These two clowns, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, have a long history of failed ratfucking.
In 2020, the two hired actors to stage a fake FBI raid on Burkman’s house and tricked The Washington Post into writing up the phony incident. Wohl used the Klein surname in that incident, too.
The year before, Wohl was charged in California for selling an unregistered security as part of a plot to create fake news items to make money in political betting markets. He pled guilty to four felony counts and was sentenced to two years of probation, according to court records in Riverside County.
Wohl and Burkman drew attention a few years ago by trying to frame multiple public figures, including former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and current Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, for sexual assaults. They conducted other outlandish smear campaigns, including hiring a woman to say that Anthony Fauci had assaulted her and allegedly stealing a USAID employee’s phone to send out tweets blasting the foreign aid agency as “anti-Christian.”
Among the conspiracy theories that Wohl has pushed include saying in 2020 that Biden had tested positive for Covid and would die in 30 days, that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) had a relationship with a former Marine and that Vice President Kamala Harris wasn’t eligible to run for president in the 2020 cycle.
There are other instances, like the time they came to Minneapolis to ‘prove’ that Ilhan Omar was incestuously married to her brother, and called the west bank of the U of Minnesota “little Mogadishu”. My favorite flop, though, was when they hired an ex-Marine to claim he’d been scarred by violent sex with Elizabeth Warren. They’re absolutely nuts and impressively bad at their con games.
They’re so bad that now they operate under pseudonyms.
A Washington startup pitched as a service to integrate AI into lobbying is covertly run by a pair of well-known, far-right conspiracy theorists and convicted felons who are using pseudonyms in their new business, according to four former employees as well as photo and email evidence.
LobbyMatic was founded last year by Jacob Wohl, who in 2022 was convicted along with his longtime associate Jack Burkman of felony telecom fraud after running a robocall campaign in largely Black neighborhoods in several states telling people not to vote by mail. An Ohio judge ordered them to spend 500 hours registering people to vote, and the Federal Communications Commission fined them $5 million.
In his role as a founder and CEO of the new firm, Wohl uses the name “Jay Klein,” according to the former employees and emails obtained by POLITICO. Burkman uses the pseudonym “Bill Sanders,” the former employees said.
Ha ha, you laugh. Nobody will fall for this.
Their lobbying group has already signed up some big name clients, including Toyota. The corporate lobbying game in Washington DC is a fruitful market for grifters, I guess.
And these little shits are allowed to breathe free air because…
When there is big money to be made it is perfectly alright to ignore those pesky laws that get in your way.
One day they’ll cross the wrong people and pay for it. Or get recuited by the wrong people and have a glittering career amongst the elite. It’s so difficult to be sure these days.
Has anyone asked Toyota and their other corporate clients whether they enjoy doing business with convicted fraudsters yet?
In the twilight of my years I look back and wish I had done a little better in this area, or worked a bit harder in that, but by and large I’m satisfied with my achievements and pleased that no one was harmed in the making of this life, and that many were helped.
How can people like these two a-holes look back on lives like their’s?
In the comic strip Ernie you will meet the Wurlitzer brothers, two extremely inept burglars. If they had directed their careers to grifting among the political class they would have been far more succesful.
Also, the overpaid people in the corporate lobbying game must have a lot of quite incompetent people. Maybe this could be a basis for a TV comedy.
Why aren’t these guys and others like them getting mega jail time?
These felonies have a worse impact on our societies than murder.
tacitus: the linked story indicates that politico did, in fact, ask these known clients about it.
They said various things but most important: their software sucks so they never went beyond the free trial.
birgerjohansson @6: BBC Radio 4 did just such a sitcom about lobbyists – Absolute Power with Stephen Fry and the late great John Bird. (It’s on BBC sounds if you can get past the geolocking).
Oh God, oops forgot whose blog I’m on . Those are some pretty serious behaviors just to get a slap on the wrist sentences. Now I know why trump isn’t in prison .
Trump isn’t in prison because there is somehow bipartisan agreement in the US that GOP presidents are above the law and cannot be prosecuted.