Matt Schlapp says he’s under attack from ‘pseudo-journalists,’ predicts CPAC success

Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Conservative Political Action Coalition, which will hold its annual confab outside Washington beginning Wednesday, said he has been hounded by certain news media members since an anonymous Republican aide accused him of making unwelcome sexual overtures.

The unidentified accuser, a man, is suing Mr. Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes, who both deny the accusations.

Mr. Schlapp told The Washington Times that the accusations have brought reporters to his home late at night and calling CPAC staffers nonstop. He said they are “trying to find any piece of dirt that they can on the person running this organization.”

He said the drama and intrigue from the lawsuit will not eclipse the Conservative Political Action Conference, which will be the most influential gathering of conservatives ahead of the 2024 Republican presidential primaries.

The conference, like past events, will showcase the emerging Republican presidential primary field, including former President Donald Trump, who leads all candidates in most early polling and will deliver the keynote address.

This year’s conference, themed “Protecting America Now,” will shut out journalists whom Mr. Schlapp accuses of giving unfair and unethical coverage of him and the conference.

“We’re not going to treat real journalists in the same way as the pseudo-journalists,” said Mr. Schlapp, 55. He did not detail which outlets might fall into the latter category.

Mr. Schlapp would not disclose which reporters may be refused admittance into CPAC, which returns to the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Maryland after two years in Florida because of COVID-19 restrictions in the Washington area.

The event will conclude Saturday with a closely watched straw poll measuring the popularity of a field of declared and potential Republican presidential candidates.

Those candidates include Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and biotechnology tycoon Vivek Ramaswamy. All three plan to attend and speak at the conference.

Mr. Schlapp will helm CPAC weeks after news reports emerged about an anonymous person who said Mr. Schlapp made unwelcome advances during a car drive in Macon, Georgia, where Mr. Schlapp was attending campaign events for Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker.

The accuser, a 39-year-old aide working for the Walker campaign, made the accusations in a story published in the Daily Beast, a left-leaning news site.

Other outlets reported the story. Mr. Schlapp, who denies the claims, said members of the press have hounded him unfairly.

Reporters have knocked on the door of his home, where he lives with Mrs. Schlapp and their five children. Reporters have also shown up at the homes of CPAC staff and called them repeatedly.

“This has become an outrageous example of hate-filled politics,” Mr. Schlapp said.

He said media outlets have aggressively and unfairly pursued the story to try to take him down along with CPAC because the conservative politics the organization represents do not align with the ideology of some journalists.

“It’s an attempt to say, not just that you’re wrong from a policy standpoint, but to try to destroy you, destroy your family, destroy your marriage, destroy your employment situation,” Mr. Schlapp told The Times.

CPAC has increasingly become a target of unfair reporting by left-wing outlets, said Mr. Schlapp, who has presided over the convention since 2014.

He hopes to halt the trend this year by filtering out certain news outlets.

“They do not want CPAC to continue to go on,” Mr. Schlapp said.

In 2021, several news outlets reported that the CPAC stage design looked similar to a neo-Nazi symbol. An article in Rolling Stone magazine about last year’s event described “dark militant speeches” and “thinly veiled calls for violence.”

The 2022 CPAC theme, “Awake Not Woke,” centered on a message against cancel culture and woke politics that silence conservative viewpoints.

This year, it’s Mr. Schlapp who could become the focus of negative coverage.

The accuser filed a lawsuit last month seeking $9.4 million in damages for what he claimed were unwanted sexual advances by Mr. Schlapp and defamation by Mr. and Mrs. Schlapp and a Republican Party operative related to their response to news stories about his claims.

The lawsuit included graphic details provided by the accuser of what he said was an unwanted advance. In a legal filing in February, Mr. Schlapp and Mrs. Schlapp denied all charges made in the lawsuit and asked the court to force the accuser to identify himself.

“Mr. Schlapp has no record whatsoever of sexual or other misconduct,” their motion states. “But by broadcasting his false allegations to the public, Plaintiff has already succeeded in dragging Mr. Schlapp’s name through the mud, to the delight of his political opponents and journalists hungry for a scandal, however frivolous.”