Legal Random, Random

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'Matt Schlapp is a Sexual Predator': Accuser Sues Over Sexual Battery
'UNMISTAKABLY TRUE'
He first detailed the account of Matt Schlapp sexually assaulting him to The Daily Beast. Now he's suing Schlapp.

Roger Sollenberger
Political Reporter
Matt Fuller
Senior Politics Editor
Updated Jan. 17, 2023 4:40PM ET / Published Jan. 17, 2023 3:46PM ET


Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty

The former Herschel Walker staffer who came forward to The Daily Beast earlier this month to detail a sexual assault allegation against conservative icon Matt Schlapp is now suing the powerful chairman of the American Conservative Union—for battery, defamation, and conspiracy.

The lawsuit, which the staffer’s attorneys filed Tuesday in the circuit court of Alexandria, Virginia, accuses Schlapp of “sexual battery” after “aggressively fondling” his “genital area in a sustained fashion” while the staffer drove Schlapp home from an evening of drinks at Atlanta bars in October.

The complaint also accuses Schlapp—as well as his wife, conservative commentator and former Trump White House communications adviser, Mercedes Schlapp—of defamation, citing efforts to “impugn” the accuser’s character in response to media reports of the allegation. It further alleges a conspiracy count where the couple worked to denigrate the accuser with the help of conservative fundraiser Caroline Wren, who has acted as a representative for the Schlapps in the matter.

The lawsuit claims that Schlapp, who oversees the Conservative Political Action Conference, made "repeated unsolicited and undesired advances" toward the campaign staffer for Herschel Walker. The staffer previously told The Daily Beast that Schlapp "groped" his crotch while he drove the conservative organizer back to his hotel after a day of campaign events.

The staffer filed the lawsuit under the alias of “John Doe,” citing privacy concerns and fear of retaliation. He has vowed to come forward with his real name should Schlapp deny the allegations.

But according to the complaint, the retaliation is already underway. The lawsuit cites text messages Mercedes Schlapp sent to a “neighborhood group chat or text,” where she called the staffer a “troubled individual” who had been fired “for lying and lying on his resume”—a claim the lawsuit says is untrue and defamatory.

The complaint also cites a series of tweets from Wren, who orchestrated high-dollar fundraising efforts behind the Jan. 6 rally. In those tweets, Wren outed the accuser by name following media reports in which he chose to remain anonymous out of privacy concerns. She accused him of being fired from campaigns because he was a “habitual liar"—claims the lawsuit also says are false and defamatory.

The lawsuit seeks a total of $9.4 million in damages: $3.85 million against Schlapp for the alleged assault, $1.85 million from both Schlapp and his wife for the alleged defamation, and an additional $1.85 million from the couple for the conspiracy charge.

The New York Times first reported the lawsuit Wednesday afternoon.

In a letter, the staffer’s attorney, Tim Hyland of Hyland Law, called Schlapp a “sexual predator.”

“Mr. Schlapp has not directly denied our client's allegations, and with good reason—they are unmistakably true, and corroborated by extensive contemporaneous evidence,” the letter read.

“We intend to keep a singular focus: to demonstrate that Matt Schlapp is a sexual predator who assaulted our client,” the letter also said.

Schlapp, for his part, once again indirectly denied the allegations through a lawyer.

“This anonymous complaint demonstrates the accuser's real agenda, working in concert with [The] Daily Beast to attack and harm the Schlapp family," a statement from Schlapp's lawyer, Charlie Spies, read. "The complaint is false, and the Schlapp family is suffering unbearable pain and stress due to the false allegation from an anonymous individual. No family should ever go through this, and the Schlapps and their legal team are assessing counter-lawsuit options.”

The staffer’s account has now been independently confirmed by NBC News and CNN since The Daily Beast first reported on it on Jan. 5. The lawsuit says The Daily Beast “accurately recounted, in all material aspects, the facts surrounding Mr. Schlapp’s sexual battery of Mr. Doe.”


https://www.thedailybeast.com/accuser-s ... y?ref=wrap

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[Owendonovan]

Sundance doc looks into Brett Kavanaugh investigation
A new documentary looks into the sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and raises questions about the depth of the FBI investigation in 2018.

“Justice,” from filmmaker Doug Liman, debuted Friday night at the Sundance Film Festival to a sold-out theater surrounded by armed guards.

The film, made under intense secrecy, focuses on allegations made by Kavanaugh’s Yale classmate Deborah Ramirez that were detailed in a New Yorker article in 2018. Ramirez alleged that at a gathering with friends when she was a freshman in 1983, Kavanaugh pulled down his pants and thrust his penis at her. Kavanaugh has denied those claims. “Justice” also plays a taped recording of a tip given to the FBI from another Yale classmate, Max Stier, that describes a similar incident that the FBI never investigated.

