wohl of wal str

---

constant fails?

merri ok

===

an 12 24

The Michigan Court of Appeals on Friday upheld criminal charges against two far-right operatives who prosecutors say made a series of robocalls in the state during the 2020 election particularly targeting Black voters in Detroit.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that criminal charges had been filed against Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl back in 2020 after it had been found that the pair had made about 85,000 calls spreading misinformation and fear about voting across Midwestern states.

After hearing arguments concerning the case in November of 2023, the Michigan Supreme Court (MSC) supported assertions that Burkman and Wohl had utilized “corrupt means” and instructed the Court of Appeals to examine whether the pair’s actions violated state election laws.

The Michigan Supreme Court concluded in June of this year that the defendants attempted to deter Black metro Detroiters from participating in the 2020 election using the “immoral or depraved” method of spreading election misinformation, particularly for mail-in voting, using “racially based motives”.

“Defendants discussed their desire to “hi-jack this boring election” and arranged for the distribution of a robocall specifically to “black neighborhoods” with the call stating that the consequences of mail-in voting would include voter information being used by police departments to effectuate old warrants, by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts, and (potentially) by the CDC to support mandatory vaccination efforts,” the MSC wrote in its opinion in June.

In that opinion, the MSC ruled that the Court of Appeals needed to review whether Burkman and Wohl’s conduct violated Michigan law, specifically a section of election law pertaining to elector influence.

Michigan’s election laws say, “A person shall not attempt, by means of bribery, menace, or other corrupt means or device, either directly or indirectly, to influence an elector in giving his or her vote, or to deter the elector from, or interrupt the elector in giving his or her vote at any election held in this state.”

On Friday, the Michigan Court of Appeals found that because the calls directly pertained to misinformation about mail-in voting and promlegating false information in order to disrupt and deter Black voters in Michigan, they violate the law and Burkman and Wohl’s criminal charges stand.

“There can be no reasonable dispute that voting by mail is a voting procedure. That is, voting by mail is “a particular way of accomplishing” voting, which fits the definition of “procedure.” The robocall was related to the procedure, because it alleged that, if a voter used the voting procedure identified, certain negative events “will” occur,” Court of Appeals Judge Anica Letica wrote in the opinion.

In a dissenting opinion, Court of Appeals Judge James Redford argued that the robocalls did not pertain to voting requirements or procedures, but rather possible negative consequences of participating in absentee voting, so the court has not fulfilled the inquiries set out by the Michigan Supreme Court to uphold the charges.

Nessel applauded the court’s decision saying in a statement her office looks forward to the case being brought to trial.

“Voter intimidation infringes upon the fundamental right to vote,” Nessel said “I am grateful the Court of Appeals saw this conduct for what it was—a gross misrepresentation of voting procedures meant to scare voters from participating in our elections.”

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.

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an 2 24

In 2023, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman — an infamous team of far-right MAGA conspiracy theorists — faced legal consequences for racist robocalls aimed at Black voters during the 2020 election. Prosecutors described the robocalls as a blatant attempt at voter suppression, and after pleading guilty to a felony count telecommunications fraud, they were given two years of probation and fined $2500 each in November.}:

Now, according to the Daily Beast's Justin Rohrlich, Wohl and Burkman are facing an $11 million lawsuit from a Maryland-based attorney and U.S. Marines veteran who says they falsely accused him of sexual misconduct.

In an article published on February 6, Rohrlich reports that the attorney "claims his life fell apart after Wohl and Burkman falsely tarred him in a 2021 video as a child sex predator, according to an $11 million racketeering lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast."

"In the aftermath," Rohrlich explains, "the unidentified Maryland man was let go from his law firm, lost a paid internship at Johns Hopkins University, was thrown out by his landlord, and forced him into bankruptcy, the lawsuit states. 'John Doe' contends, in the suit, that Wohl and his co-defendant, soon-to-be-disbarred lawyer Jack Burkman, caused 'irreparable harm' by laying waste to his reputation, wrecking his ability to earn a living, and turning him into a 'critical casualty' of their 'ongoing, illegal scheme.'"

The hardships the attorney suffered, according to the lawsuit, stem from the online series "Predator D.C."

Wohl and Burkman, Rohrlich notes, have a long history of making false accusations.

"In the fetid swamp of far-right politics," Rohrlich reports, "two names are infamous for having unleashed a torrent of particularly ludicrous stunts, lies, and scams. Among other things, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have lobbed phony sexual misconduct claims at former FBI director and Trump-era special counsel Robert Mueller, recruited a young Trump supporter to smear then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg as a rapist, and floated a preposterous tale that Sen. Elizabeth Warren was carrying on a kinky, BDSM-imbued extramarital affair with a 24-year-old soldier later found to have exaggerated his service record."

Read the Daily Beast's full reportat this link (subscription required).*}:

---

June 7, 2023

SPLC: The Year in Hate & Extremism 2022.
Payton Armstrong @ Media Matters: Right-wing pastor Tom Ascol criticizes Ted Cruz for condemning Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ law and claims such laws are not “wrong” because God created them.
Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Trump ups the ante, condemns ‘fascists’ in U.S. law enforcement.
Nick Visser @ HuffPost: Tucker Carlson’s New Twitter Show, Seen By Millions, Starts With Conspiracy Theories.
David Covucci @ The Daily Dot: FCC officially fines Jacob Wohl $5 million for robocall scheme.
John Light @ Talking Points Memo: A Little Bit Of 2022 Déjà Vu In North Carolina?

Tags: Jacob Wohl Jenna Ellis Mark Robinson Tom Ascol Tucker Carlson Round-Up

---

an 11 22

During the 2020 election, the team of Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman — two far-right MAGA activists and conspiracy theorists known for their underhanded stunts — were behind racist robocalls aimed at African-American voters. The robocalls, according to prosecutors, were a blatant attempt at voter suppression, trying to convince Black voters that if they voted by mail, the information they provided could lead to legal consequences for unpaid debts.

But Wohl and Burkman were the ones who ended up facing legal consequences. In late October, both of them pled guilty to a felony count of telecommunications fraud. And on Tuesday, November 29, a sentence was handed down in Ohio by Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge John Sutula.

Sutula, according to Cleveland.com reporter Cory Shaffer, “placed” Wohl and Burkman “on two years of probation, fined each $2500 and ordered them to wear GPS ankle monitors with home confinement beginning at 8 p.m. each day for the first six months of their probation.” And they will be required to “spend 500 hours registering voters in low-income neighborhoods in the Washington, D.C., area,” Shaffer reports.

The 71-year-old judge had scathing criticism for Wohl and Burkman, telling the MAGA Republicans, “I think it’s a despicable thing that you guys have done” and comparing their racist robocalls of 2020 to efforts to bully and intimidate African-American voters during the 1960s.

Sutula’s ruling was strictly for a case in Ohio. Wohl and Burkman have also been facing criminal charges in Michigan and a civil lawsuit in New York State in connection with their racist robocalls of 2020.

Wohl and Burkman weren’t physically present in Judge Sutula’s courtroom in Ohio, but rather, attended the hearing online. And Wohl told Sutula, “I just really want to express my absolute regret and shame over all of this.” Both of them could have been sentenced to up to a year in prison for telecommunications fraud in the Ohio case.

Shaffer notes, “The charge is connected to thousands of robocalls placed in Cleveland in the run-up to the 2020 election between then-President Donald Trump and the Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. The robocalls came at a time when states across the country had expanded the use of mail-in voting as a protective measure during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pair gained notoriety in recent years by throwing press conferences to levy phony sexual misconduct allegations against prominent Democrats and Republicans who are critical of former President Donald Trump. They are also charged in Michigan and are being sued by a civil rights organization in federal court in New York over the same robocalls.”

---

all pickups?

no lnx twt pix

Camped outside DC, uneasy truckers paralyzed by paranoia vow to stay until demands met

Image via Screengrab.

Jordan Green and Raw Story March 06, 2022

HAGERSTOWN, Md. — Thousands of angry conservative supporters of the truckers convoy rallied at a speedway in rural Maryland 60 miles outside of the Capital Beltway on Saturday evening, torn between the imperative for militant action to reject COVID measures and the recognition that disruption will likely result in legal repercussions.

Addressing supporters filling the stands at Hagerstown Speedway, organizer Brian Brase said leaders “are currently right now working on another location that when we move to puts us within just a few miles of the Beltway,” while imploring them not to go into the District of Columbia.

“They are waiting for us to show up, and it’s a trap,” [Adm Akbar], Brase said.

Brase said organizers expected to hold meetings with members of Congress at the new location near the Beltway, adding, “We will not leave until we get what we ask for.” He listed a number of demands that are unlikely to be met by the current Congress under Democratic leadership, but will likely provide talking points for the Republicans’ goal of regaining control of the legislative branch during this year’s midterm elections.

“That’s why we don’t go anywhere, sir, until they actually start to do something,” Brase said, responding to a man who shouted out that lawmakers are “liars.” “That’s why we sit there in their backyard and we wait until they legitimately drop the state of emergency, they drop the vaccine mandates, and they begin the process of bipartisan investigations… to find out the transparent version of the pandemic’s origins, and ask who is responsible for screwing this up so badly.”

From a practical standpoint, Brase urged rallygoers to extend their hotel stays in Hagerstown through Sunday night. During his speech, Brase invited supporters to a meeting at the speedway at 8 a.m. on Sunday to discuss plans for the day. The Washington Post reported late Saturday that Brase told the newspaper the convoy will circle the Beltway twice on Sunday; Brase did not mention the plan during his remarks at the speedway on Saturday evening.

The leadership of the convoy is not unanimous on the tactical decision to stay out of the District of Columbia.

Before Brase pleaded with supporters to stay out of DC, another organizer, Mike Landis vowed: “My truck with that flag will go down Constitution Avenue.” In response, the crowd broke into a chant of “USA! USA! USA!”

Leigh Dundas, an antivaccination lawyer who played a key role in assembling the convoy, also warned against going into DC in a statement issued on Saturday. On March 3, an admin for the People’s Convoy posted a statement on the official Telegram channel indicating that the group had “cut ties” with Dundas’ organization, Freedom Fighter Nation, and would “no longer be affiliated with” her. The statement also said, “We only have like-minded individuals in our organization and are continually rooting out people that do not have the best interest of the convoy in mind.”

In a statement posted on the Freedom Fighter Nation website on Saturday that appears to replicate a letter sent from Dundas to Brase, Landis and two other organizers, Dundas wrote: “Gentlemen, I feel it is my duty to reiterate to you that to the extent that you are participating in a convoy whose final destination is Washington, DC proper, the Beltway, or areas quite proximal to these destinations or roadways, you are making an immeasurable mistake. The goodwill and strength of the message that has been built will be eviscerated, and more importantly, shutting down transportation routes whether intentionally or accidentally in the Washington, DC area will undoubtedly put people’s lives in danger.”

