Tag: staffer

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Matt Schlapp accused of fondling male campaign staffer

Matt Schlapp accused of fondling male campaign staffer

WASHINGTON — Matt Schlapp, a person of the nation’s most prominent conservative leaders and a prime ally of previous President Donald Trump, is becoming accused of sexually groping a male aide on Ga Senate applicant Herschel Walker’s campaign in Oct.

“He achieved in concerning my legs and fondled me,” the former Walker staffer explained to NBC News in a telephone interview Thursday night time. “To my shame, I did not say nearly anything” to end Schlapp. NBC News is withholding the staffer’s identify at his ask for because he fears the allegations against a potent Republican could harm his possess occupation in GOP politics.

Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, is married to previous Trump White Dwelling aide Mercedes Schlapp. His organization hosts the Conservative Political Action Convention, a critical proving floor for Republican presidential hopefuls.

Schlapp did not answer to text messages searching for remark, together with a single detailing each individual level of his accuser’s tale. His lawyer, Charlie Spies, did not straight away return a call from NBC News in search of comment on the allegations. But Spies did notify The Every day Beast, which initially documented on the staffer’s story, that Schlapp had denied them.

On Friday night, after this tale was published, two ACU board users issued a statement standing by Schlapp.

“We stand squarely at the rear of Matt Schlapp, and the ACU Board of Directors has entire self-assurance in his leadership of the firm,” said Charlie Gerow and Carolyn Meadows, the first and next vice chairs of the board.

“We have both recognized Matt and his wife, Mercedes, for a long time. We know Matt Schlapp’s heart and his character. And we consider this most recent attempt at character assassination is fake,” they extra. “Regrettably, the Still left and its take note takers in the media routinely pick out to scorch the earth in their quest to cancel those people with whom they disagree. Irrespective of whether it will involve conservative judicial nominees or great people like Matt Schlapp, they will sink to any depth to damage them and their people.”

A senior formal on the Walker marketing campaign confirmed that the aide shared the allegation with his supervisors at the time. 

“I was built knowledgeable of the incident the early morning right after,” claimed the formal, who explained prime campaign aides conferring on the issue and coming up with a prepare to spare the aide from possessing to decide up Schlapp once again.

On Oct. 19, Schlapp hit the hustings for Walker at an function in Perry, Georgia, about 100 miles south of Atlanta. The mid-amount Walker aide was assigned to chauffeur Schlapp, who invited him to meet up with for beverages that night time at the Funds Grille restaurant in the Buckhead section of Atlanta, the staffer explained. He believed the added facial area-to-facial area time could aid him solidify a professional link with just one of the party’s most influential figures.

As the two males started to consume, the staffer explained, Schlapp apologized for the bar “getting useless.” The staffer took Schlapp to Manuel’s Tavern, a effectively-acknowledged haunt for Ga politicos — especially Democrats — about 15 minutes away. 

Schlapp, who drank Tito’s vodka throughout the night time, started “intruding into my particular room” at the second bar, the staffer reported. At a single place, Schlapp bumped into the staffer’s gun while their legs touched, the staffer mentioned, prompting Schlapp to ask what he was carrying.

“Sig Sauer,” the aide claimed, stunned to locate that Schlapp appeared unfamiliar with the title of the gun supplied CPAC’s emphasis on Next Modification legal rights. Schlapp, who grew up in Wichita, a sizable town in Kansas, described that he didn’t have a qualifications with firearms, the staffer said. 

“Are you uncomfortable searching at me?” Schlapp requested later on, producing the aide even far more uncomfortable than he previously was, he stated. In limited get, he instructed Schlapp that they had an early morning and it was best to simply call it a night time. 

As the staffer drove from Manuel’s Tavern down the John Lewis Freedom Parkway towards the junction of Interstate 20 and Interstate 85, Schlapp commenced fondling his leg, he said. That progressed, the staffer stated, as the two men created their way toward the Hilton Yard Inn at the Atlanta airport, a ride of about 15 minutes with very little site visitors. 

