The longtime treasurer for the American Conservative Union, the organization that hosts the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has quit and issued a damning resignation letter citing how the organization is handling funds for the defense of its chairman, Matt Schlapp, accused by a GOP operative of sexual assault.
Bob Beauprez, a former GOP Congressman, personal friend of Schlapp, and American Conservative Union (ACU) board member and treasurer, wrote the board in March saying, “I cannot deliver a financial report at the upcoming board meeting with any confidence in the accuracy of the numbers,” as New York magazine‘s Ben Jacobs reports.
When the lawsuit was filed the board fronted Schlapp $50,000 to hire an attorney. Beauprez “wrote he was blindsided when Schlapp told him that he had raised another $270,000 from donors to ACU and its related foundation, ACUF. His shock grew when he said ACU’s lawyer told him in February at CPAC that the money ‘was already either dispersed or invoiced.’”
“I have to admit that I feel like I’m in the dark,” Beauprez told the board. “I have received no further information about what additional costs have accrued since then … I assume any monies paid are either coming from Matt personally or from ACU/F. But, again, I don’t know, and it is most unsettling.”
In January, a Republican political aide in his 30’s working at the time of the alleged assault for the Herschel Walker campaign, filed a lawsuit against Matt Schlapp for $9.4 million. It accuses Schlapp of “aggressively fondling” his “genital area in a sustained fashion” while the two were alone in a car, as The New York Times reported.
The Daily Beast also reported the staffer was suing “for battery, defamation, and conspiracy.”
“In a letter, the staffer’s attorney, Tim Hyland of Hyland Law, called Schlapp a ‘sexual predator,’” The Daily Beast added.
Schlapp, through an attorney’s statement, has declared the allegations he “groped” and “fondled” the male staffer’s crotch without consent after buying him drinks at two different bars, “false.”
Meanwhile, New York magazine’s Jacobs notes that Beauprez also said he told the board during its March meeting, “there was no mention of the case, no status update, no summary of expenditures to date, no word regarding acceptance of coverage from either our D&O [directors and officers] insurance company, or Matt’s personal liability carrier, no opportunity to ask questions, etc., etc. I thought this was not only inappropriate, but unconscionable.”
He pointed to their “fiduciary obligation to be made aware of what, how, and why monies are being spent, especially involving a corporation insider such as the chairman.”
Beauprez alleged that when some “have sought answers to some of what seem to be obvious and necessary questions … we have been accused of ‘not having Matt’s back’ and ‘trying to stage a leadership coup.’”
He also warned the organization’s “operating procedures are in direct conflict with our own bylaws,” which could lead to invented “charges” by a “rogue DA.”
NEW YORK reports that Beauprez “also said Schlapp refused to give any specific information about the finances of the 2023 CPAC conference held in March.”
“Matt always responds in much the same way, ‘It looks like we made about $500,000, maybe more.’ I hope that’s roughly accurate, but I’d like to also see the financial data upon which Matt has reached this conclusion.”
“A cancer has been metastasizing within the organization for years,” Beauprez concluded. “It must be diagnosed, treated, and cured, or it will destroy ACU/F. You simply cannot survive like this.”
In 2021, citing unnamed sources, the conservative website The Dispatch reported, “federal investigators are currently looking into possible criminal campaign-finance misdeeds at ACU during Schlapp’s tenure. As part of the investigation, the FBI has interviewed former and current ACU employees about the financial dealings of the organization and its leaders.”
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