A note attached to the statement indicated that the letter was written in the late evening of March 2 and early morning hours of March 3 “after receipt of information,” but was not sent to the organizers until March 4 — after the People’s Convoy had officially cut ties with her.

“Any escalation of a situation between the People’s Convoy (and other participants) and law enforcement agencies and/or the National Guard (should any escalation occur), could rapidly proceed to harrowing proportions, and leave a lasting stain on this movement and you gentlemen in particular,” the statement continued.

The statement authored by Dundas on the Freedom Fighter Nation is also attributed to Ray Alexander, who is described as a “former Naval commander.” According to a footnote attached to the statement, Alexander “did briefly continue onward volunteering his time as the advance team (between Wednesday evening and this Friday morning), in an effort to transfer the baton smoothly on the logistics and venue-sourcing front.”

Adding further confusion about the alleged differences that led to the parting, Dundas’ personal assistant, Maureen Steele, has remained involved with the convoy, and spoke at the rally at Hagerstown Speedway on Saturday evening.

Josh Yoder, an airline pilot who has been speaking at the nightly rallies held by the People’s Convoy, also cautioned against going into DC.

“I can tell you that right now as I speak there are traps being laid in DC,” Yoder said during the rally on Saturday evening. “I’ve been on the phone today with federal agents in DC. And I am pleading with all of you: We cannot go into the District of Columbia. It cannot happen. They are telling me anyone who comes in there with the convoy is probably going to be detained. There’s going to be big problems. I’m asking you: Please keep this peaceful. Keep it law-abiding. And do not go into the District of Columbia. I’m begging you.”

Organizers are also worried about bad actors within their own ranks. On Saturday afternoon, right-wing provocateurs Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were kicked out of the speedway grounds after trying to mobilize people to go to DC that day.

“Right now we need to stand together even more than we have this entire journey,” Brase said during the rally on Saturday evening. “It starts with policing ourselves. There are many here tonight that probably shouldn’t be here, if you know what I mean. Those of you that are here that fall in that category, you know exactly who you are. But guess what? So do I.”

With COVID restrictions easing as case counts drop, the complaints voiced by convoy participants have expanded into a full panoply of conservative grievances, including anger about inflation, opposition to government overreach in general, and lack of faith in President Biden’s leadership on foreign policy.

In a segment for former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast, a trucker identified as “Stan” said the convoy participants want to go back to an earlier time that was somehow more free.

“Things that have happened in this country in the last year — we just want to go back to the way it was before the COVID stuff,” Stan said. “Personally, me, I’d like to go back before 9/11, the Patriot Act. Things like that. It’s just verytyrannical type stuff. It’s government overreach. And that’s what we’re all about. Sure, the mask things and the shots and all this, they’re the… easy thing to talk about, but it’s all the other things behind the scenes…. We have freedom. They’re trying to take it away, and we’re gonna stop ’em. We’re gonna take our freedom back to where it was before.”

Following the speeches at the speedway, supporters retreated to the parking lot where they prepared to unfurl a giant American flag. The air was charged with anger and celebration as a row of rigs revved their engines and blasted their horns,with fireworks streaking into the sky. Supporters facing the rigs enthusiastically waved signs and chanted, “Let’s go Brandon,” a euphemism for “F*ck Joe Biden.”

Near the entrance to the speedway, a young man held up a cell phone and filmed the scene, exclaiming, “There must be thousands of people here. This is what it looks like when America stands up.”

Vehicles were scattered around the parking lot in random configurations as rallygoers held cell phones aloft in the dark to record the spectacle. A volunteer directing traffic at the entrance yelled angrily at a van driver attempting to leave the premises and at a man driving a flatbed truck who was attempting to turn into the driveway. Both failed to heed directions before eventually yielding. Pickup trucks sped down National Pike, a two-lane highway, with flags fluttering in the wind, as pedestrians carefully picked their way along the shoulder packed with cars.

A young man from a truck called out, “F*ck you, Biden!”

It was a cheerful greeting to compatriots, albeit strangers, and the throng of people walking to their cars responded in kind, hooting in agreement.

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/stop-the-steal/

In January 2013, a 26-year-old right-wing blogger named Ali Akbar joined the campaign of Curtis Bostic, a former Charleston, South Carolina, city councilman and Tea Party conservative who was running against disgraced former governor Mark Sanford in a Republican congressional primary. Bostic narrowly lost to Sanford (who served two more terms in the House before getting primaried out in 2018), and the campaign disassociated itself from Akbar, whose history as a convicted felon and hack political operative had caught up with him once again.

But over those first three months of 2013, Akbar — now known to the world as Ali Alexander, architect of the 2020 Stop the Steal movement — befriended the candidate's son, Daniel Bostic, then a 20-year-old aspiring model and actor who over the next eight years would partner with Ali in a number of failed ventures, including a cryptocurrency project, a listless consulting agency, a defunct MAGA gossip blog, and a scam donation project created with right-wing trolls Jacob Wohl and Laura Loomer. The partnership's lasting contribution to the world, however, came earlier this month, when the massive pro-Trump rally they organized on the National Mall on Jan. 6 turned into a violent siege of the U.S. Capitol, defiling the seat of American democracy and leaving half a dozen people dead, including two police officers.

Back in 2013, Akbar (as he was then known), a fast-talking aspiring strategist from the Dallas-Fort Worth region, had been casting about for a new gig after Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential bid failed, taking with it his own efforts to make inroads with mainstream Republicans. Conservatives had grown increasingly wary of Akbar's felony fraud convictions and other allegations of improper conduct, such as asking donors for personal information. Akbar's political journalism project, known as National Bloggers Club, was struggling, too, after its founder's history and conduct created complications for top advisers to the Romney campaign. (Akbar was first anti-Romney and then pro-Romney.) He claimed the site was a nonprofit but apparently never registered it as such with the IRS. Its current status is "revoked," according to federal tax records.

"Akbar was a Libertarian, a Reagan conservative, and a Tea Party journo all at the same time," said freelance reporter Ron Brynaert, whose complicated history with Akbar/Alexander stretches back more than a decade. "He's always been a delusional liar with a messiah complex, who talks out of both sides of his mouth and contradicts himself."

Akbar's work with the Bostic campaign focused on boosting name recognition through social media, including creating a hashtag that got a shout-out from former Republican senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who had co-sponsored Akbar's CPAC "Blog Bash" parties two years in a row and flew in to campaign with Bostic for a day. Bostic did see a surge, but it was too little too late — Slate awarded the campaign its "social media fail of the week" during the primary, specifically citing one of Akbar's sites, ViralRead.com, as having become "a one-stop shop for #SC01 news, with a jaundiced view of Sanford."

Notably, Akbar also created a since-deleted donations landing page "paid for by the committee to elect Curtis Bostic," which was quite likely illegal, since the campaign denied ever officially hiring the convicted felon. After Bostic's primary defeat, the campaign dismissed Akbar in the press as an overzealous volunteer.

But Akbar had grown close with Daniel Bostic, who had a certificate in theology from Appalachian Bible College and a few months experience as staff assistant to then-Rep. Tim Scott, R-S.C., now the state's junior senator. Bostic yearned to be a professional actor, but had landed only done a few regional ads for American Eagle and Nokia and some local short films, along with an extra role in an episode of "Army Wives," which he described as something of a formative experience.

Akbar's online footprint dries up a bit after Curtis Bostic's defeat, but he re-entered the political sphere in 2014, with a hybrid PAC called the Black Conservatives Fund, which took in $150,000 from right-wing financier Robert Mercer. But for much of that spring and summer, it seems that Akbar devoted much of his time to helping Daniel Bostic convince people that he was a celebrity with a rabid, obsessive fan base.

Operation Bostic involved a coordinated lineup of fake Twitter fan accounts promoting a number of blog sites, interviews and press releases with Bostic fan content, which Bostic and Akbar most likely either commissioned or created themselves. The profile of one Twitter account, "Daniel's Lover," links out to a Wordpress site called Daniel Bostic Daily, which the account would regularly promote in hundreds of tweets at a time, drawing hardly any response from the larger world. One tweet from May 29, 2013 ("Fans are CRAZY about Daniel's Twitter!") tags Akbar's Twitter account and links to a Daniel Bostic Daily entry that itself quotes a since-deleted tweet from Akbar:

Few folks have the honest joy that @debostic has. It's fun to watch happy positive people online.

— Ali A. Akbar (@ali) May 28, 2013

Three days later, the same blog published another entry titled, "Euphoria for Ladies — Daniel Bostic posted a shirtless picture and became an Instagram sensation," which features said shirtless selfie and a quote about it from a website called Viral Read.

The news site VIRAL READ had this to say:

Walking the fine line between #hotmess and #hotness, Bostic wins the day and lands gracefully in the hotness column. Who knew this skinny kid had this hiding under his bro-tanks? He's the eventual celebrity you'll love to hate and we intend on watching him closely. All of him.

The now-defunct Viral Read was one of Akbar's blog sites, which named controversial right-wing blogger Robert Stacy McCain as editor-in-chief on March 13, 2013, while Akbar was working in South Carolina. The Viral Read article on Bostic from May is similarly titled "Daniel Bostic, Hotness or Hotmess?" and begins like this:

ViralRead was first introduced to the young actor, Daniel Bostic, during a special election run-off in April where his father, Curtis Bostic was up against now-Congressman Mark Sanford. Our Publisher and Editor even traveled down to the lowcountry district. Sadly, they came back with zero pictures of him. Epic fail.

Other Bostic fan sites include "Bostiholics," which migrated from the "allwewantisdaniel" blogspot site. "We are here for one reason and one reason alone," reads the Bostiholics tag line. "We are OBSESSED with Daniel Bostic." Other Twitter accounts include Dan Bostic Is Life and Dan Bostic Daily. It also seems that Akbar helped place Daniel-centric content in other outlets around that same time. In March 2013 alone, as Curtis Bostic was waging a vigorous campaign, posts about his fake celebrity son appeared on sites called Jakes Take, Daily Entertainment News and Entertainment Worlds, as well as in a Newswire press release titled, "Born To Be Distinguished, Daniel Bostic Has Made A Huge Difference In The World Of Acting."

"Being young has not deterred this young actor from climbing heights in this intricate acting career," the release says, then lists "exciting films" in which he has "made headlines": "From Darkness into Light," "Gone for the Day," "Crash" (no, not that "Crash"), "Secrets in the Fall." The release also says Bostic "is much into politics" and "a proud certified black belt Tae-Kwon-Do." His LinkedIn and IMDb pages boast of the 2008 black belt, but for the art of karate.