The Stier report was previously detailed in 2019 by New York Times reporters Robin Pogebrin and Kate Kelly as part of their book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation.” But the details of it came under scrutiny. After the story was posted online but before it was in the print edition, the Times revised the story to add that the book reported that the woman supposedly involved in the incident declined to be interviewed, and that her friends say she doesn’t recall the incident.
https://apnews.com/article/brett-kavana ... bf41f9d38a

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Former senior FBI official accused of working for Russian he investigated
Charles McGonigal, a former counterintelligence chief, is also accused of taking $225,000 from a former Albanian intelligence worker while still at the FBI
By Shayna Jacobs, Spencer S. Hsu, Devlin Barrett and Shane Harris
Updated January 23, 2023 at 6:44 p.m. EST|Published January 23, 2023 at 12:56 p.m. EST


Charles McGonigal, then a counterintelligence chief for the FBI in New York, is interviewed by Leonardo Reis in 2018. (Courtesy of Leonardo Reis)

NEW YORK — The FBI’s former top spyhunter in New York was charged Monday with taking secret cash payments of more than $225,000 while overseeing highly sensitive cases, and breaking the law by trying to get Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska removed from a U.S. sanctions list — accusations that shocked the cloistered world of his fellow high-ranking intelligence officials.

Charles McGonigal, 54, who retired from the FBI in September 2018, was indicted in federal court in Manhattan on charges of money laundering, violating U.S. sanctions and other counts stemming from his alleged ties to Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In his role at the FBI, McGonigal had been tasked with investigating Deripaska, whose own indictment on sanctions-violation charges was unsealed in September.

A second indictment, filed in Washington, accused McGonigal of hiding payments totaling $225,000 that he allegedly received from a New Jersey man employed decades ago by an Albanian intelligence agency. The indictment also accussed him of acting to advance that person’s interests.

McGonigal’s alleged crimes may undercut Justice Department efforts to ramp up economic sanctions on wealthy Russians after last year’s invasion of Ukraine. The twin indictments are also a black eye for the FBI, alleging that one of its most senior and trusted intelligence officials accepted large sums of money and undermined the bureau’s overall intelligence-gathering mission.

McGonigal was arrested by agents from the bureau where he had worked for 22 years and where he rose to one of the most important counter-espionage positions in the U.S. government. Given his former role, the investigation was run by FBI agents in Los Angeles and D.C. rather than in New York.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said the case showed the FBI did its duty. “The way we maintain the trust and confidence of the American people is through our work—showing, when all the facts come out, that we stuck to the process and we treated everyone equally, even when it is one of our own,” Wray said in a statement. "We hold ourselves to the highest standard, and our focus will remain on our mission and on doing the right thing, in the right way, every time.”


Charles McGonigal, former special agent in charge of the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York, leaves court on Monday in New York. (John Minchillo/AP)

Through his lawyer, Seth DuCharme, McGonigal pleaded not guilty to the New York charges at a brief court appearance Monday, where he was released on bond. DuCharme, a former Justice Department official who recently served as acting U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said outside the courthouse that he looks forward to reviewing the evidence, “but we have a lot of confidence in Mr. McGonigal.”

“As you all know, Charlie’s had a long distinguished career with the FBI. He served the United States for decades,” DuCharme said. “This is obviously a distressing day for Mr. McGonigal and his family.”

McGonigal is scheduled to appear via video link in federal court in D.C. on Wednesday. In that case, prosecutors alleged that from at least August 2017 — and continuing after his retirement from the FBI — McGonigal failed to disclose to the FBI his relationship with the former Albanian intelligence worker, described as “Person A” in charging papers. He also allegedly failed to disclose that he had an “ongoing relationship with the Prime Minister of Albania,” the indictment said. Since 2013, Edi Rama has served as the prime minister of that country.

In late 2017, authorities charge, McGonigal received sums of cash totaling $225,000 from Person A — the first time in a parked car outside a New York City restaurant, and the next two times at the person’s New Jersey home. According to the indictment, McGonigal “indicated to Person A that the money would be paid back.”

Months later, at McGonigal’s urging, the FBI opened an investigation into an American lobbyist for an Albanian political party that is a rival of Rama, an investigation that used Person A as a source of information, authorities said.

That was not the only instance in which the indictments suggest McGonigal used his job for the benefit of people with whom he had undisclosed financial or personal relationships.

On a 2017 trip to Austria, McGonigal and a Justice Department prosecutor interviewed an Albanian businessperson and politician who had previously told McGonigal that they wanted someone to investigate a death threat against them, according to the indictment in Washington. McGonigal had been introduced to that individual by “Person A,” the indictment charges.

The following year, McGonigal allegedly asked the FBI’s liaison to the United Nations to arrange a meeting with the then-U.S. ambassador, Nikki Haley, or another high ranking official, as well as a former Bosnian defense minister and founder of a Bosnian pharmaceutical company.

