High-profile conservative activist Matt Schlapp is denying claims of sexual assault and wants the man who is accusing him to be publicly identified, according to court documents filed Thursday in the lawsuit against Schlapp and his wife, Mercedes Schlapp.
The documents claim the lawsuit, which seeks more than $9 million in damages from the Schlapps, “reeks of gamesmanship and hypocrisy” and say the accuser’s request to remain anonymous “is utterly without justification.”
The Schlapps state the staffer’s identity should be made public because they allege that his own reputation should be questioned, asserting that the staffer can’t “meet his burden of showing special circumstances which outweigh the public interest in knowing his name,” according to the documents.
“Plaintiff simply cannot proceed on his claims of alleged impropriety by the Defendants while shielding from scrutiny his own past admitted unsavory affiliations with white nationalists and anti-Semites by proceeding as a ‘John Doe,’” the documents say.
The initial complaint said the staffer, identified only as John Doe, faced an “unusual risk of retaliatory physical or mental harm” if he was named, based on the Schlapps’ popularity and prominence.
The Schlapps are now being represented by attorney Benjamin Chew, known for winning the defamation case against actor Johnny Depp. The 2022 trial, which saw a jury award Depp $15 million in his lawsuit against former wife Amber Heard, became known for airing many personal and intimate details publicly.
The original lawsuit, filed in January, alleges that Schlapp, the president of the American Conservative Union, inappropriately fondled the genital area of a male Republican strategist during a car ride back to Schlapp’s hotel in Atlanta last year. Schlapp was in Georgia for Herschel Walker’s Senate…
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