Two months later, Bostic featured in another Newswire press release, titled, "Bostic Calls on His Fans to Support Oklahoma Tornado Victims." The release is attributed to Marti Youngue, and gives a phone number and address. The address is Curtis Bostic's law firm, but the phone number belongs to Marti Young, former owner of a Nashville agency called Illuminating Talent, which at one point represented Daniel Bostic. Presented with the press release, Young told Salon in a text message, "Wow that's the first time I ever saw this."

While the extent of Akbar's involvement in Bostic content creation is unclear, his prints appear to be on some of the self-promoting replies, including those aimed Dana Loesch and Michelle Malkin, who were relatively obscure at the time but would go on to become big names in right-wing political circles.

By 2014, however, Akbar had moved on from South Carolina's low country, landing himself a consulting gig in Louisiana with his new Mercer-backed PAC, the Black Conservatives Fund. According to investigative journalist Lamar White Jr., this PAC was mostly a proxy for former Louisiana State Sen. Elbert Guillory, who at the time was putting together an ultimately unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor. CNBC reported the PAC distributed money that year to a handful of successful Black conservative candidates, including Rep. Mia Love of Utah, as well as Bostic's former boss Tim Scott, who won South Carolina's special election to the Senate in 2014.

Bostic in the meantime attended Anderson University, a private Christian school with both online and in-person degrees, eventually earning a BS in international business, according to his LinkedIn page. He appears to have done some political blogging, identifying as a never-Trumper in 2016 and becoming one of the few donors to former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's ill-fated presidential campaign.

Politico reported in 2018 that a PAC advised by Akbar had accepted $60,000 from Mercer just before the 2016 presidential election. After Trump's victory, Akbar popped up again amid the Unite the Right controversy, and in 2018 tried to help kickstart a Trump-centric alternative to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) called the American Priority Conference, which collapsed in short order.

After that defeat, Alexander (having dumped his original surname at some point) teamed up with longtime Trump confidant Roger Stone, who first conceived of the Stop the Steal movement — which, believe it or not, did not originate with the 2020 election. The name and the "movement" began with the 2018 midterms, and specifically with the Florida U.S. Senate campaign in which then-Gov. Rick Scott narrowly defeated incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. That was whenRoger Stone launched the group as a kind of tribute or coda to his infamous "Brooks Brothers riot" during the Florida recount of 2000.

Alexander signed on to work for the "Stop the Steal" campaign, which was aimed at locking down Scott's victory over Nelson. In a Periscope, as reported in Right Wing Watch, Alexander said he hoped to motivate not just Republicans, but QAnon followers, Democrats and "homeless people in all the adjacent counties" to keep an eye on the vote count in Broward County.

"Ali Alexander is a noxious political activist who often animates extremist groups and individuals to fulfill his activism goals," Jared Holt, journalist and expert in domestic extremism, told Salon. "Political groups and organizations that have turned to him for his work should be embarrassed and ashamed. The fact that he has a molecule of influence in GOP organizing is a damning indictment of the priorities of pro-Trump politics."

Alexander has associated with a number of young pro-Trump flunkies who would also seem to fit Holt's description, as with his aforementioned ill-fated 2019 joint venture in Minneapolis with right-wing personality Laura Loomer and the recently-indicted Jacob Wohl.

That scam also involved Daniel Bostic. Alexander, Loomer and Wohl directed donations to a company called Cystra Ventures Ltd., which had been created in Bostic's name just three weeks before the group met up in Minnesota. Cystra Ventures is apparently held under Cystra LLC, Bostic's "consulting company," whose website doesn't work (this archived version does) but which received $14,477 in federal coronavirus small business loans this spring — after much apparent consternation on Bostic's part.

Cystra appears to have been designed to get Bostic and Alexander in the cryptocurrency game. In late June 2017, less than two months before Unite the Right in Charlottesville, Alexander and Bostic teamed up to pitch a new cryptocurrency "focused heavily on free speech." According to thepitch, the coin would be "a medium of exchange for individuals who value free speech above all else," and would be exchanged on the Crown platform, based on the Dash network. "Our project will feature no pre-mine and a decentralized governance with the sole goal of promoting free speech," they claimed.

Nothing came of this venture, shockingly, but the duo were back at it in 2018, cranking out a series of pitching the Crown crypto platform, whose "overarching goal is to build a community ofdedicated users who maintain a free, legally compliant, open-access and decentralized sandbox economy." Nothing came of that, either.

Then in 2019, Alexander launched a tabloid called Culttture, a right-wing organ that employed a handful of writers to write breathless gossip about MAGA-world's second-string celebs, often plugging Alexander's tweets and videos in the course of the day. The site's homepage took a hiatus the next spring, however, citing the coronavirus pandemic ("China's virus") for the need to "simplify." Although the homepage still promises a steady stream of content, that promise appears not to have materialized. Twitter suspended Culttture's account when it suspended Alexander, on Jan. 10. Bostic had claimed on his Twitter profile to be a "lead at Culttture," but deleted that sometime after Jan. 9.

Alexander also still retains control over the Black Conservatives Fund, and the group regularly promoted Stop the Steal rallies to its more than 80,000 Facebook followers. One post ahead of the Jan. 6 riots read: "D.C. becomes FORT TRUMP starting today. Fight to #StopTheSteal with President Trump." It then listed rally locations, including at the Capitol building. That post disappeared from the Facebook page after an inquiry from CNBC.

That PAC's treasurer, Patrick Krason, also happens to be treasurer for Stop the Steal PAC— the group that initially registered in November with Bostic as designated agent. During the two months prior to the riot, Bostic, who also listed himself as the media contact for Stop the Steal, helped organize rallies and sometimes addressed crowds briefly himself.

On Jan. 6, Bostic was in Washington with Alexander. The two can be clearly identified in video clips climbing the Capitol steps with Alex Jones.After the violence, Bostic tweeted, "This could've all been avoided if we were shown signatures and allowed to audit our elections. You cannot expect elections to be conducted in secret without repercussions. I do not in any way endorse violence, but path has been traversed time and time again throughout history."

Two days after the attack, Bostic's name was removed from the Stop the Steal PAC's statement of organization. Bostic told Salon that "some answers are too long for Twitter," adding that "you have slandered me, my friends, all to meet your monthly ad revenue quota."

Salon then asked Krason, the PAC's treasurer who manages compliance for a number of political committees, why Bostic was no longer a listed agent. Krason outlined a complex but somewhat plausible scenario in which he had to change bank accounts. Krason would not say what role, if any, Bostic had played in that well-timed change, and would not say whether Bostic had asked to remove his name, or why he had been listed as an agent to begin with.

After Alexander went into hiding, apparently concerned about the authorities, Bostic at first made his Twitter account private. He reopened it again this past Friday, having deleted all tweets prior to Jan. 5 (except for a New Year's Eve post), as well as a number of tweets from Jan. 6, the day of the riot, including one that called Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer "evil" for posting an image of a Stacey Abrams votive candle. Bostic has also removed two tweets that appeared to show live-streamed video which he had captioned "Storming the Capitol." Those tweets are archived here and here, but the media files appear inaccessible. He did, however post that the chants of "Stop the Steal" that day were "indescribable."

That refrain, believe it or not, can be traced all the way back to the apparent ears beginning of Bostic and Alexander's relationship. One of the first tweets from the "Daniel's Lover" fan account is a retweet of an uncannily prescient post from Curtis Bostic, Daniel's dad, whose underdog campaign had just hired Akbar, perhaps unofficially.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin

10:47 AM · Jan 22, 2013·Twitter for iPhone

Alexander could not immediately be reached for comment.

---

one of few time aside from watergate that dt punished?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/right-wing-fraudsters-jacob-wohl-and-jack-burkman-hit-with-15-new-felony-charges-day-after-testifying-in-related-case/

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Tierney Sneed @ Talking Points Memo: Judge Sets $100,000 Bail For Hoaxsters Facing Charges For Bogus Vote-By-Mail Robocalls.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/right-wing-fraudsters-jacob-wohl-and-jack-burkman-get-criminally-charged-in-election-conspiracy

Right-wing smear artists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman will face four counts in an alleged criminal scheme to influence the 2020 election after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed charges on Thursday.

Nessel accused the pair of intimidating voters, conspiring to break election law, using a computer to commit an election crime, and using a computer to carry out a conspiracy.

The charges center on a robocall scheme the Nessel said was an attempt to "discourage voters from participating in the general election." According to the press release, the scheme targeted urban areas, including Detroit, and was focused on "areas with significant minority populations."

Wohl previously denied to CNN that he or Burkman were involved in any robocall schemes.

"It's believed around 85,000 calls were made nationally, though an exact breakdown of the numbers of calls to each city or state are not available," according to Nessel's office. Similar robocalls reportedly were made in New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, the last two of which are swing states in the presidential election.

The robocall allegedly attempted to make voters afraid to cast their ballots, telling them to not be "finessed into giving your private information to the man" [JOK SUPERFLY PIMP STRIKES AGAIN] and that they should "beware of vote by mail." The press release explained:

The caller, who claims to be associated with an organization founded by Burkman and Wohl, falsely tells people that mail-in voting, in particular, will allow personal information to become part of a special database used by police to track down old warrants and by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts. The caller also deceptively claims the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will use the information to track people for mandatory vaccines. However, none of that is true.

"This effort specifically targeted minority voters in an attempt to deter them from voting in the November election," said Nessel. "We're all well aware of the frustrations caused by the millions of nuisance robocalls flooding our cell phones and landlines each day, but this particular message poses grave consequences for our democracy and the principles upon which it was built."

Burkman and Wohl have made themselves notorious with a series of stunts that included trying to smear former Special Counsel Robert Mueller and former Mayor Pete Buttigieg with bogus and sexual assault allegations.