The indictment says McGonigal’s associates sought that meeting for political reasons that would have benefited Person A financially. At the time, the indictment charges, McGonigal suggested that the pharmaceutical company pay half a million dollars to a company registered to Person A, as a fee for arranging the meeting.

Current and former U.S. officials who know and have worked with McGonigal said they were shocked by the indictments. As a senior FBI counterintelligence official, McGonigal had access to an extraordinary amount of sensitive information, potentially including investigations of foreign spies or U.S. citizens suspected of working on behalf of foreign governments, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the work McGonigal did. One former official said McGonigal had worked with the CIA on counterintelligence matters.

According to the New York indictment, a law firm retained McGonigal to work as a consultant and investigator on the effort to get Deripaska removed from the sanctions list. He was listed as a consultant and arranged for $25,000 monthly payments to be sent to an account controlled by another person, an interpreter for the U.S. government who was a former Russian diplomat. The interpreter, Sergey Shestakov, was also charged.

McGonigal’s FBI role gave him access to classified information, including a then-secret list of Russian prospects for sanctioning by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Justice Department said. That list included Deripaska before the sanctions were actually imposed.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement that McGonigal and Shestakov “should have known better” given their experience in government service. Shestakov also pleaded not guilty.

U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves of D.C. called the alleged coverup of foreign contacts and financial relationships a “gateway to corruption,” and he credited the FBI with its handling of the “delicate and difficult” investigation of a former high-ranking official.

“McGonigal is alleged to have committed the very violations he swore to investigate while he purported to lead a workforce of FBI employees who spend their careers protecting secrets and holding foreign adversaries accountable,” said the FBI assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles field office, Donald Alway, who announced the charges along with Graves and the leaders of the D.C. FBI office and the Justice Department National Security Division. Asked about the case Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland declined to comment.


McGonigal faces a statutory maximum sentence of 20 years in prison on the two D.C. counts of falsification of records and documents, and up to five years in prison for each of seven counts of concealing material facts or making false statements. The most serious charge in the New York indictment carries a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison.

McGonigal joined the FBI in 1996, working in New York, Washington, Baltimore and Cleveland. Along the way, he was involved in some of the most sensitive and high-profile intelligence cases in the U.S. government, including the conviction of former national security adviser Samuel Berger for knowingly removing classified documents from the National Archives. In 2010, McGonigal was tapped to lead the task force probing the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

The charges against McGonigal alarmed his former colleagues in part because of his depth of knowledge of so many elements of U.S. espionage. McGonigal was an expert on Russian intelligence activities targeting the United States, as well as U.S. efforts to recruit Russian spies, said several former intelligence officials who worked with him and spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters.

His position at the New York field office would have given him direct access to past and current recruitment efforts, work that was coordinated with the CIA, these people said. McGonigal was well-known at the CIA among officers who dealt with Russia and counterintelligence matters, and he knew the details of some intelligence operations targeting Russia, former officials said.

McGonigal has not been charged with espionage, but the former officials who worked with him said his knowledge and experience would have put him at high risk of being recruited by a foreign government.

One former official noted that McGonigal was in charge of an investigation into why numerous individuals in China who were spying for the United States were arrested and taken out of commission. As part of that investigation, McGonigal would have known details about the covert systems that the CIA used to communicate with its agents, the former official said. Those systems are believed to have played a central role in exposing the agents to government authorities.

Deripaska has been a focus of FBI investigative work for many years. In 2021, agents searched two homes linked to him, one in D.C. and the other in New York. At the time, a spokeswoman for the aluminum tycoon said the properties were owned by his relatives.

A politically connected billionaire, Deripaska’s name came up repeatedly in recent U.S. investigations involving Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Deripaska did business for years with Paul Manafort, whose tenure as Trump’s campaign chairman became an intense focus of FBI investigations.

Manafort and Deripaska have both confirmed that they had a business relationship in which Manafort was paid as an investment consultant. In 2014, Deripaska accused Manafort in a Cayman Islands court of taking nearly $19 million intended for investments without accounting for how they were used.

Hsu, Barrett and Harris reported from Washington. Rosalind S. Helderman and Perry Stein in Washington contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national ... tment-fbi/

[ponchi101]

I oppose the death penalty. You know that.
But, for treason? Well...

[ti-amie]

An inside baseball look at the McGonigal situation.

