Conservative radio host Erick Erickson on Wednesday said the “C” in “CPAC” should stand for “clown,” noting that the annual Conservative Political Action Conference is led by a man with sexual misconduct allegations against him — and that isn’t the only problem.

“Two weeks ago, I mentioned the problems with CPAC,” Erickson wrote on X.

He continued, “The head of CPAC, Matt Schlapp, has been accused multiple times of inappropriate sexual behavior towards other men. Undeterred from running the Conservative Political Action Conference, Schlapp has invited Steve Bannon on stage.”

Schlapp is chairman of the American Conservative Union, which runs CPAC. He was accused in 2023 of sexual misconduct by GOP strategist Carlton Huffman, who claimed Schlapp “groped” and “fondled” his groin without consent, which Schlapp firmly denied.

Huffman eventually dropped his lawsuit, but Schlapp was previously accused of trying to kiss a male CPAC staffer without consent in 2017 and making unwanted sexual advances on another person during a 2022 business trip, The Washington Post reported in 2023.

Erickson went on to note that Bannon, a former aide of President Donald Trump, “was one of Jeffrey Epstein’s friends” — and tried to rehabilitate the late sex offender’s image with a lengthy softball interview before his apparent suicide behind bars in 2019.

Bannon has also told voters to “get accommodated” with a third, unconstitutional Trump term, and said last year that he’d care more about Palantir, the tech company currently streamlining data on U.S. citizens for the federal government, if a Democrat were in office.

Bannon is prominently mentioned in the Epstein files released by the Department of Justice.

“Now CPAC is announcing Todd Chrisley will be at CPAC,” Erickson wrote Wednesday. “If you don’t know who that guy is, he got sentenced to twelve years in prison for tax evasion and then got pardoned by Donald Trump. Before all that, he was a reality TV star.”

Chrisley and his wife, Julie Chrisley, rose to fame with the USA Network show “Chrisley Knows Best.” They were found guilty in 2022 of some $30 million in bank fraud and tax evasion. Todd was sentenced to 12 years in prison and Julie to seven.

Trump called this “pretty harsh treatment” in 2025 while announcing his plan to pardon them.

Erickson, a perhaps more traditional conservative, appeared to argue that even pardoned criminals have no place at CPAC. He concluded Wednesday, “The ‘C’ in CPAC is now best represented by the world [sic] ‘clown’ than as any semblance of a conservative institution.”

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