“From Manuel’s Tavern to the Hilton Backyard garden Inn there at the Atlanta airport, he literally experienced his fingers on me,” the staffer said in a online video he recorded early in the early morning of Oct. 20, just a pair of hours right after the alleged incident. “Matt Schlapp of the CPAC grabbed my junk and pummeled it at length.” The staffer did not publish the video publicly but shared it with NBC Information.

“To my disgrace, I did not say ‘no’ or ‘stop,'” the staffer said in the video, a recollection he recurring in the interview with NBC Information. “God knows it was not a preferred advance.” 

When the two arrived at the resort, Schlapp invited the staffer to his space, the staffer claimed. The staffer declined. Within a pair of hrs, all-around 12:45 a.m., the staffer commenced recording video clips of himself recounting what he stated experienced took place, which he shared with NBC Information. He arrived at out to senior campaign personnel later on that morning to relay the story, and they suggested him how to respond the upcoming early morning when Schlapp texted to say he was in the lobby prepared to be chauffeured. 

“I did want to say I was unpleasant with what happened past evening,” the staffer texted, according to monitor shots he shared with NBC News. “The marketing campaign does have a driver who is out there to get you to Macon and back again to the airport.” The aide shared the title and cellphone range of his colleague. 

“Pls give me a contact,” came the reply from Schlapp, in accordance to the display pictures. The staffer offered NBC News with Schlapp’s telephone quantity to validate that the textual content arrived from Schlapp. Schlapp regularly known as the staffer, who did not respond to, in accordance to screen photographs of the staffer’s telephone log, which includes 2 times at 7:53 a.m. and at the time at 8:09 a.m.

The senior campaign formal reported that Schlapp did not go to the occasion the subsequent early morning and did not connect with the Walker campaign about getting an additional ride to the airport.

“The full factor tends to make me bodily sick,” stated the senior Walker marketing campaign official.

Both equally the staffer and the senior campaign official mentioned the Walker marketing campaign manufactured legal counsel readily available to the staffer to examine his legal possibilities and indicated the campaign would aid regardless of what conclusion he designed. He has not pursued legal motion towards Schlapp, he claimed.

The staffer stated he was talking to the news media to make many others informed of what he described as predatory habits by Schlapp.

“If he experienced built a well mannered go at me and remaining it that,” the staffer stated, “only me, Matt and God would know about that.”

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Former January 6 committee staffer says texts show evidence of ‘attempted coup’ – as it happened | US politics

Former January 6 committee staffer says texts show evidence of ‘attempted coup’ – as it happened | US politics

Denver Riggleman’s interview with 60 Minutes is a rare breach in the carefully stage managed presentation the January 6 committee has given Americans over the past months about what happened during the insurrection at the Capitol.

A former Republican congressman who was ousted by a more conservative opponent in 2020 and now considers himself independent, Riggleman acted as a technical adviser for the committee, poring through evidence such as text messages and emails obtained from people thought to have knowledge of the attack. His interview provided a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation, most details about which have come from lawmakers’ comments or the public hearings themselves.

Perhaps his most startling admission is his belief that text messages then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows voluntarily turned over the committee amounted to a “roadmap to an attempted coup.” But Riggleman shared other disquieting details in the interview, such as that a White House number called one of the rioters who had stormed the Capitol as it was happening.

Then there were the text messages Meadows received containing an array of far-right conspiracy theories from Ginni Thomas, wife of rightwing supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.

“What really shook me was the fact that if Clarence agreed with or was even aware of his wife’s efforts, all three branches of government would be tied to the stop the steal movement,” Riggleman said on 60 Minutes.

Ginni Thomas’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has been well documented in recent months, leading to calls for the January 6 committee to compel her testimony – efforts Riggleman said he supported. Last week, a deal was reached for Thomas to speak to investigators.

