Watch: Conservative Operative Carlton Huffman Accuses Matt Schlapp of 'Nonconsensual Touching and Fondling'

In reporting why the recent CPAC conference wasn't as influential as in the past, National Public Radio said one reason was that Matt Schlapp, who runs the event as chairman of the American Conservative Union, faces a $9 million civil lawsuit filed in January by a former staffer on the Herschel Walker Senate campaign. The lawsuit scared some leading figures away from attending the event, which was dominated by Donald Trump supporters.

"The lawsuit accuses Schlapp of making, quote, 'advances and unwanted and nonconsensual touching and fondling' in October of last year," explained NPR's senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.

The identity of the former staffer was not known until he went public on Wednesday. Carlton Huffman – the white supremacist and former Herschel Walker staffer who's suing MAGA conservative Matt Schlapp for $9.4 million after Schlapp allegedly groped Huffman's crotch and "pummeled" his penis "at length" – came forward to reveal his identity in a 10-minute YouTube video yesterday.

He did so, the New York Times reports, because the judge in the case said he had to for the case to go forward.

"The judge ruled the way she did, but we're ready to move forward," Mr. Huffman said in a brief interview after a videoconference hearing in the Virginia Circuit Court in Alexandria.

In court filings, Mr. Schlapp has denied the accusations, and a spokesman for him reiterated that on Wednesday. "From before he even filed suit, the plaintiff chose to litigate this in the media while hiding behind anonymity to avoid scrutiny of his unsavory past, troubled work history and issues with honesty," said Mark Corallo, the spokesman. "We are confident that when his full record is brought to light in a court of law, we will prevail."

But Huffman also was forced to address his past as a white supremacist.

The Times writes: "Mr. Huffman, who lives in North Carolina, acknowledged in the interview that he had been involved 12 years ago with a white supremacist radio program and website, and expressed regret for his actions."

"I had some politically incorrect views that came from a place of undue reverence for the Confederacy when I was growing up," Mr. Huffman said. "After doing some soul-searching, I turned away from those views in 2011 and everything in my history since then shows a genuine change of heart."

This past January, North Carolina television station WRAL reported that Huffman resigned from his from a job at the North Carolina General Assembly just weeks after starting it. His job title wasn't "immediately available," but "online résumé on LinkedIn listed him as a policy advisor to Speaker of the House Tim Moore,"

"The departure comes a day after statehouse reporters received a lengthy, anonymous email detailing interviews and online posts Huffman made more than a decade ago expressing sympathy for white supremacist causes. WRAL wasn't immediately able to verify the identity of the email sender, but Huffman himself confirmed key details to WRAL. Many of the interviews and posts detailed in the email remain online. Some of his online posts appeared under an assumed name."

"Those views that I expressed represent a time in my life that I am not proud of," Huffman said in an interview Thursday. "Views that I have shifted from, that I disavow."

But the 38-year-old has left behind a large digital footprint, including interviews some 13 years ago with "The Political Cesspool," a radio program and website that describes itself as "pro-white" and advocates reviving "the white birthrate ... to grow the percentage of whites in the world relative to other races," adds WRAL.

In one 2010 interview he said it broke his heart to see the Confederate flag brought down from atop the South Carolina state capitol and that the forced integration of the University of Mississippi in 1962 began "a very long fall from grace."

"Huffman was also part of a segregationist group called the Council of Conservative Citizens," WRAL writes. "He said Thursday that he left after the group expressed openly antisemitic views. Huffman said that he 'did not embrace white supremacy or bigotry' but that he was 'too closely associated' with people who did."

"Those views, they were ugly," he said. "I admit it, and I hate that the world is seeing that, and I'm ashamed of it. But I know in my heart that the person that I am today is not the person that is reflected in that email and those writings."