It’s the update nobody saw coming!
Yesterday, we learned that the man who had accused CPAC’s holy and blameless white-haired patriarch Matt Schlapp of drunkenly groping his dick — “pummeling his junk,” in the lingo of the complaint — had mysteriously and suddenly dropped his sexual assault lawsuit against Schlapp, plus his defamation lawsuit against Schlapp, Schlapp’s wife Mercedes, CPAC, the American Conservative Union, this one other Schlapp idiot Caroline Wren, etc.
It had all been one big misunderstanding! It wasn’t groping, it was a Christian sidehug gone hilariously awry! Or something. Point is, the lawsuit was dropped. And for totally legit reasons. The accuser, Carlton Huffman, said in his meticulously prepared statement, without being asked, that “[n]either the Schlapps nor the ACU paid me anything to dismiss my claims against them.”
You know, not that anyone had asked.
But now that you mention it, it did seem like a heavily lawyered statement, one with loopholes you could drive a Mack truck through. Like, maybe somebody else paid Huffman something? Or maybe some other kind of arrangement had been met? It would have been irresponsible not to wildly speculate!
But nah, it was the first thing. ACU’s insurance company paid Huffman off, to the tune of $480,000, per the Daily Beast. That would be the insurance company ACU pays for liability insurance. Details!
CNN has also now independently reported the story.
When reached for comment, Huffman told CNN, “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.”
Wonkette can say more, though.
As DB’s Roger Sollenberger explains, Schlapp spent the day yesterday pretending he had been vindicated, that it was all invented by the lib media, that it had somehow been proven he didn’t touch other men’s penises in a predatory way with his meat paws. (Plural because remember, Huffman was the only official accuser, but more allegations had been uncovered. Yesterday’s statement certainly didn’t unring those bells.) Apparently Huffman wasn’t a huge fan of some of the words attributed to him in that statement:
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.”
Yeah nah.
And then there was an over-the-top “TOTALLY EXONERATED!1!!” statement from CPAC’s board, which suggested the dirty left-wing media had reported on the lawsuit without waiting for “the facts,” as if some new facts had actually been revealed yesterday:
“The left-wing media did not, of course, wait for the facts to come out and instead launched a character assassination campaign to destroy CPAC, Matt, and his family,” the statement said in part, adding that “CPAC’s financial position is also at a historic level of strength” with an “exceptionally engaged” base of support.
Huffman, however, never recanted his claims—though the media statement that ACU had provided in his name chalked the lawsuit up to a “complete misunderstanding.”
Technicalities! Of course, as the Daily Beast notes, it’s not entirely clear which part of the official statement Huffman has a problem with, the part where it says his lawsuit was based on a “misunderstanding,” or that the Schlapps’ statements about him had been based on a misunderstanding of his misunderstanding.
The Beast also reminds us that it broke the story last year that Schlapp had offered to pay off Huffman, in the “low six figures.”
We would write more in this blog post, but you’re already too busy having heart palpitations of surprise because you never imagined that Matt Schlapp’s total exoneration on the allegation of unwantedly pummeling the penis of a Herschel Walker campaign staffer might not actually be a total exoneration.
This would be the first time a white conservative Christian man was ever caught lying through his forked tongue, after all.
CNN with the chef’s kiss:
Asked why Schlapp ultimately settled, the source told CNN that they believed that Schlapp and his wife “did not want this to go to trial, they simply did not want the testimony that would come out.”
“It’s not exoneration,” the source said, “if you paid the guy off.”
In summary and in conclusion, we think the same things about Matt Schlapp we did two days ago, and we see no reason why you shouldn’t either. No changes.
The end.
[Daily Beast / CNN]
Evan Hurst on Twitter right here.
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