Key events

Closing summary

A former staffer for the January 6 committee went public with a claim that someone at the White House called a Capitol rioter on the day of the attack, while warning that evidence obtained from Donald Trump’s chief of staff looked like an “attempted coup”. The committee’s lawmakers downplayed Denver Riggleman’s interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes program, and have been busy themselves, sending a subpoena to the Republican speaker of Wisconsin’s assembly.

Here’s what else happened today:

  • Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic senator known for bucking the party’s priorities, offered few reasons for her mysterious politics in a speech alongside the chamber’s top Republican.

  • Joe Biden’s student loan relief plan will cost $400 billion, if not more, the independent Congressional Budget Office said, prompting criticism from budget hawks as well as defense from Democrats.

  • Doug Mastriano, a Trump-backed 2020 election denier standing as the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, appears to be lagging on the campaign trail.

  • Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows exchanged texts with another conspiracy theorist and 2020 election denier.

Democratic senators hit back at claims student debt relief too expensive

The Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer along with Wall Street foe Elizabeth Warren have issued a joint statement underlining their support of president Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan, and drawing a contrast with Republican policies that slash taxes for the rich.

The statement came after the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found the plan announced last month would cost a sizable $400 billion or more. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget seized on that estimate to say the plan was too expensive, and could push inflation higher.

“Today’s CBO estimate makes clear that millions of middle class Americans have more breathing room thanks to President Biden’s historic decision to cancel student debt,” Schumer, who represents New York, and Warren, who represents Massachusetts, said in their statement.

“In contrast to President Trump and Republicans who gave giant corporations $2 trillion in tax breaks, President Biden delivered transformative middle class relief by cancelling student debt for working people who need it most — nearly 90{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} of relief dollars will go to those earning less than $75,000 a year. We don’t agree with all of CBO’s assumptions that underlie this analysis, but it is clear the pandemic payment pause and student debt cancellation are policies that demonstrate how government can and should invest in working people, not the wealthy and billionaire corporations.”

Idaho’s abortion law is being challenged in federal court, but The Washington Post reports that the impact of the strict measure is already being felt by the state’s universities.

The University of Idaho has advised employees that because the law is not written clearly, it may prohibit employees from offering birth control, and thus they should refrain from doing so:

University of Idaho employees were warned Friday that they could be charged with a felony for talking about abortion, because of the state’s new abortion law.

They were also told *they could no longer provide birth control.*

Not just Plan B, but regular birth control. pic.twitter.com/qHJoDRzMc2

— Caroline Kitchener (@CAKitchener) September 26, 2022

The fiscal hawks at the independent Congressional Budget Office have released their cost estimate for the student loan relief plan president Joe Biden announced last month, and found it comes in at $400 billion, but could vary.

The plan partially satisfied Biden’s campaign pledge to provide relief for Americans struggling with loans from higher education, but was criticized both for not being generous enough, and for adding on to the country’s already mammoth federal budget deficit:

CBO estimates that the cost of outstanding student loans to the federal government will increase by about $400 billion because of an executive action canceling some debt. https://t.co/FgEHBn2XP6

— U.S. CBO (@USCBO) September 26, 2022

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for restraint in federal spending, criticized the plan as simply too expensive:

“.@USCBO’s new estimate confirms the outrageous cost of the White House plan to cancel large amounts of student debt, by executive order, to nearly all borrowers almost regardless of need.” https://t.co/KFs9DQ8KYp

— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022

“The debt cancellation and pause alone will cost $420 billion – a bit more than we previously thought – and costs could reach $510 to $610 billion with their IDR changes. The Biden Administration’s failure to release their own cost estimate should have been a red flag.”

— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022

“As @USCBO’s estimates help confirm, the President’s student debt plan would wipe out the ten-year savings from the #InflationReductionAct twice over, worsen inflationary pressures, and deliver benefits to millions of Americans with advanced degrees in upper-income households.”

— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022

“This might be the most costly executive action in history. It’s unacceptable that the President would implement it without offsets and without Congressional approval. Including these actions, the President has now added nearly $4.9 trillion to ten-year federal deficits…”

— CRFB.org (@BudgetHawks) September 26, 2022

The Biden administration is generally keeping mum about Russia’s decision to grant citizenship to Edward Snowden, who leaked National Security Agency documents and fled the United States.

Here’s the little state department spokesman Ned Price had to say about it:

State Department Spokesperson Ned Price reacts to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden being granted Russian citizenship:

“Perhaps the only thing that has changed is … apparently now he may well be conscripted to fight in the reckless war in Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/ZemSN8CVur

— The Recount (@therecount) September 26, 2022

January 6 committee member says DoJ investigation proceeding, but slowly

A Democratic member of the January 6 committee revealed details of the department of justice’s investigation into the attack and its interaction with the congressional inquiry, describing the government’s effort as plodding, thorough and bolstered by evidence the lawmakers had uncovered.

“They have been very slow, though, on the much more comprehensive, and I believe, even more significant investigation of January 6,” California congressman Adam Schiff said of the justice department during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival, according to CNN. However, he thought it was a mistake for the justice department to start their investigation with the individual rioters and proceed from there.

“That works when you have one plot, one conspiracy. It doesn’t work when there are multiple lines of effort to overturn an election, multiple plots, that may be all part of the same whole, but nonetheless each operating independently,” Schiff said.

The Democrat acknowledged federal investigators are matching the work of the January 6 committee, saying, “It does appear now that they have interviewed many of the same significant witnesses that we have.” He did note that the justice department had requested much of the committee’s materials, which he found “breathtaking”.

“My first reaction when we got the request – ‘Turn over all your files to us’ – was: ‘Why don’t you have your own damn files? Why haven’t you been conducting your own investigation? Why do you need us to do it?” Schiff said.

The lawmaker also found it strange that a district attorney in Georgia had been left to singlehandedly investigate Donald Trump and his allies’ involvement in trying to overturn the election there, but noted that situation might not last much longer. “That may be changing too, but it’s a long time coming,” Schiff said.

The day so far

A former staffer for the January 6 committee went public with a claim that someone at the White House called a Capitol rioter on the day of the attack, while warning that evidence obtained from Donald Trump’s chief of staff looked like an “attempted coup”. The committee’s lawmakers downplayed Denver Riggleman’s interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes program, and have been busy themselves, sending a subpoena to the Republican speaker of Wisconsin’s assembly.

Here’s what else happened today:

  • Kyrsten Sinema, a Democratic senator known for bucking the party’s priorities, offered few reasons for her mysterious politics in a speech alongside the chamber’s top Republican.

  • Doug Mastriano, a Trump-backed 2020 election denier standing as the GOP’s gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, appears to be trailing on the campaign trail.

  • Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows exchanged texts with another conspiracy theorist and 2020 election denier.

There are few mysteries in Congress bigger than Kyrsten Sinema.

Once a member of the Green Party, the Democratic senator from Arizona has seized on the party’s one-vote majority in the Senate to act a spoiler for progressive proposals, including changing the filibuster to get voting rights legislation passed, raising the national minimum wage to $15 per-hour and closing a tax loophole that benefited private equity firms. Unlike with Joe Manchin, the fellow Democratic senator and frequent holdout vote who already had a reputation for conservatism and support for the fossil fuel industry, Sinema’s reasons for acting this way aren’t quite clear, and somewhat inexplicable given her left-wing activism earlier in her career. The tactic doesn’t appear to have paid off, either. An AARP poll released last week showed that independents, Republicans and, most of all, Democrats in Arizona viewed Sinema unfavorably.