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https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-political-operatives-jack-burkman-and-jacob-wohl-target-black-voters-with-robocalls-disinformation/

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Burkman

jack Burkman (born 1965 or 1966^[1]) is an American conservative lobbyist and conspiracy theorist.^[3][4][5] Burkman has been involved, along with far-right conspiracy theorist Jacob Wohl, in multiple plots that attempted to frame public figures for fictitious sexual assaults, including in October 2018 against U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in April 2019 against 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, and in April 2020 against White House Coronavirus Task Force member Anthony Fauci.^[6][7][8][9] Burkman was also involved in spreading conspiracy theories about the 2016 murder of Seth Rich, and in 2017 Burkman was shot in the buttocks and thigh and hit with a car by a man he had hired to assist him in an independent attempt to solve Rich's murder.^[10][11] Burkman drew significant media attention in 2014 for organizing a protest against the Dallas Cowboys of the NFL after the team signed Michael Sam, an openly gay football player, to its practice squad.^[12][13][14]

Burkman is the president of the lobbying firm J.M. Burkman & Associates and the head of the conservative organization American Decency.^[15][16] He is the host of the Behind the Curtain podcast and radio talk show.^[4][17]

Life and education[

Burkman was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[2] He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1988, and in 1992 graduated with a M.S. from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center.^[2][18] Burkman lives in Arlington, Virginia in a home that doubles as the headquarters of his and Wohl's organization, Project 1599.^[2][19]

Attempts to frame political figures[

Robert Mueller[

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.^[20] 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."^[21][22][23]

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.^[24] 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.^[25][26]

Pete Buttigieg[

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][27][28][29]}

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][27]

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.^[30] 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.^[31] However, Wohl denied involvement in creating the event page. Eventbrite later took down the event page citing their rules against "inauthentic content".^[30]

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.^[32]

Anthony Fauci[e

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.^[33] 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]

Others[

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 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".^[34]

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.^[35]

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.^[36] At the press conference, which was postponed until October 21, Burkman and Wohlunexpectedly focused on claims that SenatorTed Cruzwas 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.^[37]

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-rightQAnon conspiracy theorywho already believed that Schiff had been engaged in nefarious activity at the Standard Hotel in Los Angeles.^[38][39] The Daily Beast wrote that Burkman unsuccessfully attempted to launder the photographs through several publications before releasing them himself.^[39] 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".^[39] Areverse image search revealed the photographs were generic pornography found via internet search.^[38][39]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.^[38][39]

Other activities[

In June 2016, Burkman held an event called "Lobbyists for Trump" and invited all major lobbyists of Washington, D.C. to help raise money for Donald Trump's presidential campaign.^[40][41] In July 2016, he helped fundraise for Free the Delegates, an anti-Trump effort to change the delegate rules for the 2016 Republican National Convention.^[42]

In October 2019, Wohl and Burkman announced they would investigate any rumors about candidates in the 2020 presidential election as a part of an effort they called "Project 1599." Any candidates they fully vet, they said, would receive the "Burkman-Wohl Seal of Approval."^[43]

On March 19, 2020, Twitter permanently suspended Burkman's account after he tweeted unevidenced claims about impending nationwide food shortages due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A Twitter spokesperson said the account had been suspended for repeated infractions of Twitter rules, including making false statements about COVID-19.^[44]

American Decency[

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 toprotest the Dallas Cowboys' signing of Michael Sam, the first publicly gay player to be drafted in the NFL.^[16][45][46] 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.^[47]

Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory[

Burkman started investigating the murder of Seth Rich in September 2016 after the Rich family accepted his pro bono public relations services.^[48] The Rich family and Burkman held a joint press conference about the murder in November 2016.^[48][49]

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.^[50][51] 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.^[52]

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.^[53][54] 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]

Roger Stone jury[

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.^[55]

Voter suppression robocall[

In August 2020, a robocall campaign attempted to suppress votes in battleground areas, including Detroit and Pennsylvania.^[56][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.^[56][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."^[56] 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]

Staged FBI raid[WHY?]

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][57]

Reference

https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/the-tale-of-a-right-wing-scam-artists-downward-trajectory

no lnx vod?

tale of a right-wing scam artist’s downward trajectory

Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon June 5, 2020

I didn’t want to report this in the first person, but here we are.

Last week I received a press release from right-wing internet troll Jacob Wohl and his decades-older partner, conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman, announcing a stunt so outlandish it did not come close to the level of publication. I could track down only one other journalist who received the press release, and no one wrote about it.

Is there a common denominator? There is. In recent weeks, that other journalist, Jared Holt, and I have both published articles about Wohl’s looming trial for criminal securities fraud in California, as well as his liability for non-payment on a 2017 judgment in Arizona, which also involved securities violations.

Wohl and a former business partner pleaded not guilty to two counts of securities fraud this February in front of a judge in Riverside, California. Their trial has been extensively delayed, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

Additionally, the Arizona Corporation Commission — in conjunction with the Arizona attorney general’s office and legal counsel in California — is actively pursuing Wohl with regards to the $43,000 he still owes the state.

After I posted the second story to Twitter, a user comment pointed me to a since-deleted tweet from a woman named Kristin, who claimed to have worked with Wohl and Burkman on some of their infamously hapless public defamation stunts in the past.

For those unfamiliar with this sordid history, Wohl and Burkman have convinced, coerced and/or paid a number of real people to accuse their political enemies du jour of wrongdoing, most often in the form of absurd acts of sexual impropriety or assault in hotel rooms.

For instance, they accused former special counsel Robert Mueller of raping a woman in a New York hotel room in 2010. They claimed that Sen. Elizabeth Warren had carried on a BDSM-flavored extramarital affair with a young Marine in a Massachusetts Hilton in August 2018. They tricked a young man into signing an affidavit claiming that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg sexually assaulted him at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in 2019, an allegation the young man immediately recanted, saying that Wohl and Burkman had deceived him.

Most recently the duo appears to have paid a young woman thousands of dollars to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 79-year-old head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of sexually assaulting her in a Baltimore hotel room in 2014.

Fabrications not confined to hotel rooms include Nancy Pelosi’s Percocet addiction and Sen. Ted Cruz’s “swinger” lifestyle.

None of those accusations, or any of the others, bear any known relationship to reality. Here’s a detailed rundown.link

But “Kristin,” the Twitter account, claimed that this rolling smear campaign was just a reality show. What’s more, they had actually recruited her, Kristin said, though she did not actually participate in any Wohl-Burkman scams.

In one tweet, Kristin wrote, “I have nothing but good things to say about them (and everything was platonic and I was treated well). People shouldn’t judge this girl for backing out because it’s a scary thing to do, nor should they make assumptions about Wohl and Burkman’s intentions.”

Kristin’s Twitter bio described her as a “Model, mom and paralegal. Marylander for life:)”. She had only one follower, and followed about 50 accounts, mostly right-wing media and political figures, including Jacob Wohl’s father, David.

Lo and behold, she had left her direct messages open, allowing anyone to contact her.

At this point I was already about 110% sure that Kristin was actually Jacob Wohl. I reached out.

“Can I get back to you on this?” Kristin replied.

“Sure,” I said. “When’s a good time, do you think?”

“As soon as I figure out how I’m going to handle everything,” she said.

“OK,” I responded. “Let me know.”

I didn’t hear anything until the next day, when Kristin returned to say, “OK, I’ll talk with you. Do you have a number? I had to talk with my lawyers first and decide if I should come out with everything.”

Kristin gave me her number, but I hadn’t seen the new messages. She found my phone number online and called me that night — definitely a woman’s voice. I couldn’t talk, but we set another time.

My wife is a politics hound who also follows Wohl, so I thought she’d get a kick out of this strange tale. I assumed, egotistically, that the whole thing was some weird Wohlian attempt to sting me or weave me into their next farce.

When she saw Kristin’s profile picture, though, her mouth dropped: My wife knew Kristin, who was a real person. They both went to suburban Maryland high schools and had 53 Facebook friends in common, including her closest friends.

Kristin’s full name is Kristin Spealman, and her Twitter bio is accurate: She’s a single mom, a model and paralegal living in Maryland. At various points, she has also been Nancy Pelosi’s drug dealer and Ted Cruz’s concubine.

Spealman told me in a phone call that Burkman cold-called her last September, havingfound her through a local modeling agency.

“He said he worked with Spike TV,” she said. “He said he wanted to meet me. He wanted to talk about this reality show.”

Spealman said she agreed to meet Burkman and Wohl for dinner and drinks at Morton’s Steakhouse in Bethesda, Maryland. Burkman sent a limo. Spealman said she had filet mignon, Burkman had salmon, and Jacob, at the time on a carnivore diet he has since abandoned, had a porterhouse steak — “and gave me his asparagus.”

“We all drank a bit,” she added. Burkman paid with an American Express “Black” card, she said.

At that dinner, Burkman seemed in charge. “I thought Jacob was Jack’s intern at first,” she said. “Just the way he was ordering the limos, stuff like that.” (Spealman shared pictures of what she characterized as her contemporaneous notes, with a ? under the name “Jacob.”)

“There are only like four good-looking girls in D.C.,” she recalls Burkman saying to her. “They were saying they wanted to make me the star of season one of their new reality show.”

The show, she said, would be called“Project 1599,” the street number of Burkman’s home in Arlington, Virginia.The moniker is also his apparently now-prohibited Twitter handle. Burkman was suspended from the site earlier this year for spreading harmful misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. Wohl’s official account was suspended what feels like ages ago.

“Project 1599,” she said, was to be billed as something like a sensationalized political version of the celebrity prank show “Punk’d.” They told her it would air on Spike TV, a network that no longer existed at the time — it had disappeared the year before and re-emerged as the Paramount Network.

(Project 1599 was also the name of the entity that emailed me the recent press release.)

Spealman recalled that Burkman told her she stood to make between $200,000 and $300,000 for season one of Project 1599, which would be released in January 2020. She pointed out that if she became a big star, she would be useless as an incognito prankster. They told her they’d film everything beforehand.

It isn’t insane to entertain the idea that Wohl and Burkman at one point might have had something going at some level with someone at the Paramount Network. They made this same pitch about Spike TV to another recruit. Their accusations against political figures are so ridiculous, and their press conferences so clownish and cheekily scripted, that it seems like reality TV already. They’re clearly in on the joke, on some level.

On another level, of course, there’s no joke for anybody to be “in on.”

At any rate, Spealman signed on. The trio met a few more times, always in the D.C. area and, perhaps in keeping — consciously or otherwise — with a running theme of the smears, always in hotel rooms. Wohl, she said, had a room that he liked at the W. But there were no more meals, she says, only vodka drinks, which were always provided at those afternoon meet-ups.

“Jacob did more of the talking after that,” she said. “And the story soon became that I would come out and say that I was selling painkillers to Nancy Pelosi.”

“I was shocked,” Spealman said. “I was like, ‘Look, I thought this was a different kind of show.’ They asked me to lose weight, to get down to 96 pounds — I’m 103, but they wanted me down to 96, to do talk shows like Ellen DeGeneres.”

Spealman’s idea of stardom was not to appear at a press conference falsely claiming to have sold lethal doses of opioids to the 79-year-old speaker of the House. Burkman offered to talk to any judges for her, should any lawsuits ensue, but she declined.

“That’s when they changed it to the affair with Ted Cruz,” she said. “Which I was also supposed to do.”

They picked Cruz, she said, because the purported reality show’s purported producers wanted to make sure the attacks were not all against Democrats.

