CPAC Kicks Off With New Round of Legal Troubles in Matt Schlapp Scandal

An official at the Conservative Political Action Conference allegedly oversaw the mass shredding of documents just days after the organization’s chief Matt Schlapp was accused of sexual assault.

Schlapp is the head of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the annual CPAC. He, his wife, and CPAC are being sued by Republican strategist Carlton Huffman, who accused Schlapp in January 2023 of groping him while Huffman was working as a staffer on Herschel Walker’s Senate campaign.

Just five days after Huffman came forward, the ACU’s manager of strategic initiatives Lynne Rasmussen personally oversaw a group of interns shredding documents in or near her office, the Daily Beast reported Wednesday. The Beast cited a subpoena to Rasmussen released earlier that day by the Alexandria City Courthouse, as well as three anonymous sources familiar with the matter.

Communications from someone inside the CPAC office which were dated January 11, 2023, alleged that Rasmussen and CPAC general counsel David Safavian oversaw the shredding. The messages also speculated whether Schlapp was involved, as well. At the time, Huffman had not taken concrete legal action against Schlapp. In fact, Huffman didn’t file his lawsuit until five days later.

Huffman alleges that Schlapp made “sustained and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual contact with him while he was driving the ACU chief back from an Atlanta bar in October 2022. Huffman says Schlapp bought him drinks at two different bars and then proceeded to grope his crotch on the drive back to Schlapp’s hotel. When they arrived at the hotel, Schlapp allegedly invited Huffman to his room.

Huffman recorded several tearful videos of himself describing what happened. “Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length,” he says in one video.

“From the bar to the Hilton Garden Inn, he has his hands on me. And I feel so fucking dirty. I feel so fucking dirty.”

The Schlapps have denied Huffman’s accusations, but in March last year, Schlapp reportedly offered Huffman a sum in the low six figures to settle the suit. Huffman countered with a significantly higher amount, which Schlapp turned down.

Former ACU employees, including its former vice president Charlie Gerow, have accused the organization of rushing to shield Schlapp—including well before Huffman officially accused Schlapp of assault. Huffman made his first post alluding to inappropriate drunken behavior in December 2021, tagging Schlapp. According to the Beast, that set off a wave of precautions in the CPAC offices.

Three people familiar with the situation, speaking anonymously, told the Beast that CPAC officials conducted an in-depth, informal inventory of the organization’s records and imposed new non-disclosure agreements on all office employees. Non-compliant staffers had their pay docked.

Despite the bombshell revelation from the subpoena on Wednesday, Schlapp seemed unfazed the next day at the opening of CPAC.

“If you call yourself a journalist but you spend all your time trying to destroy Americans…we don’t want you here,” he told the crowd.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis says he has zero interest in joining Donald Trump’s presidential ticket, nixing the possibility of bonding with the man who dubbed him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and sparked rumors that he needed heels to reach the debate podium.

“People were mentioning me [as a potential vice president]. I am not doing that,” DeSantis said on a private video call with more than 200 supporters, obtained by the New York Post. Instead, DeSantis says he’s not ruling out another bid for the White House after his gubernatorial term runs out in 2027.

At a Fox News town hall on Tuesday, the GOP front-runner was presented with several names he could tap as potential vice presidents, including one time Democratic presidential primary candidate Tulsi Gabbard, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Florida Representative Byron Donalds, biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, and of course, DeSantis.

“Are they all on your shortlist?” asked Fox’s Laura Ingraham, to which Trump responded that “they are.”

“They’re all solid,” Trump added, noting that the “first quality” he looks for in a running mate is the ability to serve as a good president. “And I always say I want people with common sense because there’s so many things happening in this country that don’t make sense.”

Despite having never gotten far enough in the general election to legitimately consider a running mate, DeSantis had some of his own advice to pass on to Trump for picking someone to run what John Adams coined as the nation’s “most insignificant office.”

“My criteria was, basically, I need someone who can do the job if it came to that, and I would have been the third-youngest president elected so chances are, actually I would probably be in pretty good shape, but you never know what else can happen, it’s happened before,” the 45-year-old said, adding that he would have been “partial to governors.”

DeSantis also warned Trump against leveraging “identity politics” in his choice for No. 2.

“I think that’s a mistake. I think you should just focus on who you think the best person for the job would be,” DeSantis said.

Trump’s campaign wasted no time in slapping back the unsolicited advice, with a spokesperson noting that DeSantis had “failed miserably in his presidential campaign” and has no “voice in selecting the next vice president.”

Other members of Team Trump had less kind words for the former GOP favorite.

“Chicken fingers and pudding cups is what you will be remembered for you sad little man,” posted Trump 2024 adviser Chris LaCivita.

Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked to postpone enforcement of his multimillion-dollar civil fraud fine, even as delay tactics cost the former president $87,500 a day.

