A Herschel Walker Senate campaign staffer has claimed to The Daily Beast that longtime Republican activist Matt Schlapp was having “prolonged and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual contact with him when the staffer Schlapp was driving back from an Atlanta bar this October.
The employee said the incident happened on the night of Oct. 19, when Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union and chief organizer of the influential Conservative Political Action Conference, “felt” and “stroked” his crotch in his car after buying it against his will “. He drinks in two different bars.
The employee described Schlapp, who had traveled to Georgia for a Walker campaign event, as inappropriately and repeatedly invading his personal space at the bars. He said he was also acutely aware of his “power dynamic” with Schlapp, who is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in national-conservative politics.
Schlapp, the employee recalled, wanted to spend the evening talking about the employee’s professional future.
“It was a public space and I thought he took the hint. I didn’t want to embarrass him,” he said. “But it escalated.”
We are withholding the employee’s name at his request, citing concerns about drawing attention as he begins his first few weeks in a new job in Republican politics. He said he would come forward using his real name if Schlapp denied his claims.
In a statement to The Daily Beast, Schlapp’s attorney Charlie Spies called the allegations an “assault” and said Schlapp “denies any improper conduct.”
“This now appears to be the twelfth Daily Beast article featuring personal attacks on Matt Schlapp and his family. The attack is false and Mr. Schlapp denies any improper conduct. We are evaluating legal options for a response,” the statement said.
The employee, in his late 30s, recalled that while driving Schlapp back to the hotel, Schlapp put his hand on his leg, then reached over and “stroked” his crotch while he was frozen in shock, calling it “scarring.” and “degrading”. When they got to the hotel, the clerk said Schlapp invited him to his room. The employee said he declined and left “as soon as possible”.
The next morning he informed the campaign about the incident.
When the employee got home that evening, he received a call from Schlapp — just after midnight, according to call recordings the employee shared with The Daily Beast — to confirm the employee was still taking him to an event in the next day Macon would chauffeur. The employee described the call as “brief and perfunctory” but after confirming he would drive it, “the employee broke down”. He then recorded a series of tearful video accounts of the evening, which he shared with The Daily Beast and two people close to him, including the employee’s wife.
“What’s wrong with me? Is that okay?” he said in one of the videos. “I don’t know what I did. It’s very sad that that’s okay.”
In another video, the employee recounted the events “regarding Matthew Schlapp, the chairman of CPAC, who sustained and unsolicited and unwanted laying on of hands on me about two hours ago.”
“CPAC’s Matt Schlapp grabbed my trash and gave it a good beating, and I’m sitting there thinking what the heck is going on that this person is literally doing this to me,” the staffer said in the video.
“From the bar to the Hilton Garden Inn, he’s got my hands on me. And I feel so damn dirty. I feel so damn dirty,” he said.
“I’m supposed to pick up this motherfucker in the morning and just pretend nothing happened. That’s what I’m dealing with,” the employee continued. “That’s what I have to do.”
The staffer’s communications with the campaign the next day, as well as further exchanges with Schlapp, were documented in call logs and text messages that the staffer shared with The Daily Beast, as described below.
At 7:26 a.m., Schlapp texted “I’m in the lobby.” A minute later, the employee called his manager, followed by a call to a senior campaign official. The worker said the senior officer was “immediately horrified” and pulled him off the driver’s service with instructions to write to Schlapp telling him he was unwell.
Immediately after this call, the Schlapp employee sent an SMS.
“I wanted to say that I felt uncomfortable about what happened last night. The campaign has a driver available to take you to Macon and back to the airport,” he texted, providing the driver’s name and phone number.
“Please call me,” Schlapp replied, followed by “Thank you.” Schlapp then called him three times over the next 20 minutes, according to phone records verified by The Daily Beast.
When the employee didn’t answer the calls or return the call, Schlapp texted him again, asking him to “look into your heart” and call back.
“If you could see it in your heart to call me at the end of the day. I would appreciate it,” Schlapp wrote at 12:12 p.m. “If not, I wish you the best of luck with the campaign and hope you keep up the good work.”