“I have lawyers,” Spealman said. “My friends are lawyers, I am a part-time paralegal. I was worried about lawsuits, you know? I expressed that to them and they said ‘This is political satire. If you really feel uncomfortable, in a few weeks you can just come out and say this was all a fake thing.'”

“They said it was performance art,” she said. “So it’s free speech.”

To assure her, she said, Wohl and Burkman offered to make an audio recording of her agreeing to “do something” for money. That way, they said, she’d have evidence it was fake.

It’s unclear whether Wohl and Burkman still have that recording. Neither would comment.

“Jacob was the main manipulator,” Spealman said. “But both were very aggressive.”

She feels intimidated by the duo to this day, and would not readily talk about anything beyond the events of last fall.

Burkman and Wohl scheduled a press conference for mid-October, and on Oct. 16 Spealman went to Burkman’s duplex-style house in Arlington to go over the script.

“When I got there to work on the script, it said at the top, ‘Affidavit of Kristin Spealman.’ That threw me off because I thought it was supposed to be a script,” she said. “I took pics of it, and that made them uncomfortable but I said I needed them to rehearse.”

She later showed those photos to her lawyers, she said, who “freaked out.”

At the rehearsal, Spealman said, Wohl showed her a check for $150,000, which he said would be hers if she went through with the lie as scripted — a claim corroborated by what she said were contemporaneous notes, which she shared in another picture.

Spealman said it appeared to be a business check, not a personal check, but Wohl only briefly allowed her to look at it.

She also shared her photos of the “script,” which is labeled “statement of fact and belief” and, except for the name, is identical to the one they later distributed at the press conference.

In an aside, Spealman noted that Burkman’s dog — a chocolate-colored dachshund named Jack Jr. — took a shine to her.

“Jack said that Jack Jr. doesn’t like many people,” said Spealman, who is blonde. “He told me it must be my Aryan blood.”

“It was weird,” she added. (Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who claims to be half-Jewish and who made an appearance at the Cruz-themed press event staged by Wohl and Burkman — both Jewish — had threatened to kill Jack Jr. earlier this year; Spealman says she never met him.)

Spealman says she told Burkman via text that she was backing out. He called her dozens of times, she said, saying, “This is your big shot.”

“But I never said I wanted a big shot,” she told me.

They rescheduled the press conference, Spealman said — disappointing a gaggle of bored and cynical journalists — swapping her out for “another model in Virginia,” from her same agency, who read the same script, though she used an assumed name.

But then there’s this observation from that same Wohl press event, as noted by journalist Molly Jong-Fast: “Across the street was a documentary film crew who wouldn’t tell me anything about themselves. They were probably just following some sort of Prime Directive where they didn’t want to tarnish the art by becoming part of it. Who can say.”

Spealman saw Wohl again after that, she says, at the Nov. 7 opening for a club called Pandora, which Spealman had brought Wohl in to promote. That’s documented in an Instagram photo.

At the end of that conversation, Kristin leveled with me: She had known we had friends in common, and yes, she knew my wife, though not very well.

Here is why I wanted to write this in the first person.

When Wohl and Burkman accused Robert Mueller of raping a woman in New York, Brett Kavanaugh and Roy Moore were in the headlines. Wohl went to great lengths to try to bait reporters into covering his bogus claims about Mueller, which appeared to be a media honey-trap as much as anything else.

In other words, I’m reluctant to give these guys attention, but at the same time I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t worth writing about, because, as I learned, another smear might be in the works. Allegedly.

Of course the existence of a smear doesn’t mean it is worth covering. But the credible prospect of a possible unlawful future action is another matter.

Still, I wondered if Wohl was setting me up — a thought I relished, until I learned Kristin and my wife had so many connections, which turned my eagerness to a combination of concern and confusion.

Around the same time I contacted Kristin, I received Twitter messages from an account calling itself “Blackbird Consulting,” which had two followers and claimed to be enforcing collection actions against Wohl.

That account has since been suspended. A Twitter spokesperson did not immediately reply to questions about the circumstances.

As for that “model in Virginia” — I found her. Her name is Kylie Garcia-Andrews. She told me in a phone call that Wohl and Burkman had paid her $700 cash to sing the national anthem at an Oct. 9, 2019, press event where Wohl and Burkman trotted out a young man to accuse Sen. Kamala Harris of adultery.

Garcia-Andrews deleted an old Instagram post that linked to that performance — and hashtagged Spike TV.

But despite looking exactly like the woman who took Spealman’s place at the Cruz event, Garcia-Andrews says she was not that woman. Spealman says she was, and here is a video of Wohl calling that woman “Kylie.”

Ford Fischer, an independent journalist and prolific Wohl watcher whose video was linked in the above Instagram post, told me that Garcia-Andrews had friended him last October on Facebook.

“I didn’t know who she was relative to Facebook, but from the bit we talked it seems she was actually at Wohl’s pressers twice: once to sing the anthem, and once as a ‘Ted Cruz accuser,'” he told me, sharing a screenshot that showed they became Facebook friends on Oct. 15, smack in the middle of the Kamala Harris and Ted Cruz events.

“Kylie is a more common name than you may realize,” Kylie told me in a text message denying her involvement in the Cruz stunt. “I mean kylie Jenner has her name on literally everything. It still doesn’t prove its me.” [sic]

The rest of this gets even muddier than what you’ve read already. I feel obligated to report what I was told on the record because it regards potential unlawful conduct involving a public figure. Or so I’m told. But here it is, deconflicted as best as possible.

Spealman, who shared a text-message conversation showing she had been in touch with Wohl as recently as this spring, told me that Wohl and Burkman had been planning “an ongoing thing” with Garcia-Andrews.

“She still does stuff with them,” Spealman said.

Spealman did not feel comfortable detailing what she knew, she said, in part because “it would ruin something they’re doing in the future.” She says she decided to come forward because she wants to distance herself from Wohl and Burkman after experiencing harassment online, while making clear she holds no bad feelings against them

She said she had originally been “asked to be involved” in Wohl and Burkman’s new stunt, adding, “What’s to come is even worse.”

“There’s something ongoing with that doctor at the White House,” Spealman said, evidently meaning Fauci. Wohl and Burkman’s attempted smear of Fauci, earlier this year drew press coverage from only one outlet, and was almost immediately debunked by the woman they paid to carry it out.

Or so it seemed: Spealman told me the whole confession was fake, a setup for a journalist.

After our phone conversation last week, Spealman called Burkman. She says she also tried Wohl, who did not answer.

Following her conversation with Burkman, Spealman told me that Garcia-Andrews said she didn’t want me to write about her because, she claimed, a murderer was after her.

For her part, Garcia-Andrews rejected Spealman’s claim that she was involved in a new “project” with Burkman and Wohl. “They seem shady,” Garcia-Andrews said. “They don’t seem like the best types of guys, so I don’t want to be associated with them.”

Spealman echoed those concerns. “I’m worried about them blackmailing me,” she said. “Jacob created an audio recording of us in a conversation when they offered me $25,000 to do something — I don’t remember what.” She’s worried he may leak that recording to smear her in the press. She also claims to have received ominous phone calls after we began talking — “People breathing into the phone and hanging up” — and believes her computer was hacked.

All things considered, though, there is something strikingly unfair about the position these two women find themselves in, it seems to me. The targets of Wohl and Burkman’s defamatory attacks can afford to ignore them. But the men and women coerced or conscripted to do their dirty work are almost powerless.

But as another Wohl pawn Diane Andrade recently made clear, even if fraudulently, as Spealman claims, they do hold an ace: information.

Spealman said that, depending on what happens after this article is published, she and Kylie might decide to start talking about the other things they know, which, she assures me, are much worse.

She shared some text messages with Wohl about the press release I mentioned above, which I will not be reporting on. She says the subject of that press release is not the same as the alleged new plot they tried to convince her to join.

I find Spealman more credible than Wohl or Burkman, but am also wary of giving them more oxygen for any reason, or playing even a small role in furthering their game.

In 2019, the Daily Beast obtained a document from January of that year showing thatWohl had created a group called the Arlington Center for Political Intelligence, whose purpose, he said, would be to “make shit up” about candidates and public figures in order to manipulate political betting markets and seek to suppress Democratic turnout in 2020.

First Amendment attorney Anne Champion told me, “It would appear that the premise of this company amounts to wire fraud.”

Wohl was soliciting $1 million to fund the project. His smears — and promises of major payouts — kicked into high gear that fall. As his trial date for defrauding investors now approaches, they might kick in again. It is unclear what returns any Arlington Center investors might see or expect at this point, several months ahead of a presidential election.

As for the alleged plot looming on the horizon, Spealman and Garcia-Andrews seem to agree on one thing: The new project, whatever it is — if it ever existed — is now, thanks apparently to my one week of investigation, moribund. So there’s no need to worry about it, whatever it was.

Spokespeople for Dr. Fauci, Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Harris, Sen. Warren and Sen. Cruz all declined to comment, as did a former spokesperson for Robert Mueller’s office, the FBI, and multiple spokespeople for Paramount Networks.

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman declined to comment, and would not acknowledge that they knew the women.

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/these-documents-are-a-likely-source-of-jacob-wohls-legal-troubles/

---

https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/arizona-may-jail-right-wing-fraudster-who-accused-democrats-of-sexual-assault/

db new civ rts move

j Wohl — the 22-year-old right-wing fraudster who unsuccessfully lobbed fake sexual assault allegations at Special Counsel Robert Mueller, former Democratic presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren, and infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci— may soon be getting some comeuppance thanks to Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.

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On November 7, 2017, the Arizona Corporation Commission (AZCC), a state government group that enforces ethical trading practices, ruled that Wohl basically lied to investors to get them to invest $155,000 in his company, the Wohl Capital Investment Group LLC.

In addition to lying about his experience and his company’s investments, Wolh allegedly misrepresented the financial risks, promising his investors 80 percent of their money back but only returning about 50 percent later on. One of his investors later killed himself, according to Wohl’s arrest warrant.

The AZCC alleged that Wohl had illegally sold “unregistered securities.” Here’s Investopedia’s explanation of what those are:

Before securities—like stocks, bonds, and notes—can be offered for sale to the public, they first must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Any stock that does not have an effective registration statement on file with the SEC is considered ‘unregistered’.

Only qualified investors, or individuals who have a net worth of at least one million dollars or an annual income in excess of $200,000, are able to buy and sell unregistered securities.

Unregistered securities scams are often advertised as ‘private offerings’ and take advantage of both qualified and non-qualified investors, often promising returns that are too good to be true.

Because Wohl didn’t meet the net worth or annual income requirements, he wasn’t legally allowed to sell them.

The AZCC told Wohl to immediately cease-and-desist his sale of unregistered securities and required him to pay $37,918.72 back to his investors. He was expected to pay $16,459.36 immediately and to pay the rest in monthly installments of $1,788.28 with payments starting in October 2017.

