Very Typical Trump Allies Try To Frame McKinsey Pete For Assaulting Gay Republicans

Smear-mongers Jack Burkman, Donald J Trumpanzee and Jacob Wohl, the 3 Mouseketeers of right wing politics

If you go down deep enough into the netherworld of fetid right-wing sewage, you inevitably come to hate talk radio host (Behind the Curtain) and failed Republican Party lobbyist Jack Burkman and his crackpot sidekick Jacob Wohl. Wohl, just 21 and the son of far right psychopath David Wohl, is severely impaired mentally and has been banned by the National Futures Association for life for ripping off clients and by Twitter for creating and operating fake accounts. Wikipedia's bio of Wohl describes him (in the first sentence) as a "far right conspiracy theorist, fraudster and internet troll." He is a Trump fanatic obsessed with sex, making unfounded claims to smear Robert Mueller, Hillary Clinton, Ilhan Omar, Kamala Harris, Seth Rich and most recently-- with Burkman-- against Pete Buttigieg.

Burkman-- who can't stop thinking about male genitals-- drew some attention to himself about 5 years ago for putting together a protest against the Dallas Cowboys when they hired an openly gay team member, Michael Sam. He worked with Wohl to attempt to frame Robert Mueller-- on behalf of Trump-- for sexually assaulting a woman who later admitted she never met Mueller and that Wohl and Burkman offered her $20,000 to claim Mueller had attempted to rape her. Burkman is the founder and head of a phony organization called Lobbyists for Trump.

This morning, a team of reporters at the Daily Beast exposed Burkman's and Wohl's latest plot-- an effort recruit gay Republican college students to claim McKinsey Pete had assaulted them: Far-Right Smear Merchants Try to Slime Pete Buttigieg with Bogus Sex Assault Claim. This is what Trump has brought the Republican Party too. It's what the Republican Party now is.

The details of the operatives’ attempt emerged as one man suddenly surfaced with a vague and uncorroborated allegation that Buttigieg had assaulted him. The claim was retracted hours later on a Facebook page appearing to belong to the man.

A Republican source told the Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent.

The source who spoke to the Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg’s momentum in the 2020 presidential race. The man asked to remain anonymous out of a concern that the resulting publicity might imperil his employment, and because he said Wohl and Burkman have a reputation for vindictiveness.

But the source provided the Daily Beast with a surreptitious audio recording of the meeting, which corroborates his account. In it, Wohl appears to refer to Buttigieg as a “terminal threat” to President Donald Trump’s reelection next year.

Neither Burkman nor Wohl responded to repeated requests for comment on this story.  But after the Daily Beast contacted them last week, traces of the scheme disappeared from the web and social media.

On Monday, a separate individual using the name of Hunter Kelly published a post on the site Medium in which he alleged that Buttigieg sexually assaulted him in February. That post was tweeted out [and since deleyed] by David Wohl, Jacob’s father, and quickly re-written by the site Big League Politics, which is known as a landing ground for right-wing conspiracy theories.

Kelly’s supposed Medium and Twitter accounts both say they were created this month. His Facebook page includes several posts lauding Trump and criticizing Hillary Clinton. He appears to have responded to Jacob Wohl’s posts on Instagram in the past.

The Daily Beast reached out to Kelly on a cellphone listed to him in the student directory at his  Michigan college. Told we were reporting on apparent efforts by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman to drum up false sexual assault allegations against Buttigieg, Kelly replied, “I was unaware this was happening. But yes it is true.”

Kelly wrote that he did not control the newly created Medium and Twitter accounts that posted the allegations under his name. When asked if he could verify his identity, he texted the Daily Beast a selfie that matched the photo seen on Medium and on Kelly’s longstanding Facebook accounts.

“Here is a selfie of me, sorry I have been crying,” he wrote. “Today and the promises made didn’t go as planned.”

Kelly declined to provide more details. But two hours later he posted a message to his Facebook timeline headed, “I WAS NOT SEXUALLY ASSAULTED.”

...The pitch by Wohl and Burkman wasn’t detailed, the source said, but it resembled past attempts by the duo to peddle dubious sexual assault allegations against perceived political foes. It would involve the accuser giving a press conference where he would publicly make his accusations about Buttigieg. The source said Wohl and Burkman seemed to want him to figure out many of the details, including a window of time during which he and Buttigieg were both in Washington, when the fabricated offense may have occurred.

When the source expressed reluctance, they assured him the scheme would make him wealthy, famous, and a star in Republican politics. Wohl cited the national recognition given to Christine Blasey Ford after she accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault during his confirmation hearings last year.

Wohl and Burkman described the source’s role as a “catalyst” whose false allegations would prompt actual victims to come forward. They promised that a number of such victims were waiting in the wings.

The goal, Wohl and Burkman stressed, was to hobble Buttigieg’s ascendant campaign, according to the audio of the conversation. The South Bend mayor has rocketed into the top tier of 2020 Democratic contenders, to the surprise of many national political observers.

Last Monday, Burkman wrote on Twitter, “2020 is shaping up to be more exciting than 2016.  Looking like it will be Trump vs. Mayor Pete! Get the popcorn ready!”