EXCLUSIVE: Alexandria opens prosecution of ex-CPAC staffer accused of giving $14K to staffers
CPAC court battle re-opens old wounds in tangle over payments during Schlapp scandal
ALEXANDRIA, Va. _ The City of Alexandria opened its prosecution Monday in the case of a former CPAC finance director who current and former CPAC executives accused of wrongly paying out more than $14,000 in paid time off to resigning staffers in 2023.
Former CPAC finance director Ryan McGowan was indicted last September on two counts of embezzling more than $1,000. McGowan pleaded not guilty Monday morning to both counts and waived his right to a jury trial, placing the decision in the hands of the Alexandria Circuit Court judge overseeing the case.
The case brought old battles from the sexual assault allegations against longtime CPAC leader Matt Schlapp back into the spotlight, this time under oath in a courtroom, and revived debate over a stretch two years ago when CPAC staff resigned en masse amid the Schlapp scandal.
Top CPAC executive Lynne Rasmussen, who The Daily Beast reported oversaw the shredding of documents in the Schlapp scandal, testified that she discovered McGowan had wrongly increased paid time off payouts to five staffers amounting to more than $14,000, amid the mass CPAC exodus in 2023.
But McGowan’s defense, citing official CPAC policy and relying on the testimony of former top CPAC staff, said that McGowan followed longstanding CPAC protocol in providing accrued PTO to the five former staffers on their way out the door.
The opening of the trial centered on the mechanics of who had the power and authority to pay $14,000 in allegedly accrued PTO to five former staffers. But it also re-opened old wounds inside the long-running conservative organization.
It follows two years after CPAC was rocked by sexual assault allegations against its longtime president Matt Schlapp, a year after the sexual assault civil suit was settled for almost a half million dollars and no finding of wrongdoing, and a few months after local Virginia police reported a complaint of Schlapp allegedly groping a man at a rural Virginia bar.
“They will tell you they were leaving because of the outside sexual assault allegations against Matthew Schlapp,” McGowan’s lawyer Manuel Leiva said of the former CPAC staffers who received the allegedly purloined PTO.
The amount allegedly stolen is relatively small, and McGowan’s defense provided evidence that it was in keeping with longstanding CPAC policy paying out unused PTO accrued over the course of its budget year, which runs from the beginning of April to the end of March each year (to account for its massive annual event in suburban Washington each year around the end of February.)
But Schlapp’s CPAC has pursued multiple court cases against the former staffers.
McGowan and other staffers started their own conservative organization which graded lawmakers on votes, long a staple of CPAC and its parent organization the American Conservative Union, but a civil suit filed by CPAC against the former staffers was tossed out earlier this year.
Schlapp was not included as a witness in the trial, for the prosecution or defense, but he loomed large throughout the testimony.
In one text exchange presented into evidence, Rasmussen discussed seemingly hiding a 15-percent pay raise that Schlapp had approved for her from McGowan.
“That was a decision Mr. Schlapp made. I wanted to talk to Ryan personally, I knew he would be upset,” Rasmussen testified.
In another text exchange entered into evidence, between McGowan and David Safavian – who left as CPAC’s full-time general counsel last November – McGowan expressed his frustration with CPAC hiring Schlapp’s personal accountant to serve as its accountant.
Rasmussen and Safavian testified that McGowan told them he knew paying out the vacation days was wrong, but often differed in their testimony over who had authority to approve payouts.
A verdict in the trial is expected Tuesday morning in Virginia, according to sources familiar with the case.