

“It’s not exoneration,” a source told CNN, “if you paid the guy off.”

When reached out for a statement by CNN, Schlapp passed along not just his own words but also Huffman’s, the language of which had been coordinated via a private agreement between the two parties.

“From the beginning, I asserted my innocence,” Schlapp told the outlet. “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.”

Huffman’s subsequent statement chalked up his initial allegations to a “complete misunderstanding” that he said he regrets. “Neither the Schlapps nor the ACU paid me anything to dismiss my claims against them,” he added.