Parroting squawkbox Pundits |
And a dirty dozen more |
Frogs, clowns, and swastikas Alt-right |
Chuds |
Rebuilding the Reich, one meme at a time |
Buzzwords and dogwhistles |
“”Jacob is a child prodigy who has eclipsed Mozart.
|
—Jack Burkman, Wohl's co-worker[1] |
Jacob Alexander Wohl (December 12, 1997–),[2] a.k.a. Bill Sanders,[3] is a woolly-headed right wing conspiracy theorist, fraudster, and internet troll who has perpetrated numerous hoaxes of questionable legality. His most famous hoax may be alleging that Robert Mueller raped a woman through a paper-thin fake company. He also holds the dubious honor of being the youngest person to have ever been banned from the National Futures Association (NFA).[4][5][6] In October 2019, he alleged that Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren was in a long-term BDSM affair with a Marine veteran that left him physically scarred, which backfired in that it made a consumer protection expert and Harvard Law professor sound cool.[7]
“”Burkman and Wohl appear to have no idea how to spell their client's first name. They insist it's Carolyn — but then after reporters ask them, they say it's Carolyne with an E.
|
—Will Sommer[8] |
“”Someone asks, "Are you both prepared for federal prison?" Burkman replies no.
|
—Oliver Darcy[9] |
In order to smear the Trump-Russia connection, Wohl and Jack Burkman (1965 or 1966–), a.k.a. Jay Klein,[3] (allegedly working for a company called "Surefire Intelligence") accused FBI director Robert Mueller of raping Carolyne Cass in 2010. Said accusation was hilariously fake:[10]
Mueller referred the accusation to the FBI for investigation.[22]
Wohl was fired after a brief stint at The Gateway Pundit because of this fuckupery.[23] Initially, The Gateway Pundit credulously promoted Wohl's claims.[23]
In February 2018, a claim surfaced that Ilhan Omar's ex-husband was actually her brother and they only married so he could be granted US citizenship. There is no evidence that Omar's ex-husband, a British citizen, is in any way related to Omar.[24] The claim doesn't even make any sense, since US citizens can petition the USCIS to bring a brother or sister to the United States, making a marriage unnecessary.[25]
Nonetheless, Wohl with Laura Loomer and Ali Alexander, from the website Culttture which follows Trump-associated social media personalities,[26] launched a fundraiser for an investigation about Omar's marriage. To get attention for the fundraiser, the trio travelled to Minneapolis, Omar's hometown. Their visit to Minneapolis resulted in a series of weird tweets and streams about Minneapolis being a no-go zone overrun by Somali jihadists[27] and claimed he travelled around town in "armoured cars" with a team of security professionals in order to avoid hitmen. The armoured cars and security are conveniently never shown on camera.[28]
Before the publication of the documentary in March 2019, Wohl went on an interview with USA Today. In the interview, Wohl shared his future plans for the 2020 election:
He says he plans to create “enormous left-wing online properties” – such as deceptive Facebook and Twitter accounts – "and use those to steer the left-wing votes in the primaries to what we feel are weaker candidates compared with Trump.” It’s a plot similar to what Mueller has charged in indictments that the Russians crafted in an effort to boost the 2016 campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein and hobble Hillary Clinton.[27]
A few hours after this interview was published Wohl was banned from Twitter for creating and operating fake accounts. These accounts included @JWohlTreason, @Women_4_Schultz, and @Ericshanzner.[29]
The documentary, titled Importing Ilhan, was published later in mid-March 2019. In the documentary, Wohl claimed he got several death threats from local Minneapolitans, and one of these was shown in the documentary. The tweet came from the Twitter account @Drakehomes612, a self-described Minneapolis "diversity coordinator". He went to a local police department and filled a police report about the death threat. But, as journalist Tony Webster noticed, @Drakehomes612 is one of the many fake accounts Wohl created leading up to his ban from Twitter. Since filing a false report is illegal, the documentary has been taken down from Culttture's website.[30]
After the above-mentioned Muller allegations fell apart, Wohl is trying a new strategy of just throwing shit at the wall quantity over quality.[31][note 1]
