Jack Burkman

On October 30, 2018, NBC News and The Atlantic published articles detailing a scheme to falsely accuse U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller of sexual misconduct in 1974. The articles reported that on October 17, 2018, several journalists received emails from a person claiming to be named "Lorraine Parsons" that asserted Burkman had hired a man with Surefire Intelligence, a company created by far-right conspiracy theorist Jacob Wohl, to offer her more than $20,000 to sign an affidavit falsely accusing Mueller of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment. "Parsons" told the reporters she had worked with Mueller at the law firm Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro in 1974, and that the man from Surefire had asked her to falsely accuse Mueller of engaging in misconduct during that time. Mueller worked at Pillsbury in 1974, but the firm told reporters they had no record of any Lorraine Parsons ever working there. "Parsons" declined reporters' requests to speak on the phone, and none of the reporters published the story until the scheme became evident.[6][7]

On October 31, Burkman tweeted and Wohl retweeted that Parsons did not exist, denying involvement in the matter, and calling it "a hoax designed to distract the nation from [Burkman's] press conference" to be held the next day.[21] Burkman denied knowing "Parsons", although The Atlantic noted that he posted a video on his Facebook page around the same time Taub and "Parsons" began to be contacted by Surefire Intelligence, asserting without evidence that Mueller "has a whole lifetime history of harassing women."[7] Burkman tweeted that at the press conference he would "reveal the first of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's sex assault victims" and "prove that he is a drunk and a sexual abuser."[22][23][24] Wohl and Burkman convened a press conference outside Washington on November 1, ostensibly to present a woman who they said signed an affidavit, which The Gateway Pundit had published, accusing Mueller of raping her in a New York hotel room in 2010—on a date he was contemporaneously reported by the Washington Post to be serving jury duty in Washington.[25] The men accused Mueller's office of "leaking" the eight year-old Post story to discredit their allegations. The purported accuser, Carolyne Cass, did not appear at the press conference as they had initially stated she would, and the men asserted she had panicked in fear of her life and taken a flight to another location.[26][27]

On April 22, 2019, Jack Burkman tweeted "2020 is shaping up to be more exciting than 2016. Looking like it will be Trump vs. Mayor Pete! Get the popcorn ready!"[8]

On April 28, a Medium post emerged under the name of a gay Republican college student, alleging that Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Indiana and a Democratic presidential candidate for 2020, had sexually assaulted him in February. A Twitter account created just a month prior under the student's name also emerged. The next day, The Daily Beast reported that Burkman and Jacob Wohl had tried to convince young Republican men to make false accusations of sexual assault against Buttigieg. One man attested that Burkman and Wohl had tried to convince him to falsely accuse Buttigieg of assaulting him when he was too drunk to consent. According to the source, Burkman and Wohl contacted him under the false identities "Matt Teller" and "Bill", but he recognized Wohl due to Wohl's internet notoriety and decided to record their conversation. He then provided the recording to The Daily Beast, which wrote that it corroborated the man's claims with the aid of an audio forensics analyst who determined that one man in the recording was "highly likely" to be Wohl.[8][28][29][30]

The student who was being impersonated on Medium and Twitter told The Daily Beast that Burkman and Wohl flew him to Washington, D.C. under the guise of speaking about politics from the perspective of a gay Republican, and that he was unaware they were trying to involve him in their scheme. He said that he had to pretend that he was taking a nap in order to escape Burkman's residence, and that they had created the Medium profile and a Twitter profile claiming to be him without his permission.[8][28]

Burkman and Wohl announced that they would be holding a press conference at Burkman's house on May 8 to continue their accusations against Buttigieg. On May 7, Burkman tweeted a link to an event called "Protest Against Homophobic Bigots" and wrote, "Hundreds of leftist protestors are set to descend on our Wednesday Press conference. We WILL NOT surrender to the mob. We've called in extra security to guard our safety and that of our partners in the media." The protest was discovered to be fake, organized by Wohl himself, when attendees received confirmation emails containing the email address wohlthinktank@gmail.com, which Wohl had used in the past.[31] Mediaite noted that events may be registered with false contact information, but that Eventbrite would have emailed the address used by the organizer allowing them to delete or edit the event.[32] However, Wohl denied involvement in creating the event page. Eventbrite later took down the event page citing their rules against "inauthentic content".[31]