As of Nov. 2018, Wohl has not made any payments, an AZCC spokeswoman told the Arizona Republic. That’s unsurprising seeing as Wohl called the Arizona Corporation Commission a “racketeering organization full of Angry Democrats” in June 2018.

“The Commission, through the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, is actively pursuing collection efforts against Mr. Wohl,” the AZCC spokesperson told *Salon* in an email.

“Mr. Wohl has not paid anything since the matter was sent to the Attorney General’s Office for collections,” the spokesperson continued. “Given his indictment last year, I would venture that any available funds are going to pay his criminal defense counsel.”

Worse for Wohl, “The Attorney General’s office has engaged California counsel to assist in collections efforts. Those lawyers are utilizing all statutorily allowed collection methods to obtain the funds owed to the state.” That may be bad news because California issued Wohl a felony warrant in September 2019 for allegedly committing the same crimes in 2016.

Although he was later released on his own recognizance after appearing in a California court in October 2019, the combination of charges in Arizona and California could finally put the fraudster behind bars, though he may get a shorter sentence because of his young age.

On a side note, Wohl has since opened up an OnlyFans account and claims that he cannot go to the bathroom without lifting up his shirt, pointing a gun down at his genitals and taking a selfie.[pix]

[Right-wing political operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl pitch reporters their latest far-fetched scandal on a balcony outside the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 27, 2020. (Photo: Jared Holt)]

Like bees to honey, the pro-Trump fringe descended on this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference outside of the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C., in hopes of stealing a sliver of the spotlight for themselves.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and a cohort of his Infowars employees roamed the conference’s exhibition hall and the escalators on their way to radio row, attracting a crowd of star-struck attendees with their cell phones hoisted above their heads to get video of Jones. Right Wing Watch asked Jones for his thoughts on the new coronavirus now spreading around the world, a subject that Vice President Mike Pence had directly addressed on the CPAC main stage hours earlier.

“We know it’s a manmade bioweapon, produced by the U.S. government, sold to China in 2015. That was in theJournal of Science.That’s why we got a bit concerned about it. It’s a chimera cross-viral species system,” Jones said, going on to argue that the U.S. should restrict travel from China.

Right Wing Watch was unable to track down a Journal of Science article that made that assertion, which was recentlyfloated by Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, as well. According to The New York Times, former White House strategist Steve Bannon is also a purveyor of the theory, which is widely disavowed by scientists.

[Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones rides an escalator to radio row at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 27, 2020. (Photo: Jared Holt)]

Jones told journalists at CPAC that he felt at home with CPAC attendees, “But the Republican establishment, I don’t feel at home with them. But we’re here to let them know that we’re taking the Republican party over.”

:{:{On a terrace overlooking the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center lobby,}::{ Republican political personalitiesJacob Wohland Jack Burkman hosted a press conference, as they did last year.}::{ In the audience, far-right political entertainer Gavin McInnes, who founded the Proud Boys hate group, accosted reporters. McInnes was later}:}:{. One attendee told Right Wing Watch they reported McInnes to security after McInnes threatened to assault them. A request for information from CPAC about McInnes’ ejection was not immediately returned.}:

Laura Loomer, anti-Muslim activistwho is pursuing a bid for Congress in Florida, was spotted around CPAC touting her campaign. Last year, Loomer had her media credentials revoked and was removed from CPAC after harassing journalists in the media filing center; this year she donned standard attendee credentials.

But white nationalist organization leader Patrick Casey never made it past the conference center’s front door, according to a post in his Telegram chat channel. On days that the vice president or president speaks at CPAC, guards at the doors of the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center require conference credentials or hotel room keys to enter the building. Casey falsely claimed to his followers that the policy was new for this year.

Tags: Alex Jones Gavin McInnes Jack Burkman Jacob Wohl Laura Loomer Patrick Casey CPAC 2020 Identity Evropa InfoWar

but wait, re below, 919 up on fed charges?

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-loving-conservative-smear-artist-jacob-wohl-is-now-wanted-for-a-felony-report/

no lnx

Trump-loving conservative smear artist Jacob Wohl is now wanted for a felony: report

NBC News

Written by Cody Fenwick September 4, 2019

Jacob Wohl, a conservative operative whose clumsy and unethical schemes have earned him notoriety, is now wanted in California for illegally selling securities, the Daily Beast reported Wednesday.

Wohl has become a vigorous defender of President Donald Trump, often concocting bogus smear campaigns to target the president’s perceived enemies. Most notable of these operations were his attempt to convince a young man to falsely accuse South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg of sexual misconduct and his effort to push an unsubstantiated and baseless accusation of misconduct against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Wohl had already been banned for life by the National Futures Association after determining that he had misled investors.

Matthew Johnson, his former business associate, has been accused alongside Wohl of the new felony.

The Daily Beast reported:

Wohl has not been arrested yet on the charge, according to the court docket. Prosecutors recommended $5,000 bonds for both Wohl and Johnson.

The allegation that Wohl and Johnson unlawfully sold securities centers on one of Wohl’s financial companies, Montgomery Assets. A warrant application filed by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office notes that the three-year statute of limitations on the case was set to expire at the end of August 2019, meaning prosecutors had to file by the end of last month if they wanted to pursue charges.

The report also noted that Wohl often pushes “the legal and political envelope to seemingly absurd lengths.”

actually lambert

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/students-for-trump-founder-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-after-posing-as-a-lawyer-and-taking-46654-in-fees/

Far-right grifters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have pushed a number of conspiracy theories previously; recently they failed in trying to smear special counsel Robert Mueller.

The Daily Beast reported that the man purportedly behind allegations against South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg came forward to say that the entire thing was actually the idea of Wohl and Burkman and that all the allegations were false: "Kelly said he expressed concerns about the scheme but Wohl told him to sleep on it. When Kelly woke at around 11 in the morning, Wohl 'was already dressed in a suit because he "can’t do a Monday if he isn’t in a suit”' and—of more significance—the fabricated statement had been posted to Medium, along with fake Twitter and Gmail accounts in Kelly’s name. According to Kelly, Burkman tried to calm his nerves by claiming that he was a '"star"’ and people are eating me up.' The trio, according to Kelly, ate Subway sandwiches, during which Kelly continued to express his regrets. Burkman and Wohl tried to calm him down by promising to purchase 'any house I wanted' and insisting that his family would 'get over it.'"

In the short time before Wohl allegedly posted the vague accusations online and the real Kelly came forward to dispute them, far-right media ran with them -- despite no actual evidence whatsoever. Not only did a number of far-right digital outlets run with it, but Trump-favorite cable news station OANN did as well. OANN later covered the collapse of the smear, saying it made no sense -- never mentioning that it had covered the smear a day prior.

---

ref

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/04/30/Trump-endorsed-One-America-News-Network-among-right-wing-amplifiers-of-Jacob-Wohls-attempt/223596

many pix twit vid

Trump-endorsed One America News Network among right-wing amplifiers of Jacob Wohl's attempted smear of Pete Buttigieg

Blog ››› April 30, 2019 3:01 PM EDT ››› ALEX KAPLAN

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Far-right network One America News Network and others helped spread a hoax from pro-Trump trolls Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman regarding Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

One America News Network has repeatedly pushed conspiracy theories and employs well-known right-wing conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec. President Donald Trump has praised the network, and he regularly watches and cites its programs -- just last week, he pushed a false claim from OANN that the United Kingdom helped the Obama administration spy on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

On April 29, the network aired a segment about a Medium post purportedly from a man named Hunter Kelly accusing Buttigieg of sexually assaulting him earlier this year.

Media Matters did not find a segment since then correcting the report.

The real Kelly has since come forward to deny he wrote the post; he said Wohl and Burkman tricked him after approaching him to ask him to make up the allegation. From The Daily Beast:

Kelly said that Wohl and his similarly infamous cohort, lobbyist Jack Burkman, booked him a flight from Michigan to Baltimore. From there, they drove to Burkman’s home in Arlington where Wohl showed him a draft of a statement detailing the bogus accusations against Buttigieg.

Kelly said he expressed concerns about the scheme but Wohl told him to sleep on it. When Kelly woke at around 11 in the morning, Wohl “was already dressed in a suit because he ‘can’t do a Monday if he isn’t in a suit’” and—of more significance—the fabricated statement had been posted to Medium, along with fake Twitter and Gmail accounts in Kelly’s name.

According to Kelly, Burkman tried to calm his nerves by claiming that he was a “‘star’ and people are eating me up.”

The trio, according to Kelly, ate Subway sandwiches, during which Kelly continued to express his regrets. Burkman and Wohl tried to calm him down by promising to purchase “any house I wanted” and insisting that his family would “get over it.”

Wohl has a history of pushing false claims and hoaxes. He told USA Today in February that he aimed to interfere in the Democratic presidential primaries, including with the use of fake social media accounts, and he previously spread a false claim about Democratic candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). The lie about Buttigieg also resembles a similar scheme by Wohl and Burkman involving a fake intelligence service used to fabricate a false sexual assault allegation against special counsel Robert Mueller.

In addition to OANN, other figures and outlets that pushed Wohl and Burkman’s false claim about Buttigieg include:

Conspiracy theory outlet Infowars and its writer Paul Joseph Watson

PJ Media, though the original link has since been updated to note that the story is false

Error-prone far-right outlet The Gateway Pundit and its founder Jim Hoft

Fellow Gateway Pundit writer Cassandra Fairbanks (who has also since deleted her tweet, which was captured via CrowdTangle)

Conspiracy theorist and Newsmax TV host Wayne Allyn Root

Far-right outlet Big League Politics

Wohl’s father and frequent Fox guest David Wohl

Radio host Bill Mitchell

Reddit’s “r/The_Donald” subreddit and 4chan’s “politically incorrect” message board known as “/pol/”

According to social media analytics website BuzzSumo, links to articles that pushed the false claim received more than 31,000 Facebook and Twitter shares combined. The original Medium post also received at least 60,000 Facebook engagements.

Update (5/1/19): OANN has since aired a segment acknowledging that the allegation against Buttigieg was a hoax from Wohl. On the April 30 edition of The Daily Ledger, guest host Alex Salvi talked about Wohl’s “smear effort” without noting that his own network had pushed the same allegation a day earlier, mocklingly saying, “I mean, we were supposed to believe that Buttigieg announced his candidacy and then immediately went and sexually assaulted someone? It makes no sense.”