Timothy Snyder
@TimothyDSnyder
Levin Professor of History at Yale. Author of "On Tyranny," with 20 new lessons on Ukraine, "Our Malady," "Road to Unfreedom," "Black Earth," and "Bloodlands"

In April 2016, I broke the story of Trump and Putin, using Russian open sources. Afterwards, I heard vague intimations that something was awry in the FBI in New York, specifically counter-intelligence and cyber. We now have a suggestion as to why. 0/20

The person who led the relevant section, Charles McGonigal, has just been charged with taking money from the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Follow this thread to see just how this connects to the victory of Trump, the Russian war in Ukraine, and U.S. national security. 1/20

The reason I was thinking about Trump & Putin in 2016 was a pattern. Russia had sought to control Ukraine, using social media, money, & a pliable head of state. Russia backed Trump the way that it had backed Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, in the hopes of soft control 2/20

Trump & Yanukovych were similar figures: interested in money, & in power to make or shield money. And therefore vulnerable partners for Putin. They also shared a political advisor: Paul Manafort. He worked for Yanukovych from 2005-2015, taking over Trump's campaign in 2016. 3/20

You might remember Manafort's ties to Russia from 2016. He (and Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump, Jr.) met with Russians in June 2016 in Trump Tower as part of, as the broker of the meeting called it, "the Russian government's support for Trump" (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 237). 4/20

Manafort had to resign as Trump's campaign manager in August 2016 when news broke that he had received $12.7 million in cash from Yanukovych. But these details are just minor elements of Manafort's dependence on Russia. (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 235). 5/20

Manafort worked for Deripaska, the same Russian oligarch to whom McGonigal is linked, between 2006 and 2009. Manafort's assignment was to soften up the U.S for Russian influence. He promised "a model that can greatly benefit the Putin government." (#RoadToUnfreedom, p. 234). 6/20

While Manafort worked for Trump in 2016, though, Manafort's dependence on Russia was deeper. He owed Deripaska money, not a position one would want to be in. Manafort offered Deripaska "private briefings" on the campaign. He was hoping "to get whole." (#RoadToUnfreedom, 234) 7/20

Reconsider how the FBI treated the Trump-Putin connection in 2016. Trump and other Republicans screamed that the FBI had overreached. In retrospect, it seems the exact opposite took place. The issue of Russian influence was framed in a way convenient for Russia and Trump. 8/20

The FBI investigation, Crossfire Hurricane, focused on the narrow issue of personal connections between the Trump campaign and Russians. It missed Russia's cyber attacks and the social media campaign, which, according to Kathleen Hall Jamieson, won the election for Trump. 9/20

Once the issue of Russian soft control was framed narrowly as personal contact, Obama missed the big picture, and Trump had an easy defense. Trump knew that Russia was working for him, but the standard of guilt was placed so high that he could defend himself. 10/20

It is entirely inconceivable that McGonigal was unaware of Russia's 2016 cyber influence campaign on behalf of Trump. Even I was aware of it, and I had no expertise. It became one of the subjects of my book #RoadtoUnfreedom. 11/20

The FBI did investigate cyber later, and came to some correct conclusions. But this was after the election, and missed the Russian influence operations entirely. That was an obvious counterintelligence issue. Why did the FBI take so long, and miss the point? 12/20

I had no personal connection to this, but will just repeat what informed people said at the time: this sort of thing was supposed to go through the FBI counter-intelligence section in New York, where tips went to die. That is where McGonigal was in charge. 13/20

The cyber element is what McGonigal should have been making everyone aware of in 2016. In 2016, McGonigal was chief of the FBI's Cyber-Counterintelligence Coordination Section. That October, he was put in charge of the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI's NY office. 14/20

We need to understand why the FBI failed in 2016 to address the essence of an ongoing Russian influence operation. The character of that operation suggests that it would have been the responsibility of an FBI section whose head is now accused of taking Russian money. 15/20

Right after the McGonigal story broke, Kevin McCarthy ejected Adam Schiff from the House intelligence committee. Schiff is expert on Russian influence operations. It exhibits carelessness about national security to exclude him. It is downright suspicious to exclude him now. 16/20

Back in June 2016, Kevin McCarthy expressed his suspicion that Donald Trump was under Putin's influence. He and other Republican members concluded that the risk of an embarrassment to their party was more important than American security. #RoadToUnfreedom, p. 255. 17/20

The Russian influence operation to get Trump elected was real. It serves no one to pretend otherwise. We are still learning about it. Denying that it happened makes the United States vulnerable to ongoing Russian operations. 18/20

I remember a certain frivolity from 2016. Trump was a curiosity. Russia was irrelevant. Nothing to take seriously. Then Trump was elected, blocked weapon sales to Ukraine, and tried to stage a coup. Now Ukrainians are dying every day in the defining conflict of our time. 19/20

The McGonigal question goes even beyond these issues. He had authority in the most sensitive possible investigations within U.S. intelligence. Sorting this out will require a concern for the United States that goes beyond party loyalty. 20/20



https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1618 ... 18080.html

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[ponchi101]

He will die in Mar-a-lago, after a strenuous 18 holes, never having spent a day in prison.
And THAT will be the crime of the century.

[Owendonovan]

I'll celebrate his death no matter how or when it comes.

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