Several people have accused Mr. Schlapp, the Conservative Political Action Conference chairman, of sexual assault. One of his previous accusers received a six-figure settlement.
But as the Conservative Political Action Conference got underway outside Washington on Thursday, the group’s influential chairman, Matt Schlapp, was embroiled in another scandal involving allegations of sexual assault against him.
The convention comes a week after new accusations emerged in an article by the journalist Yashar Ali that Mr. Schlapp, a confidant of Mr. Trump, had groped a man at a bar in Virginia a few days earlier during a gathering of conservatives.
Several people have accused Mr. Schlapp of sexual assault in the past, allegations that he has denied and his allies have dismissed as an “attempt at character assassination.” Mr. Schlapp has not been charged with any crimes related to the accusations. The details of the latest episode were also documented in a report by the Rappahannock County Sheriff’s Office that was obtained by The New York Times. A previous accuser received a $480,000 settlement after dropping his lawsuit against Mr. Schlapp, 57, who opened Thursday’s session with his usual conservative bombast...
The people who were interviewed said that one man’s girlfriend confronted Mr. Schlapp, who was accused by the man and several witnesses of grabbing and gripping the man’s genitals while looking directly in the man’s eyes, before Mr. Schlapp was briefly escorted out of the bar by a manager. According to the article, Mr. Schlapp returned to the bar, which led to a heated confrontation.