Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, the right-wing fraudsters who orchestrated a robocall campaign targeting Black voters in seven states during the 2020 election, have agreed to pay $1.25 million in a settlement with New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it belongs to everyone. We will not allow anyone to threaten that right,” James said in a statement on the settlement. “Wohl and Burkman orchestrated a depraved and disinformation-ridden campaign to intimidate Black voters in an attempt to sway the election in favor of their preferred candidate.”
The pair was found liable by a federal judge in New York in 2023 for the robocalling scheme. According to a consent decree the two signed, Wohl and Burkman must “refrain from knowingly creating, sponsoring, or transmitting any robocall or other Mass Communication that would intimidate or deter voters from voting by any method in any election.” The decree remains in place for eight years.
During the 2020 election cycle, the lie-peddlers launched a robocall campaign targeting thousands of predominantly Black voters in Ohio, Minnesota, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Detroit, and Virginia. The recorded call contained lies about mail-in voting and featured a woman’s voice reading this script:
Hi, this is Tamika Taylor from Project 1599, the civil rights organization founded by Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl. Mail-in voting sounds great, but did you know that if you vote by mail, your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts? The CDC is even pushing to use records for mail-in voting to track people for mandatory vaccines. Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man. Stay safe and beware of vote by mail.
Wohl and Burkman have faced multiple charges of fraud and received sentences from several states as a result of their robocall campaign. In 2021, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a $5 million fine for the voter suppression scheme—the largest such robocall fine in U.S. history. In 2022, both men pleaded guilty to telecommunications fraud in Ohio, leading Burkman to give up his law license in January 2024.
Before hitting the big leagues of dirtbaggery, the two men were making a "career" of trying to concoct grotesque smear campaigns against then-special counsel Robert Mueller, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and other prominent Democratic leaders. Many of those campaigns included false claims of sexual impropriety.
Hopefully we won’t be hearing much from these two for at least eight years.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
