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Meet the GOP operatives who aim to smear the 2020 Democrats -- but keep bungling it
Style
Meet the GOP operatives who aim to smear the 2020 Democrats — but keep bungling it
By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Feature reporter, and Beth Reinhard
June 4 at 1:32 PM
Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl — a pair of boundlessly eager, profoundly unrepentant aspirants to the dankest depths of political chicanery — were watching television together the other day when something caught Burkman’s eye. ... There on the screen was Don McGahn, President Trump’s former White House counsel. ... It was at that very moment when Burkman remembered that McGahn had connected the unlikely duo — Burkman, the 53-year-old Washington lobbyist, and Wohl, a 21-year-old Californian trailed by investment scandals.
Yes, it was McGahn, they agreed, who had put them together a year ago by sharing Wohl’s cellphone number with Burkman. That was before their spree of bungled smears — including a disappearing sexual assault accuser against special counsel Robert Mueller (announced at a news conference that Burkman conducted with his pants zipper down) and a botched attempt last month to paint Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg as a sexual predator.
Alas, Burkman’s juicy origin story about the formation of their partnership didn’t check out. That tends to happen a lot in their world. ... McGahn said through his attorney that he doesn’t know Wohl or Burkman. ... As it turns out, the truth or falsity of a Burkman-Wohl-concocted story is merely an inconvenience. Let the media’s “puritanical” fact-checkers puzzle it out: That’s the view of this twosome who fancy themselves as sub rosa players in the 2020 presidential contest and busy themselves trafficking in Internet rumors they hope will damage Democratic candidates.
Like notorious dirty tricksters before them, they operate in a realm where it matters little whether their claims are proved — they hardly ever are — but only whether they somehow slip into a corpuscle or two of the national bloodstream. But today it’s a more dangerous game: They operate in an era when notions about truth and fiction have been upended and in which many Americans get their information from self-affirming, partisan silos, making their brand of political cyberwarfare hyper-relevant.
....
'2020 Election Central'
In his short, busy life so far, Wohl has been declared a teenage hedge-fund wunderkind, “the Wohl of Wall Street,” in media reports, and been barred from membership in a national futures trading association that looked disapprovingly at his alleged refusal to be interviewed about fraud allegations. One of his firms has been investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case in which the agency decided not to bring charges, while adding that the decision “should not be considered an exoneration,” according to an SEC document. ... Wohl’s firm also agreed to a cease-and-desist order and paid a $5,000 fine and $32,000 in restitution after an Arizona regulatory commission concluded he had committed securities fraud via two hedge funds and a house-flipping venture. Wohl says he’s never faced a criminal charge or a lawsuit. ... “I think those are good indications that I’ve never done anything wrong with respect to any of my business ventures,” he says.
....
Carol D. Leonnig, Alice Crites and Andrew Ba Tran contributed to this report.
Manuel Roig-Franzia is a feature writer in The Washington Post’s Style section, where he profiles national figures in the worlds of politics, the law and the arts. He previously served as bureau chief in Miami for The Post's National staff and in Mexico City for the Post's Foreign staff. He is the author of a biography of Sen. Marco Rubio. Follow https://twitter.com/RoigFranzia
Beth Reinhard is a reporter on the investigative team at The Washington Post. She was a member of the Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award and Toner Prize in 2018. She previously worked at the Wall Street Journal, National Journal, the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post. Follow https://twitter.com/bethreinhard
Meet the GOP operatives who aim to smear the 2020 Democrats — but keep bungling it
By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Feature reporter, and Beth Reinhard
June 4 at 1:32 PM
Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl — a pair of boundlessly eager, profoundly unrepentant aspirants to the dankest depths of political chicanery — were watching television together the other day when something caught Burkman’s eye. ... There on the screen was Don McGahn, President Trump’s former White House counsel. ... It was at that very moment when Burkman remembered that McGahn had connected the unlikely duo — Burkman, the 53-year-old Washington lobbyist, and Wohl, a 21-year-old Californian trailed by investment scandals.
Yes, it was McGahn, they agreed, who had put them together a year ago by sharing Wohl’s cellphone number with Burkman. That was before their spree of bungled smears — including a disappearing sexual assault accuser against special counsel Robert Mueller (announced at a news conference that Burkman conducted with his pants zipper down) and a botched attempt last month to paint Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg as a sexual predator.
Alas, Burkman’s juicy origin story about the formation of their partnership didn’t check out. That tends to happen a lot in their world. ... McGahn said through his attorney that he doesn’t know Wohl or Burkman. ... As it turns out, the truth or falsity of a Burkman-Wohl-concocted story is merely an inconvenience. Let the media’s “puritanical” fact-checkers puzzle it out: That’s the view of this twosome who fancy themselves as sub rosa players in the 2020 presidential contest and busy themselves trafficking in Internet rumors they hope will damage Democratic candidates.
Like notorious dirty tricksters before them, they operate in a realm where it matters little whether their claims are proved — they hardly ever are — but only whether they somehow slip into a corpuscle or two of the national bloodstream. But today it’s a more dangerous game: They operate in an era when notions about truth and fiction have been upended and in which many Americans get their information from self-affirming, partisan silos, making their brand of political cyberwarfare hyper-relevant.
....
'2020 Election Central'
In his short, busy life so far, Wohl has been declared a teenage hedge-fund wunderkind, “the Wohl of Wall Street,” in media reports, and been barred from membership in a national futures trading association that looked disapprovingly at his alleged refusal to be interviewed about fraud allegations. One of his firms has been investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case in which the agency decided not to bring charges, while adding that the decision “should not be considered an exoneration,” according to an SEC document. ... Wohl’s firm also agreed to a cease-and-desist order and paid a $5,000 fine and $32,000 in restitution after an Arizona regulatory commission concluded he had committed securities fraud via two hedge funds and a house-flipping venture. Wohl says he’s never faced a criminal charge or a lawsuit. ... “I think those are good indications that I’ve never done anything wrong with respect to any of my business ventures,” he says.
....
Carol D. Leonnig, Alice Crites and Andrew Ba Tran contributed to this report.
Manuel Roig-Franzia is a feature writer in The Washington Post’s Style section, where he profiles national figures in the worlds of politics, the law and the arts. He previously served as bureau chief in Miami for The Post's National staff and in Mexico City for the Post's Foreign staff. He is the author of a biography of Sen. Marco Rubio. Follow https://twitter.com/RoigFranzia
Beth Reinhard is a reporter on the investigative team at The Washington Post. She was a member of the Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize, George Polk Award and Toner Prize in 2018. She previously worked at the Wall Street Journal, National Journal, the Miami Herald and the Palm Beach Post. Follow https://twitter.com/bethreinhard
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