Send in the clowns

It’s a classic rule of comedy that clowns almost always come in pairs. Think Laurel & Hardy, or Abbott & Costello, or Ragetti & Pintel from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. [1] The tall skinny one and the short fat one. The hapless bumbler who’s always apologizing and the frustrated sidekick who is this close to having his head explode. 

A new pair of clowns has hit the scene, and they’re pretending to be an AI-based political lobbying firm called LobbyMatic. Entering from stage left, slipping on banana peels and squirting themselves in the face with seltzer, are Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl.

The plot twist here is not only do Burkman and Wohl wear red rubber noses and size 37 shoes, they’re also notorious right-wing grifters and convicted felons. Per Politico:

LobbyMatic was founded last year by Jacob Wohl, who in 2022 was convicted along with his longtime associate Jack Burkman of felony telecom fraud after running a robocall campaign in largely Black neighborhoods in several states telling people not to vote by mail. An Ohio judge ordered them to spend 500 hours registering people to vote, and the Federal Communications Commission fined them $5 million.

I’m sure the judge thought that forcing them to register voters instead of suppressing them was a fitting punishment, but personally, I would not trust these guys to register that dog’s license, let alone voters. Did anyone supervise this activity? I bet half of the people they registered were named Deez Nutz, Neal Down or Ben Dover.

Clowns to the left, jokers to the right

Of course, Wohl and Burkman are well known in Washington DC, because they’ve been hitching a ride on the MAGA wingnut grift express for far longer than that. 

In 2018, Burkman tried to discredit Trump/Russia special counsel Robert Mueller by cooking up a fake rape allegation, based on evidence uncovered by a firm calling itself “Surefire Intelligence,” whose CEO was – yes – Jacob Wohlman, using the pseudonym Matthew Cohen.

Wait, it gets better. Per Talking Points Memo: 

And that’s not the only Wohl connection — the phone number listed for Surefire Intelligence, the supposed contact of all the various foreign and domestic bureaus, led back to one place: (It’s almost too sad to say) Jacob Wohl’s MOM’S HOUSE.

In 2019 they tried to do it again, this time targeting Pete Buttigieg. But the press conference they’d scheduled to announce their findings had to be canceled due to a “leftist mob” that planned to disrupt their announcement. Burkman even posted a link to the EventBrite invitation the Woke Mob was using to organize the protest. The email address associated with that invitation: [email protected]. [3]

That’s just a small sampling of the too-ludicrous-to-be-believed shenanigans these guys have tried to pull over the years. [2] So when they decided on their latest AI lobbying grift, they felt compelled to mask their identities. Jacob Wohl transformed into “Jay Klein,” and Burkman became “Bill Sanders.”

But these geniuses couldn’t even remember their own aliases. Again, Politico: 

After getting hired by “Jay Klein,” [a former] employee soon grew suspicious about Wohl and the company after witnessing an apparent hesitation to obtain business licenses and hearing Wohl referred to as Jacob. The person discreetly took a photo of Wohl, did a Google image search and learned that Klein was actually Wohl.

The other former employees learned of Klein’s true identity after different colleagues told them that he was Wohl. Three of the former employees also said that Burkman or others at the company would sometimes slip up and call “Jay Klein” Jacob by accident.

Yet these guys still managed to convince Toyota, healthcare company Lantheus, and DC lobbying firm Boundary Stone to (briefly) sign on with LobbyMatic, which promises to “drive to the heart of complex legislation in seconds” and “transform the unseen into the seen.”

Always be grifting

Here’s their VP of Growth, an entirely AI generated entity named Pat Smith, whom Wohl created “because the best way to get introductions was to use an attractive blonde,” as he told three of his former employees. 

When “Pat Smith” is the most clever name you can come up with, maybe you should get out of the con game and take up something easier, like working in a car wash or being a news anchor on Fox.

Per 404 Media, LobbyMatic also posted fake screenshots suggesting that Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Fidelity, Home Depot, Palantir, and Microsoft were clients. (They were not.)

And Wohl continues to double down. On Tuesday he posted a video to LinkedIn  defending his company, without ever acknowledging any of the obvious lies, including the fact he’s been pretending to be someone else for the last two years.

Yet they’re still using their Robo-babe account to post this, and they still refuse to identify him by name.

Perhaps the funniest/saddest part of this is how many people have gotten snookered. “Pat Smith” boasts nearly 1700 Linkedin connections (apparently the best way to get Linkedin connections is also to be an attractive blonde). The company has roughly 3000 followers on Linkedin. It managed to hire a handful of actual employees, before most of them quit. 

As our current political dystopia reminds us each day, some people will believe anything, regardless of the evidence staring them in the face. Until that changes, clowns like Wohl and Burkman will continue to find new audiences for their circus. 

How do you transform the unseen into the seen? Share your magic tricks in the comments or email me: [email protected].

[1] Or, if you want to get all literary, Vladimir and Estragon from “Waiting for Godot.”

[2] I have occasionally entertained the idea that these guys are more like Abbie Hoffman or Andy Kaufman – satirists on a superhuman scale who are deeply committed to the bit – mostly because it’s hard to believe anybody could really be this stupid.

[3] Probably the only time you’ll ever see the name Wohl and the word “think” in the same sentence.