Short Link

http://mm4a.org/4R3

copy link

Network/Outlet

One America News Network, Gateway Pundit, Reddit, 4chan

Person

Paul Joseph Watson, Cassandra Fairbanks, Jim Hoft, Wayne Allyn Root, David Wohl, Bill Mitchell

Show/Publication

Infowars, Big League Politics

Stories/Interests

Fake News, Alt-right and pro-Trump trolls

---

ref

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/02/26/robert-mueller-hoax-how-jacob-wohl-created-sexual-harassment-plot/2993799002/

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http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jacob-wohl-is-in-the-hot-seat-again/

no lnx twit

Jacob Wohl is in the Hot Seat (Again)

By Jared Holt | March 13, 2019 2:21 pm

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman hold a press conference in Arlington, Virginia, on November 1, 2018. (Photo: Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch)

Right-wing activists Jacob Wohl and Ali Akbar appear to have filed false information into a police report in Minneapolis, Minnesota last month while filming a smear video against Rep. Ilhan Omar.

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Wohl, Akbar and anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer traveled to Minneapolis to film a short “documentary” based on unfounded allegations in order to paint Omar as a threat to the country, and to depict Minnesota as unsafe because of a vibrant Muslim community in Minneapolis.

As Minneapolis journalist Tony Webster pointed out on Twitter, the video uploaded last night depicts Wohl and Akbar entering a Minneapolis police office and reporting that they had received a threatening message on Twitter. The video shows a threat that was sent by an account using the name “Drake Holmes” that NBC News’ Ben Collins reported to be controlled by Wohl.

Tony Webster

@webster

Mar 12, 2019

Replying to @webster

In the right-wing ‘documentary’ on Rep. Ilhan Omar released tonight by Jacob Wohl, Laura Loomer, and Ali Alexander, they included this screenshot of a threat they received. There's one problem: NBC News earlier reported that Jacob Wohl created the account which sent the “threat”.

View image on TwitterView image on Twitter

Tony Webster

@webster

Here's a video clip showing Jacob Wohl reporting threats he received to the Minneapolis Police Department, and a screenshot of one particular “threat”—but the avatar image matches a fake Twitter account NBC News and The Daily Beast reported Wohl created. pic.twitter.com/bV7EZarJk8

6,135

9:26 PM - Mar 12, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

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2,684 people are talking about this

Webster reported that records at the Minneapolis Police Department indicated that Wohl reported terroristic threats and a “homeland security offense” and that Wohl was filmed via an officer’s body camera while reporting those threats. The address that Akbar and Wohl gave police for themselves is a P.O. box used by attorney Baron Coleman, who is representing Proud Boys founder and Rebel Media host Gavin McInnes in a lawsuit against the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Tony Webster

@webster

Mar 12, 2019

Replying to @webster

Minneapolis Police records indicate officers saved and inventoried a copy of the documents Jacob Wohl provided to them when reporting “terroristic threats” and a “homeland security offense,” and MPD recorded their interactions with Jacob Wohl on body camera.

Tony Webster

@webster

pic.twitter.com/f3AiFPDgE3

1,505

10:56 PM - Mar 12, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

View image on Twitter

305 people are talking about this

:{:{}:

Akbar appeared to preemptively distance himself from Wohl in a late-night Periscope video uploaded last night but denied that the report they filed was a hoax because police were still investigating writer Dianna E. Anderson, who they reported to the precinct for pointing out on Twitter that the trio was filming at an Airbnb near her home. Anderson told Right Wing Watch that MPD is not actively investigating her and has not contacted her.

He also asserted that if Twitter told a reporter that the “Drake Holmes” account belonged to Wohl, that it would somehow make the company liable in whatever crime Wohl and Akbar might have committed by submitting false info to the police. He wrote on Twitter that he was personally “chasing down the allegation.”

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“I don’t know what’s going to happen but, man, it doesn’t involve me and I’m pretty excited about that,” Akbar said on Periscope. “If the police were using resources to investigate this claim, then Jacob may have actually violated the law. Maybe.”

Wohl has been the subject of federal and state investigations for fraudulent behavior, which resulted in him receiving a lifetime ban from the National Futures Association. Last year, Special Counsel Robert Mueller asked the FBI to investigate a scam orchestrated by Wohl to make false allegations that Mueller had sexually assaulted a woman. Wohl was also been banned from Twitter, following a USA Today story in which he said that he planned to create fake accounts in hopes of manipulating public opinion to “and use those [accounts] to steer the left-wing votes in the primaries to what we feel are weaker candidates compared with Trump.”

Right Wing Watch has submitted a public records request with the Minneapolis Police Department in hopes of obtaining more information about the report filed and the possibility of obtaining reported body camera footage. We will update this post if we receive more information.

(This article was updated at 2:50 p.m.)

Tags: Ali Akbar Jacob Wohl conspiracy theories Media

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https://thinkprogress.org/cpac-tries-to-circle-the-wagons-against-the-far-right-60408d44e7df/

no lnx

CPAC tries to circle the wagons against the far-right

Far-right grifters were kept at arm's length, but a few still managed to sneak in.

LUKE BARNES

MAR 2, 2019, 11:13 AM

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — In 2019, CPAC seems to have gone out of its way to put on a drab, non-controversial conservative show.

There was none of the drama of 2017, when far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos was disinvited just days before the event after a video of him condoning pedophilia emerged, and when neo-Nazi Richard Spencer roamed the CPAC halls rubbing shoulders with younger attendees.

This year, by contrast, a collection of white nationalists, far-right grifters and conspiracy theorists were kept at an arms’ length and mostly had to be content with roaming the Gaylord Hotel outside of the convention. Many were initially denied passes, but managed to wangle their way inside, although they had to be content themselves with posting about CPAC on Twitter, rather than having direct contact with attendees.

Among those spotted was Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist podcaster who lurked around the edges of CPAC like a vulture. Faith Goldy, a white nationalist who ran for mayor of Toronto in 2018 — getting 3.4 percent of the vote — was also present. Patrick Casey, the executive director of the far-right group Identity Evropa, tried to get into CPAC before being informed that his pass had been canceled. Casey then promptly launched into an angry tweetstorm about how CPAC wasn’t a forum for real conservatives anyway.

:{:{}:

Certainly the most amusing example of the far-right and its associated grifters attempting to get some form of CPAC cred occurred on Thursday afternoon, when noted pro-Trump trolls Laura Loomer andJacob Wohl — both of whom were also denied their in their initial attempts to get into CPAC— held a “press conference” along with conservative lobbyist Jack Burkman to outline another set of spurious, unsubstantiated allegations, this time against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).

The event rapidly devolved into farce, with Wohl talking over Loomer every time she tried to speak about her supposed “censoring” on social media, and journalists asking why a document marked “Strictly Private and Confidential” was being distributed to the public.

Wohl and Goldy were later spotted chatting to each other at CPAC, but wearing attendee and not media badges. It is not immediately clear why Wohl especially was allowed in, after being so pointedly denied entry earlier in the day.

Later that night Wohl made an appearance at an afterparty hosted by Turning Points USA, the conservative student group, which featured Donald Trump, Jr. and TPUSA leader Charlie Kirk. Among the (mostly college-aged) revelers was Enrique Tarrio, current leader of the far-right Proud Boys gang was also spotted roaming the halls.

On Friday, two members of the Proud Boys in New York City pled guilty to charges stemming from a fight outside the New York Metropolitan Republican club in 2018, where the Proud Boys viciously attacked counter-protesters.

But CPAC’s shooing away of far-right personalities, at least superficially, isn’t the sign of some conservative bulwark against far-right ideas.

Instead, CPAC this year has morphed into a celebration of Trumpism, not conservatism, and all the vitriol that comes along with it.

On Friday, for instance, Breitbart writer Michelle Malkin blamed moderate Republicans, including the “ghost of John McCain” for being in bed with “immigration saboteurs.” The crowd guffawed uproariously.

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no lnx

‘WOHL OF WALL STREET’

Jacob Wohl, Teen Hedge Funder Turned Pro-Trump Media Star, Was Accused of Cheating Clients

This 20-year-old Trump acolyte bills himself as a finance prodigy, but like his hero, he’s got a shady past.

Kelly Weill

06.14.18 5:31 AM ET

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

Jacob Wohl scored headlines with claims of managing millions of dollars as a teenage hedge fund owner. Even President Donald Trump has retweeted his financial commentary. Now the 20-year-old is trying to parlay his reputation as a hedge fund wunderkind into a career in conservative media.

But what Wohl doesn’t mention is that the hedge funds he says he founded as a teenager have faced national and state investigations, due in part to customers who claimed Wohl scammed them. A series of Craigslist ads solicited models to flatter his potential clients and a set of salacious websites registered to his name promoted models called “Wohl Girls,” one of whom alleged that Wohl posted her pictures without her permission.

Since then he’s founded a conspiracy-heavy conservative blog which, last week was revealed as having plagiarized its code of ethics from ProPublica.

Wohl’s public posturing began years earlier. In 2016, at 18, he was calling himself “Wohl of Wall Street” when, like his namesake, he ran into some regulatory trouble.

Wohl was investigated by the National Futures Association, a government-authorized financial regulator that looks for fraud and responds to investor complaints. NFA started looking into Wohl after they reviewed promotional material for his fledgling hedge fund, NeX Capital Management. A series of NeX videos were “unbalanced in their presentation of profit potential and risk of loss” for investors, the NFA claimed in a 2016 filing before its internal Business Conduct Committee, which rules on disciplinary issues (PDF). The NFA added that Wohl claimed to have acted as a fund manager before he or NeX were registered to do so.

The NFA also cited a complaint from an investor, who claimed he wired Wohl $75,000, which Wohl claimed had grown to $89,500 in just months. But when the investor tried to withdraw his money, Wohl allegedly sent back a meager $44,000, blaming the difference on losses. “Wohl Capital’s trading account appeared to have made, not lost, money overall,” the NFA wrote.

Other NeX claims might have tipped off the regulators.

An archived version of NeX’s website from several months before the investigation suggests Wohl inflated his credentials. “>10 Years Trading Experience (Across Many Asset Classes)” his bio on the website read. The claim implied Wohl started investing at age 8.

“Wohl Capital’s trading account appeared to have made, not lost, money overall.”

— National Futures Association

NFA agents showed up at NeX’s supposed offices, which turned out to be a Los Angeles home, where no one answered. Wohl did not return their emails or phone calls. When the NFA returned to the home the following day, “the exam team noticed someone at the second floor window who appeared to be taking photos or a video of the exam team,” according to the filing. They soon received a stern phone call from Wohl’s father, a lawyer, who allegedly threatened to call the police on the regulators, warning them to “stay away or else.”

Wohl’s father allegedly followed up with an email accusing the NFA of “stalking and harassing Jacob and our family repeatedly, at our homes” and “demanding a meeting that is not going to take place under any circumstances.” Wohl’s father also told the agency he had “initiated a formal complaint with LAPD, and they are now investigating this matter,” and that he would “also seek a permanent restraining order in court, the violation of which will result in criminal penalties.”