Trump was fined $354 million on Friday for real estate-related financial fraud in New York state and temporarily banned from doing business in the state. Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron gave Trump 30 days to pay the fine. But Engoron also ordered Trump to pay pre-judgment interest dating back to March 2019, when New York Attorney General Letitia James first began investigating the Trump Organization.

James’s office calculated last week that, including interest, Trump owes more than $450 million. Trump can appeal the decision, but under New York state law, Trump will only receive a stay of enforcement if he puts up money, assets, or a bond covering the full amount he owes.

In a desperate bid to give him more time to make that happen, Trump’s lawyers filed a request Wednesday night to delay enforcement of the fine. * In a letter to Engoron, lawyer Clifford Robert slammed what he described as James’s “unseemly rush to memorialize a ‘judgment.’”

“Defendants request the Court stay enforcement of that Judgment for thirty (30) days,” Robert wrote.

The request for delay is likely so Trump can try either to raise enough capital to pay the fine, or to find a company willing to help him post a bond. Trump reportedly holds only about $600 million in liquid assets, not nearly enough to pay the millions he owes in this and other legal penalties.

Trump owes writer E. Jean Carroll $88.3 million for sexually assaulting her in the mid-1990s and then defaming her twice when denying it. He also owes thousands of dollars in fines that he racked up during his recent trials for attacking courtroom staff, and $400,000 to The New York Times.

Unfortunately for Trump, the longer he delays paying the civil fraud fine, the higher it gets. With the statutory annual interest rate set at nine percent, that shakes out to an increase of $87,502 per day. According to a penalty calculator created by Associated Press journalist Mike Sislak, as of Thursday, Trump owes the state of New York a grand total of $454,069,281.

* This article has been updated to clarify Trump’s options for delaying payment of his court-ordered fine.

Republican Representative Ken Buck went on the attack against his colleagues on Wednesday night, revealing to CNN that House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and House Oversight Chair James Comer had both been warned ahead of time that the story sold by their primary witness, Alexander Smirnov, was full of holes.

“Obviously, this witness—and we were warned at the time that we received the document outlining this witness’s testimony—we were warned that the credibility of this statement was not known,” Buck told Kaitlin Collins on CNN’s The Source.

“And yet people, my colleagues went out and talked to the public about how this was credible and how it was damning and how it proved President Biden’s—at the time Vice President Biden’s—complicity in receiving bribes,” Buck continued. “It appears to absolutely be false and to really undercut the nature of the charges. We’ve always been looking for a link between what Hunter Biden received in terms of money and Joe Biden’s activities or Joe Biden receiving money. This clearly is not a credible link at this point.”

In response to a point-blank question as to whether Comer and Jordan pushed the Burisma narrative knowing full well that Smirnov’s claims were not corroborated, Buck said “that’s what it appears.”

“I certainly didn’t have any evidence outside the statement itself that it was credible,” he added. “And as a prosecutor for 25 years, Kaitlan, I never went to the public until I could prove the reliability of a statement. And even then, the only one public statement a prosecutor makes is the charging document. Let’s see what the evidence is in this impeachment, if there is more evidence before going forward.”

The GOP impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden has crashed and burned in a spectacular way since its main witness, an informant who claimed Biden had pocketed millions of dollars from a Ukrainian oligarch, was indicted by the Department of Justice for lying to the FBI. Since then, Smirnov has reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president.

Regardless, Republicans are still scrambling to revive the probe. On Wednesday, Jordan insisted to reporters that Smirnov’s indictment “doesn’t change the fundamental facts”—although, of course, those “facts” have now turned out to be Russia-baked lies.

The GOP impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden is crashing and burning without its star witness, Alexander Smirnov, but Republicans were still primed and ready to answer pressing questions from reporters—actually, wait, no they weren’t.

Representative Andy Biggs somehow made an even more embarrassing attempt at defending the now transparently baseless impeachment effort than Representative Jim Jordan did on Wednesday, flatly insisting that the party had plenty to go on without Smirnov.

“What evidence do you have of a bribery scheme now?” a reporter asked the House Oversight Committee member.

“We got lots of evidence, yes,” Biggs replied as he hurried past a crush of reporters, refusing to elaborate.

Republicans had spent months building up the hype around Smirnov as a witness, isolating his allegation that Biden had pocketed millions of dollars from a Ukrainian oligarch as the centerpiece of their probe.

But on Tuesday, the Justice Department revealed that Smirnov admitted to prosecutors that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved” in developing the Hunter Biden narrative. In a court filing, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different [top] Russian officials,” two of whom were the “heads of the entities they represent.”

“It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States. The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day,” prosecutors wrote, noting that Smirnov’s contacts were “not benign.”

Those revelations came after Smirnov was charged with lying to the FBI about his Biden allegations.

Republican waffling on whether to continue the probe offers just another whiff of Russian meddling in a presidential election—and legal experts have picked up on the scent, predicting that the effort to save Smirnov’s testimony could spell certain disaster for the Republican lawmakers leading the effort.