The senator appeared today alongside the chamber’s top Republican Mitch McConnell for a speech in Kentucky, where she extolled the virtues of bipartisanship. While it certainly does not clear up the senator’s mysterious approach to politics, her comments here may give some hints as to why she does what she does in Washington:

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), speaking at the McConnell Center, describes her “friendship” with Senate Minority Leader McConnell (R-KY):

“While we may not agree on every issue, we do share the same values.” pic.twitter.com/2vz5ioNFeA

— The Recount (@therecount) September 26, 2022

“Not everyone likes me.”

— Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) jokes with the audience at the McConnell Center, after saying Democrats will “likely” lose some control of Congress after the midterms. pic.twitter.com/naEjHhKO5D

— The Recount (@therecount) September 26, 2022

“I signed a permission slip for a College and Career Day. What I got was indoctrination and trauma.” That sums up the experience of some of the more than 2,100 high school seniors bussed to a church in Louisiana last week on what was billed as a college fair but, as Maya Yang reports, turned into something else:

More than 2,000 public school students in Louisiana were told earlier this week that they were going to a college fair. They were then shuttled to what parents later deemed a sexist and transphobic church event which left many of the students traumatized.

On Tuesday, more than 2,100 high school seniors from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System – which serves residents of Louisiana’s capital – were taken to the local Living Faith Christian Center under the promise that they would receive college and career advice, as well as free food.

The Christian nonprofit organization 29:11 Mentoring Program organized the event, calling it “Day of Hope,” the Baton Rouge Advocate reported. The permission slips distributed to students promised “free food”, “fun and games”, “college fair” and “special guest”.

The New York Times sent a reporter to Pennsylvania to check on how the Republican candidate for governor is doing, and the verdict seems to be: not that well.

Doug Mastriano is a Donald Trump-endorsed, 2020 election denier who chartered busses to Washington on January 6 and has pledged to completely ban abortion in the state if elected. However, he’s well behind in the polls, and as the Times reports, has shunned much of what amounts to modern campaign tactics.

Here’s more from their report:

There is little indication that he has built a campaign infrastructure beyond the Facebook videos that propelled him to stardom in right-wing circles and to the vanguard of Christian nationalist politics.

“I can’t even assess things because I don’t see a campaign,” said Matt Brouillette, the president of Commonwealth Partners Chamber of Entrepreneurs, an advocacy group that is a major player in Pennsylvania Republican politics. “I’ve not seen anything that is even a semblance of a campaign.”

Mr. Brouillette, who backed one of Mr. Mastriano’s rivals in the G.O.P. primary, added: “Now, maybe he knows something we don’t on how you can win in the fifth-largest state without doing TV or mail. But I guess we’re going to have to wait until Nov. 8 to see whether you can pull something like that off.”

“The New York from which Trump emerged was its own morass of corruption and dysfunction, stretching from seats of executive power to portions of the media to the real-estate industry in which his family found its wealth,” writes Maggie Haberman in The Atlantic. “But Trump nevertheless stood out to the journalists covering him as particularly brazen.”

Haberman, a reporter for The New York Times and longtime watcher of Donald Trump, is one of the best-known chroniclers of his presidency, and the Atlantic article is a good read for those who want to better understand what drives Trump. Adapted from her soon-to-be-released book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America”, the piece touches on some of the drivers of his inexplicable behavior, such as his insistence that the election was stolen, and that he could even return to office in August 2021.

It also shows how Trump viewed the people around him, particularly his supporters, whose ardency appeared to take him by surprise. For more on that, take a look at how the piece starts:

Can you believe these are my customers?” Donald Trump once asked while surveying the crowd in the Taj Mahal casino’s poker room. “Look at those losers,” he said to his consultant Tom O’Neil, of people spending money on the floor of the Trump Plaza casino. Visiting the Iowa State Fair as a presidential candidate in 2015, he was astounded that locals fell in line to support him because of a few free rides in his branded helicopter. In the White House, he was sometimes stunned at his own backers’ fervor, telling aides, “They’re fucking crazy.” Yet they loved him and wanted to own a piece of him, and that was what mattered most.