The employee said he never called and had no communication with Schlapp since that text message. Schlapp, who has been married to conservative commentator and consultant Mercedes Schlapp since 2002, never asked the staffer what made him uncomfortable.
In interviews, the staffer stressed that he felt “nothing but support” from Walker campaign officials throughout the ordeal, saying he never felt any pressure and was given “complete autonomy” over how to move forward. Options included legal and therapeutic support, and reporting.
However, the employee declined to pursue legal action at the time, telling The Daily Beast he was concerned that speaking out about Schlapp could have professional repercussions and jeopardize career advancement. (The associate previously accompanied Mercedes Schlapp when she visited Wisconsin during the 2020 election.) He also said he felt an IPO at the time would only exacerbate what he called the “circus of scandals” surrounding Walker’s campaign in a few weeks called Die Wahl. However, he said he is still weighing his options, particularly if Schlapp denies the allegations and does not resign from his post at ACU.
A senior Walker official, authorized to speak on behalf of the campaign, confirmed the details of the campaign’s involvement as described by the staffer and noted that the campaign had initiated a meeting between the staffer and legal counsel.
It’s not clear if Walker himself was made aware of the allegations. He did not respond to a request for comment.
A senior campaign official told The Daily Beast that the campaign had no further contact with Schlapp after the incident and did not believe Schlapp linked them to the privateer. The driver told The Daily Beast he didn’t remember Schlapp and couldn’t find a passenger by that name in his customer logs.
Schlapp — a veteran GOP agent whose decades in the upper ranks of the Republican Party include appearances in Congress and the White House — has enormous influence in conservative politics. The organization he heads, ACU, hosts the annual CPAC events, magnets for die-hard conservative politicians who have been criticized in recent years as an increasingly heated incubator for radicals within the party.
ACU did not answer questions about this article.
While Schlapp personally welcomed the LGBTQ community to the conference, CPAC is regularly criticized for supporting anti-LGBTQ extremists.
In February 2015, the year Schlapp assumed his ACU leadership, the Log Cabin Republicans — an advocacy group for gay conservatives — complained that CPAC had blocked them from sponsoring for the third straight year. A week later, Schlapp reversed this policy.
“If you’re a conservative who’s gay, you have a right to be here,” Schlapp said, adding, “It doesn’t mean we’re watering down our principles.”
But given the kind of guests and rhetoric that enjoys a warm home at CPAC — while the GOP itself is embracing increasingly dangerous anti-LGBTQ rhetoric — gay rights advocates have branded ACU’s outward efforts at inclusion as disingenuous and exploitative.
Schlapp, a devout Catholic, has drawn personal attention from members of the far right for his acceptance of LGBTQ Republicans, while some conservatives have bluntly denounced Schlapp’s nominal acceptance of the queer community as a betrayal of Christian conservative values.
Criticism flared last year when CPAC hosted an overseas conference in Hungary, where President Viktor Orbán has imposed ever-tighter restrictions on LGBTQ citizens. In August, Orbán arrived at CPAC in Dallas, where he took a “tough stance on gay rights” and received a standing ovation.
Schlapp has also come under fire for his defense of alleged sexual abusers such as former President Donald Trump Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaughwho celebrated this December at the Schlapps home with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who is the subject of a federal investigation into sex trafficking.
But when it comes to sexual assault allegations against Democrats, Schlapp has not held his fire back, repeatedly targeting President Joe Biden over a baseless allegation dating back to the 1990s.
“With five daughters, I’d prefer Biden to be several doors down, not next door,” Schlapp said tweeted when these claims first surfaced in 2019.
At the time, Schlapp himself was entertaining a Senate bid. A year later, Schlapp had dropped his political ambitions, but not the mudslinging over Biden.
“Thinking back to the Senate in the 1990s, was there any way for a staffer who was a victim of sexual assault to receive fair treatment from an institution designed to protect senators from both parties,” he said wrote on Twitter in 2020. “Biden emphasizing that this event happened 27 years ago is poor strategy.”