At the May 8 press conference, Burkman and Wohl displayed footage of the student they had flown to Washington, D.C. drinking a coffee as proof that the student was not being coerced, with Wohl explaining that "Most forced coercion events… do not involve caramel frappuccino." During the press conference, the student released a statement describing Burkman and Wohl as "chronic liars" and stating that he would not be at the press conference as they had claimed. No protesters appeared at the fake protest of the press conference that Wohl himself had attempted to organize.[33]

In a late April 2020 press release, a woman claimed to have been sexually assaulted in 2014 by Dr. Anthony Fauci, a prominent member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Only The Daily Dot reported on the allegation, debunking it as a likely smear attempt.[34] On May 2, 2020, the woman contacted Reason Magazine to confess that she and another woman had been paid by Burkman and Wohl to fabricate the allegations against Fauci. According to Reason, the woman contacted Burkman and Wohl and recorded their phone conversation. In that call, Wohl told her, "You did a good job, you got paid. What's the problem?" Burkman suggested that Fauci deserved the smear: "This guy shut the country down. He put 40 million people out of work. In a situation like that, you have to make up whatever you have to make up to stop that train and that's the way life works, OK? That's the way it goes... Mother Nature has to clean the barn every so often. How real is it? Who knows? So what if 1 percent of the population goes? So what if you lose 400,000 people? Two hundred thousand were elderly, the other 200,000 are the bottom of society. You got to clean out the barn. If it's real, it's a positive thing, for God's sake."[9]

On October 1, 2019, Burkman and Jacob Wohl held a press conference on the front steps of Burkman's home in which they claimed to know the identity of the whistleblower who revealed possible impropriety by then-President Trump involving Ukraine, though they said they could not release it. The press conference was sparsely attended and described by The Washington Post as another in a series of events in which Burkman and Wohl "routinely announce they have discovered smoking-gun revelations against Trump's rivals, then humiliate themselves when they fail to produce any evidence".[35]

On October 3, 2019, Burkman and Wohl announced a press conference in which they said a 24-year-old former United States Marine would claim he had an affair with Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren; the announcement was met with mockery and disbelief, and generally viewed as another of Burkman and Wohl's false allegations.[36]

On Friday, October 11, 2019, Burkman announced via Twitter that he and Wohl had scheduled a news conference for Monday, October 14. The press release stated that a purported illegal drug dealer would be presented, who would provide evidence that he sold illicit drugs to Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, House Sub-Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, and other unnamed members of Congress.[37] At the press conference, which was postponed until October 21, Burkman and Wohl unexpectedly focused on claims that Senator Ted Cruz was cheating on his wife, only briefly mentioning their previous claims about Pelosi, and not producing any alleged drug dealer as they had announced they would.[38]

Burkman claimed in January 2020 to have incriminating photographs of Adam Schiff engaged in sexual activity, a statement that earned Burkman attention among adherents to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory who already believed that Schiff had been engaged in nefarious activity at the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles.[39][40] The Daily Beast wrote that Burkman unsuccessfully attempted to launder the photographs through several publications before releasing them himself.[40] However, the three photographs eventually published by Burkman were blurry pornographic images "featuring a completely unrecognizable middle-age white man engaged in various gay sex acts".[40] A reverse image search revealed the photographs were generic pornography found via internet search.[39][40] This angered Burkman's newfound fanbase among QAnon conspiracy theorists, some of whom alleged that Burkman himself was a "deep state" actor working on Schiff's behalf to obfuscate the truth.[39][40]

Burkman heads the organization American Decency, a conservative organization that claims to have 3.62 million members, though this claim is unverified.[16] The organization drew media attention in 2014 when Burkman announced plans to protest the Dallas Cowboys' signing of Michael Sam, the first publicly gay player to be drafted in the NFL.[16][46][47] Burkman called for legislation that would prohibit homosexuals from playing in the NFL, though this proposed legislation was never formally introduced in the House of Representatives and never received a vote.[48]

Burkman started investigating the murder of Seth Rich in September 2016 after the Rich family accepted his pro bono public relations services.[49] The Rich family and Burkman held a joint press conference about the murder in November 2016.[49][50]