In late April 2019, Wohl and associate Jack Burkman devised another fictitious sexual assault claim, this time against Pete Buttigieg. They attempted to convince a college student in Michigan to claim he was sexually assaulted while drunk. After failing to convince him to be involved with their scheme, the two continued with their scheme anyway, using the person's name and photo and setting up a Medium and Twitter account. The Daily Beast staff tracked down the person and asked them about the allegations, which they indicated were false, and denied them on a Facebook page. They also provided audio recording of the conversation with Wohl, which was confirmed as authentic and containing Wohl by The Daily Beast. When The Daily Beast started asking Wohl and Burkman questions about the allegations, the Twitter and Medium pages vanished.[32][33][34]
On 8 May, Wohl and Burkman held a press conference where they showed footage of the person they attempted to convince to go along with their scheme from their meeting at a coffee shop, in an effort to dispell the belief that they had tried to coerce the student. This presser included the phrase: "Most forced coercion attempts do not involve caramel frappucinos".[35] Best part of it was when a fucking garbage truck drove up and started emptying Burkman's trash cans in the middle of their video.[36]
During the May 2019 press conference in which Wohl and Burkman falsely accused Buttigieg of sexual assault, the pair also shared an unsubstantiated rumor that Joe Biden might have Parkinson's disease.[37] In March 2020, Wohl published fake COVID-19 test results, claiming that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden had COVID-19 and would die in 30 days.
On 1 October, Wohl and Burkman held a press conference on the Ukraine whistleblower, wherein they said they'd reveal the whistleblower's identity. Shocker, nothing happened, nothing was revealed at the conference.[note 2] They also claimed to have traveled to Ukraine to investigate this whole mess. They provided a Turkish Airlines boarding pass[note 3] and 10 Ukrainian hryvnia[note 4][note 5] as proof that they went to Ukraine to investigate.[38]
On 3 October 2019, Wohl and Burkman held what might be the most absurd of all their press conferences, where they released their allegation that Elizabeth Warren was secretly into hardcore BDSM. Yes, you read that correctly. The person coming forward was purported to be a former "Marine" who was physically scarred by the experience. Granted, he had trouble reading through his own write-up without chuckling at points. Also, people found the dude's Instagram during the presser and asked him about a photo that showed the same scar he was presenting as proof of the encounters, with the caption "Hit my back with a chain trying to take down a swing." from 2016. He just shrugged in reply.[39][40] Oh, and it was then revealed he was lying about exactly when he was a Marine, claiming to be in Afghanistan in 2012, while military records note him being enlisted from 2014 to 2016. That previously-mentioned Instagram account also has him counting down until his enlistment in 2014...[41] Now, Wohl did get attention on this claim. Saturday Night Live made fun of it,[42] and Elizabeth Warren got plenty of attention for her snarky retort.[43][44]
On 9 October, Wohl and Burkman held a press conference to reveal that Kamala Harris was having an extramarital affair with her personal trainer. It was the typical shitshow: Wohl taking selfies with a 17-year-old girl who's a "cute blond" (Wohl's words), hecklers, a "pastor" who spoke before Jacob, who used the phrase "damn it be the whore!", Wohl threatening everyone with a hose that they didn't realize was shut off by a heckler like two seconds after they turned it on in front of everyone. Unlike the Warren accusation, this one was a bog-standard extramarital affair.[45] Then it was revealed that the guy who was presented as the personal trainer was hired via Craigslist and thought it was an audition for a role and had no clue Kamala Harris was a real politician. Then they didn't pay the dude the $500 they promised him.[46][note 6]
On 11 October, Jack Burkman tweeted out that there would be a press conference where they would reveal Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff’s former drug dealer.[47] It was originally supposed to be on 14 October, 17 October. Due to high winds (Yes, really) it was moved to 21 October at 2:30pm.[48] Once again, the main attention was given to... another snarky retort, this time from Nancy Pelosi.[49]
On 21 October, Wohl and Jack Burkman surprisingly reach across the partisan aisles instead of going after Pelosi and continue with their sex-obsessed habit of making up allegations against politicians...by accusing Ted Cruz of being a swinger. By now, having cried wolf so many times, no one really cares. (Except for the neighbors of Jack's townhouse, where most of these "press conferences" have been held. They are getting rather irritated by this ongoing "shitshow circus".)[50][51]
By April 2020, having lost any credibility whatsoever, Wohl and Burkman decided for some reason that maybe, just maybe, their bullshit will work this time around...and accused NIAID director Anthony Fauci of sexual misconduct. No media outlet gave a shit, except for Reason.com, and only because the woman who played the role of the victim gave them a tape of some phone calls between her and the two. The phone call transcripts highlight the huge sketchiness, asshole personalities, and laughable inept buffoonery of the Wohl/Burkman duo.[52] The woman revealed that she is an ex-girlfriend of Wohl's and also came forward to say that Wohl tried using her before to frame an Academy Award winner, with that story gaining no traction whatsoever so he rebranded the story to Fauci.[53]
In October 2020, Wohl and Burkman finally got media attention by engaging in the ultimate in quantity over quality: robocalls. Unfortunately, the robocalls went far beyond silly, baseless sex allegations. Instead, the robocalls consisted of alleged felony-level voter intimidation. The robocalls claimed that information used for mail-in ballots would be "used by police to track down old warrants" and "used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts". Wohl and Burkman even threw in some anti-vaccination hysteria by claiming that mail-in voting information would be used by the CDC "to track people for mandatory vaccines". This resulted in multiple legal cases against the duo, to the point where in May 2021, when Salon reached out to one person close to Burkman for a comment on the latest turn of events, the reaction was succinct: "Lol, (Burkman and Wohl) are fucked."[54]
In October 2020, the Michigan Attorney General's office charged the two with four felony-level election law crimes.[55][56][57] A grand jury in Cleveland, Ohio, added to the legal woes these robocalls caused them a few weeks later by indicting the two on eight counts of telecommunications fraud and seven counts of bribery.[58] In October 2022, the pair pleaded guilty to felony charges in Ohio.[59]
On May 6th 2021, the state Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, also announced that her department intended to take legal action against the two and that she was seeking damages of $500 per harassing robocall ($2.75 million in total).[60] By this time, evidence had emerged that Wohl and Burkman were exclusively targeting Black communities with the robocalls, which meant that James had reason to believe that Wohl and Burkman were in violation of several civil rights laws (such as the Ku Klux Klan Act) that protected minority voters from election-related harassment and intimidation. In March 2023, a federal judge ruled that the duo indeed did violate the Voting Rights Act and Ku Klux Klan Act, and that they were so egregious and obvious about it that a jury trial wasn't even required (summary judgment).[61]
In addition, in August 2021, the FCC mused on whether to impose a $5 million fine against Wohl and Burkman for making robocalls to 1,141 cellphones without getting consent. [62] On June 5, 2023, the fine of $5,134,500 was made official in a FCC forfeiture order.[63]
After pleading guilty in the Ohio case in October 2022, on November 29, 2022, Judge John Sutula placed both Wohl and Burkman on two years probation, fined each $2500, ordered them to wear GPS ankle monitors in the evenings for six months of the probation, and ordered the duo to spend 500 hours registering voters in low income areas.[64][65]
In 2024, Letitia James reached an agreement with Wohl and Burkman that they would have to pay the state of New York $1.25 million in compensation "for targeting Black voters and transmitting false and threatening messages intended to discourage voting."[66]
In 2021, Wohl tried to set up a shoestring-budget web video series called Predator DC based on the better-funded but still ethically-dubious MSNBC show To Catch a Predator.[67] Predator DC was intended to make Wohl money while targeting alleged pedophiles in the Washington DC area, thus feeding into QAnon-inspired conspiracies.[67] Wohl's Predator DC employees have alleged abusive and dangerous working conditions, including being groped a target without access to security guards.[67] In February 2024, one of the people featured on this show filed an $11 million dollar lawsuit against Wohl and Burkman alleging that they falsely tarred him in a 2021 video as a child sex predator, and criminally entrapped him using a fake Tinder profile of a purported 36 year old woman in order to make the video.[68]
In 2024, Wohl and Burkman, under their pseudonyms Jay Klein and Bill Sanders, created an AI-based lobbying firm called LobbyMatic.[3]
—a former employee of LobbyMatic[3] |