Gross If True: Schlapp Accuser Sues Conservative Power Couple For Defamation And Sexual Battery

Was it wise for Matt and Mercy Schlapp to run their mouths about the Herschel Walker staffer who accused the head of the American Conservative Union of groping him during an October 2022 campaign stop in Atlanta?

Perhaps not.

Was it wise for the Republican power couple to dispatch Caroline Wren, the Republican operative who coordinated the January 6, 2021 pre-riot rally, to do a little PR for them?

Almost certainly not.

And yet, that’s exactly what Schlapp, the head of CPAC, and his wife, who ran comms for the Trump White House, did, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in the Circuit Court in Alexandria, Virginia. After the Daily Beast reported that Schlapp made an aggressive, unwanted pass at the male staffer driving him around Georgia to stump for Walker, they not only issued a vehement denial through their lawyer, they also made public statements about the accuser’s credibility.

On January 7, 2023, Mrs. Schlapp texted the neighborhood group chat that “We have learned that the accuser is a troubled individual. He has been fired from multiple jobs, including one firing for lying and lying on his resume.” (And you thought your neighborhood list serve was full of crazy people!)

On January 11, Wren tweeted the accuser was “a 39 yr old volunteer driver who had been fired from multiple campaigns for lying and unethical behavior.” In another tweet that day, she alleged that he’d been “fired from multiple jobs for being a habitual liar.”

And if you’re going to talk that kind of smack, particularly about someone who is not a public figure, you better be right. Which they were not, according to the law suit seeking $9.4 million in compensatory and punitive damages for sexual battery, defamation, and conspiracy to defame.

You also better be damn sure there isn’t anyone else out there with a similar story to tell, because the Daily Beast already took out the Herschel Walker campaign by digging up all the women he’d fathered secret children with. So if there are other John Doe’s, Roger Sollenberger’s gonna find ’em.

Although the case was filed anonymously, Wren has publicly named the plaintiff. A cursory examination of his LinkedIn page appears to confirm that he was a mid-level, paid staffer. But ATL is not going to name him (or link to Wren’s tweets doxxing the guy) because this is a victim of an alleged sexual assault, and we are not assholes. Also, as he pointed out in the complaint filed under the alias “John Doe,” the defendants are “well known, and in some quarters revered, amongst a portion of the population that has demonstrated a proclivity for threatening violence against those with whom they disagree.”

In fact, according to the January 6 Committee’s final report, Wren knew on December 29 that Trump was going to call for the crowd to descend on the Capitol, and she coordinated to have Alex Jones, Mike Flynn, and conservative agitator Ali Alexander lead the march. So it’s not hard to guess what the accuser means when he argues that filing suit under his own name “poses an unusual risk of retaliatory physical or mental harm.”

The plaintiff backs up his allegations with texts from Schlapp and with the campaign, demonstrating that he reported the incident immediately. There’s also a mildly humorous mention of Schlapp butting up against the plaintiff’s concealed firearm and claiming that he, himself, had very little familiarity with guns — something anathema to the Second Amendment devotees he cultivates in his political life. But mostly it’s just icky and sad.

Now if these people and their surrogates could shut their mouths for five minutes…

GOP strategist files sexual battery lawsuit against Matt Schlapp [CNN]

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Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.