In January 2017, Burkman launched an advertising campaign in Northwest D.C. searching for information regarding Rich's death. This included billboard advertisements and canvassing with flyers.[51][52] In late February, Burkman started spreading conspiracy theories by telling media outlets that he had a lead that the Russian government was involved in Rich's death,[11] and the Rich family distanced itself from Burkman.[53] In March 2017, Burkman started "The Profiling Project", an independent investigative attempt to solve the murder of Seth Rich with help from forensics students at George Washington University.[54][55] He hired Kevin Doherty, a former U.S. Marine and special agent, to help with the project, although tensions developed when Burkman felt Doherty was speaking to reporters when he shouldn't have been and trying to take control of the project. In July 2017, Burkman fired Doherty and sent him a cease and desist letter. In March 2018, Doherty lured Burkman to a parking garage by claiming to have evidence of FBI misconduct.[10]

When Burkman arrived, Doherty shot him in the buttocks and thigh and hit him with an SUV, breaking Burkman's arm. Doherty was sentenced to nine years in prison.[10]

In late February 2020, Burkman and Wohl alleged that the jury that convicted Roger Stone, on seven felonies related to the Robert Mueller's Special Counsel investigation, was biased against him. In a press conference held on February 27, 2020, Burkman and Wohl distributed copies of confidential juror questionnaires, and they later published some of the questionnaires on Twitter. In September 2020, The Daily Beast reported that the FBI was investigating Burkman and Wohl for potentially attempting to influence the jurors or tamper with witnesses. The FBI is also investigating how the two obtained the questionnaires.[56]

In August 2020, a robocall campaign attempted to suppress votes in battleground areas, including Detroit and Pennsylvania.[57][1] The robocall campaign appeared to originate from Burkman's personal cell phone number, and the caller identified themselves as part of Burkman and Wohl's Project 1599.[57][1] The message disseminated the false claims that information provided by those who use mail-in ballots will be used by police to find criminals, by credit card companies for debt collection purposes, and by the CDC to "track people for mandatory vaccines". Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a tweet that they were not sure who was responsible for the robocalls, but that her office would collaborate with the Michigan Attorney General's office to identify and prosecute its creator. In a press release, Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel condemned the campaign as "racist" and as "an unconscionable, indefensible, blatant attempt to lie to citizens about their right to vote."[57] Wohl told The Associated Press that he and Burkman believed "leftist pranksters" had spoofed Burkman's phone number to make the phone calls, and threatened to sue Benson for defamation.[1]

On October 1, 2020, Nessel filed four felony charges each against Burkman and Wohl, including conspiring to intimidate voters in violation of election law and using a computer to commit the crimes. Nessel's investigation into the robocalls found that the two had attempted to suppress voters of color from voting in the 2020 presidential election via a robocall campaign that made 85,000 calls across the country, including 12,000 in Detroit. The week before the charges were filed, investigators searched Wohl's Los Angeles home.[1] Burkman and Wohl turned themselves in to Detroit police on October 8, 2020, and appeared for court remotely from the Detroit Detention Center.[58] Both pled not guilty, and their lawyers have argued that they were only exercising their rights to freedom of speech.[59] They each face up to 24 years in state prison if convicted.[59] An Ohio prosecutor is also considering possible additional charges against the pair for robocalls targeted at Ohioans, though no charges have yet been filed.[59] On October 16, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation filed a civil suit against Burkman and Wohl in New York, alleging that the two men violated the Voting Rights Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 by making the robocalls.[60] On October 28, a U.S. District Court Judge in New York ordered them to call back the targets of the robocall to tell them the information in their message was false and that the campaign was illegal. The judge also prohibited them from engaging in more robocalls or text message campaigns to attempt to disenfranchise voters.[61]

The Washington Post reported that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had executed a raid on Burkman's home on the morning of September 14, 2020. Wohl claimed that the agents had taken "all of Jack's files, computers and phones" from the home, which is also the headquarters of Burkman and Wohl's organization, Project 1599. By the afternoon of the same day, The Washington Post had updated their story to reflect that the raid had been staged. The Daily Beast discovered that Burkman and Wohl had again recruited actors on Craigslist to stage the raid, under the guise of recording a television show. The Daily Beast also reported that the Twitter account which published the photos of the raid was likely operated by Wohl.[5][62]