Wohl’s father accused the NFA of “regulatory thuggery,” in an interview with Yahoo News, adding that he didn’t want Wohl “to be bullied and harassed.” In early 2017, the NFA gave Wohl a lifetime ban from registering with them.

The Arizona Corporation Commission also slapped Wohl and his businesses with a cease and desist order in late 2016, accusing them of violating the Securities Act, by selling unregistered securities. Wohl’s former clients in the state claimed they had invested with him after he represented his company as managing 178 accounts with up to $10 million in assets. The ACC said Wohl had no more than 13 accounts with a combined $500,000 in assets. When those clients became suspicious and asked for a refund, they only received about half their money back, according to the ACC complaint.

The ACC also pointed to another Wohl-run firm called Montgomery Assets. Montgomery’s Craigslist ads described it as a real estate investing firm whose proprietors had 35 years of flipping homes, when the company’s two principal employees (18-year-old Wohl and his 27-year-old colleague) had only been alive a combined 45 years. A Montgomery client told the ACC that once she started doing business with the company, Wohl sent her a letter warning of an upcoming “volatility event” in the market, and urging her to sell all her other investments and pour her money into Montgomery’s special promissory notes.

Wohl agreed to a consent decree in the case, which included more than $32,000 in fines and restitution.

Wohl also drew media attention for claiming to travel with “Instagram models” and for hiring a “Director of Fun” (a beautiful woman who featured in a now-deleted NeX video) to interact with clients, ValueWalk previously reported.

Wohl told The Daily Beast his companies had hired models for events, but said the models served no other purpose.

“Yes, we hired promotional models for conferences because that’s a very common and accepted practice in business across many industries,” he said. “That’s it. Every other kooky claim is spurious garbage.”

Montgomery Assets also appeared to advertise for bikini models on Craigslist, according to ads flagged by Twitter users.

“We need models for promo modeling events including conferences, trade shows, seminars, etc.,” read one ad on an Orange County,California, Craigslist page. “We also have other modeling opportunities including bikini modeling and fashion modeling if you fit the type for that sort of modeling.”

The website registry database DomainTools shows a number of websites registered to Wohl’s name. Some are definitely Wohl’s, including the domain for his short-lived media outlet Offended America, and domains that are described in the ACC filing as belonging to his businesses. Others, with names like “WohlGirls.com” and “MelanieRiosManagement.com” (the name of a porn actress), appeared to solicit more salacious business.

Wohl distanced himself from an unspecified set of websites and posts.

“Fake websites and craigslist ads were posted by trolls of mine in 2016 and and I immediately reported them to the FBI,” Wohl told The Daily Beast.

He declined to specify which websites and ads were the alleged frauds, and declined to answer further questions.

But one of the more salacious websites registered under his name appears to have been operational, and hosted intimate pictures of at least one woman. In summer 2016, WohlGirls.com uploaded pictures of its “Wohl Girl of the Month.” The post, which showed the young woman in a bra, included her social media handle and described her as “one of the newest additions to the agency.”

The woman’s mother, who spoke to The Daily Beast under the condition of anonymity, said the woman had not consented to have her pictures featured that way.

“She’s an attractive young woman,” the woman’s mother said. “He reached out to her and said, ‘I can make you Insta-famous and get you into modeling, and thereby gain you companies that would want you to rep their products on Instagram.’”

Wohl allegedly offered to set up a professional modeling page, and the young woman, who was interested in modeling, agreed.

But instead “he took some of her photos, either from Snapchat or Instagram that she had posted and created a page for her called the ‘Wohl Girl’ of the month,” she said. “From there, he put up photos and made the page seem inappropriate and dangerous.”

The young woman’s mother said she called Wohl. “I had no info on him,” she said. “I thought he was probably an older man trying to exploit a young woman. When I contacted him on the phone, I could tell he was young and idiotic. I told him, you take that site down, you take any reference to her out of your world or else. He got very scared and was like, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ and apologized profusely and took it down.”

Once again, Wohl allegedly presented himself as a more experienced businessman.

“He represented himself to my daughter to be somebody who was in investment management, was a very successful businessman, ran a modeling agency, had many contacts that could help her gain product endorsement gigs, and completely and utterly misrepresented himself.”

After Trump’s election, Wohl became something of an unpaid hype-man for the president, replying to his tweets en masse. Trump has retweeted at least two of Wohl’s tweets praising him for stock market gains.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

Aug 16, 2017

Rather than putting pressure on the businesspeople of the Manufacturing Council & Strategy & Policy Forum, I am ending both. Thank you all!

Jacob Wohl

@JacobAWohl

President Trump alone has succeeded in bringing the Stock Market, Small Business Index and Consumer Comfort to ALL TIME HIGHS! #MAGA

42.7K

9:23 AM - Aug 16, 2017

Twitter Ads info and privacy

25.8K people are talking about this

Last fall, Wohl launched himself into another new venture, this time with Offended America, a conservative news site, which later rebranded The Washington Reporter, where he currently lists himself as editor in chief. Its coverage, mostly authored by Wohl, skews conspiratorial (“Obama Ordered FBI Coverup of Spy Gate” reads one headline on the current homepage) and conservative (“Jacob Wohl: The Iraq War Was Moral, Just and Successful,” reads another).

Last week, Twitter users realized the site’s “code of ethics” had been plagiarized in full from the journalism nonprofit ProPublica.

“I didn’t create that part of the website, but if our policy is similar to that of another reputable site, I think that’s fantastic,” Wohl told Gizmodo.

Wohl said he would not respond to further questions “about this non-news.”

“Gossip about whether or not I date Instagram models is none of your concern,” he said.

No one had accused him of dating Instagram models.

Kelly Weill

kelly.weill@thedailybeast.com

---

ref

Teenage hedge fund manager Jacob Wohl — nicknamed “Wohl of Wall Street” — had his first run-in with a regulator.

has issued a complaint against the 18-year-old and his (now former) firm, NeX Capital Management, alleging they failed to cooperate with the regulator in its attempted examination of the fund." data-reactid="32" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em;">The National Futures Association (NFA) — a self-regulator for the US futures market — has issued a complaint against the 18-year-old and his (now former) firm, NeX Capital Management, alleging they failed to cooperate with the regulator in its attempted examination of the fund.

according to the NFA complaint. The NFA said its team showed up at an address listed for NeX that turned out to be a residence. The NFA said its team knocked on the door, but there was no response. They also didn’t receive a response to phone calls or an email they sent to Wohl that same day, according to the complaint. They visited the residence the following day, and even stopped by two more addresses, including his parents’ home, to attempt their examination." data-reactid="33" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Back in June, the NFA tried to conduct an unannounced examination into Wohl’s NeX Capital, according to the NFA complaint. The NFA said its team showed up at an address listed for NeX that turned out to be a residence. The NFA said its team knocked on the door, but there was no response. They also didn’t receive a response to phone calls or an email they sent to Wohl that same day, according to the complaint. They visited the residence the following day, and even stopped by two more addresses, including his parents’ home, to attempt their examination.

cited in the NFA complaint." data-reactid="34" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">At the time, Wohl’s father, David Wohl, sent the NFA an email accusing them of “stalking” and “harassing” his son, the complaint said. The email from his father went on to say he had had filed a formal complaint with the Los Angeles Police Department. He threatened to take out a “permanent restraining order” against the regulator, according to the email cited in the NFA complaint.

The NFA’s complaint said it was “abundantly clear” Wohl and NeX weren’t going to cooperate.

But that’s only the regulator’s side of the story.

Yahoo Finance reached out to Jacob Wohl for comment. His father, David Wohl, called us back instead.

‘Regulatory thuggery’" data-reactid="38" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.2em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">‘Regulatory thuggery’

In a telephone call with Yahoo Finance, Wohl’s father, David, who has practiced as a criminal defense lawyer for 27 years, gave a different version of events. He called the NFA’s complaint “frivolous” and “not professionally written.”

He also said that “two, maybe three guys” showed up “not dressed like professionals, wearing polo shirts and cargo shorts or something like they’re heading to the beach” and “ambushed” Wohl by “pounding on his door” with “no notice.”

Wohl’s father said his son lives in Hollywood Hills, a hilly area. He said that the NFA team members climbed up the hill adjacent to the home and “were peeking in the window like stalkers.”

Wohl said his son called him at the time and let him know what was going on. His son told him they were “tampering” with his mailbox. His son called the Los Angeles Police Department and filed a complaint.

“He’s got surveillance video of this. I let them know that,” his father said.

The elder Wohl, who practices law but not on behalf of Jacob’s company NeX, said he let his son know that the activity was not legal or in conformance with California law.

“If you want to send a subpoena you can do that. I’m not going to tolerate this regulatory thuggery, which is what they were displaying, in any way shape or form,” David Wohl said, adding, “This is the type of behavior that causes outrage toward the government … Are you kidding me? You guys just get the hell of his property. You send a letter or a subpoena. You do not ambush and stalk my son.”

He later added it was “completely outrageous” and “completely intolerable.”

“In Jacob’s case, I’m his dad, I know how ethical and honest he is. He’s a brilliant, brilliant kid. The dad side of me, doesn’t want him to be bullied and harassed. If you want to do something, legally, and you want documents, you don’t go to someone’s house and tamper with their mailbox, climb on a hill, pounding with no notice — you’d think we’re a third world — it’s a Chicago regulatory agency!”

We reached out to NFA for comment and received this response: “NFA does not comment on pending enforcement matters.”

:{From jock to stocks" data-reactid="49" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.2em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">:{From jock to stocks}:

featured on local news channel KTLA as a high school jock-turned-hedge fund manager. At the time, he had been running Wohl Capital Management — which used a value investing stock picking approach — for about four months, according to the report." data-reactid="50" style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Wohl first garnered attention in March 2015 when he was as a high school jock-turned-hedge fund manager. At the time, he had been running Wohl Capital Management — which used a value investing stock picking approach — for about four months, according to the report.

Then a junior at Santiago High School in Corona, California, Wohl told the news channel that he was running the money of his friends’ parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, as well as funds from some of his teachers. He said he had around 20 investors.

wohl of wal str

Life and education[

Attempts to frame political figures[

Robert Mueller[

Pete Buttigieg[

Anthony Fauci[e

Others[

Other activities[

American Decency[

Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory[

Roger Stone jury[

Voter suppression robocall[

Staged FBI raid[WHY?]

See also[

Reference

‘Regulatory thuggery’" data-reactid="38" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.2em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">‘Regulatory thuggery’

:{From jock to stocks" data-reactid="49" style="margin: 0.5em 0px 1em; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; line-height: 1.2em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">:{From jock to stocks}: