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A former Herschel Walker campaign staffer has filed a lawsuit against Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, over sexual battery allegations.
The lawsuit accuses Schlapp of “aggressively fondling” the anonymous ex-Walker staffer’s “genital area in a sustained fashion” as Schlapp was being driven to his hotel from an Atlanta-area bar.
Schlapp’s wife, former Trump White House aide Mercedes Schlapp, is also listed as a defendant in the suit filed in an Alexandria, Virginia, court on Tuesday.
The lawsuit further accuses Schlapp and his wife of trying to discredit the male accuser’s claims after the Daily Beast first reported on the allegations earlier this month.
The former Walker campaign staffer is seeking $9.4 million in damages from the Schlapps.
A lawyer for the Schlapps vehemently denied the allegations in the lawsuit on Tuesday, calling them “false” and an “attack” on the family.
“This anonymous complaint demonstrates the accuser’s real agenda, working in concert with Daily Beast to attack and harm the Schlapp family,” attorney Charlie Spies wrote in a statement shared by Matt Schlapp on Twitter on Tuesday.
“The complaint is false, and the Schlapp family is suffering unbearable pain and stress due to the false allegation from an anonymous individual. No family should ever go through this, and the Schlapps and their legal team are assessing counter-lawsuit options,” Spies added.
The former Walker staffer recounted the alleged sexual assault by Matt Schlapp to multiple news outlets earlier this month.
He said the alleged “unwanted and unsolicited” sexual contact came after a night of drinking at two different bars after a Walker campaign event.
The accuser claims Schlapp inappropriately and repeatedly intruded his personal space at the bars, and when the staffer, described as a married man in his late thirties, drove the powerful conservative back to his hotel, Schlapp put his hand on his leg and “fondled” his crotch.
The staffer made contemporaneous video recordings of his reaction to what he called a “scarring” and “humiliating” incident, which he shared with news outlets.
“Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length, and I’m sitting there thinking what the hell is going on, that this person is literally doing this to me,” the staffer says in one of the recordings.
In the lawsuit, the former Walker staffer alleges that Mercedes Schlapp sent a message to a neighborhood group chat on Jan. 7, calling the accuser a “troubled individual” and someone who was “fired from multiple jobs,” including for “lying on his resume.”
The accuser claims none of Mercedes Schlapp’s allegations are true.
Matt Schlapp’s American Conservative Union is the organization that hosts the annual Conservative Political Action Committee conference, known as CPAC, which hosts prominent Republican politicians and thought leaders and draws thousands of attendees every year. The ACU is set to host this year’s CPAC conference March 1-4 in Maryland.
