Today, Explained - Who framed Mayor Pete?

Episode Date: May 8, 2019

Two right-wing operatives tried to frame Mayor Pete Buttigieg for sexual assault. It didn’t go as planned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before we get started with the show today, a quick reminder that it's May, it's time for spring cleaning, and that includes your mouth. The Quip electric toothbrush starts at just $25, and if you go to getquip.com slash explained right now, you can get your first refill pack for free. That is G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained. There was a press conference this morning that you might have missed. Well, there are these stories out there, these reports about a kidnapping that took place of a young 19-year-old man. Various media outlets have repeated this, everyone from the Daily Beast to the New Yorker and so on. You might have missed it because it was held in a driveway in northern Virginia. There was some sort of kidnapping, subway sandwiches, there was a 19-year-old involved. The press conference was mostly given by a guy named Jacob Wohl to double down on allegations against Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Allegations that could end his presidential campaign. The thing is, they won't. Will Summers has been covering this very messy smear for the Daily Beast. So this very thinly sourced sexual assault allegation surfaced on the website Medium. A young man named Hunter Kelly claimed that he had been sexually assaulted by the mayor, and he really didn't have any details, and he sort of said, I will be revealing my story later. And what was the story that he revealed later? The post was very vague. It just said, Mayor Pete sexually assaulted me. So this had all the hallmarks of a sort of right-wing smear.

Very few details, basically nothing that could be corroborated besides this young man's name. Nevertheless, it blew up on right-wing media. It got mentioned on blogs like Big League Politics and The Gateway Pundit, which are kind of these classic like hoax blogs that run this kind of stuff. And soon it made it over to One American News, which is a cable network sort of akin to Fox News. In an online blog post today, the alleged victim identified himself as Hunter Kelly. He claims the alleged sexual assault happened back in February when he didn't know who Buttigieg was. Kelly did not provide much detail of the alleged assault, but claims Buttigieg's actions deeply affected him and provoked suicidal thoughts. So it got some pretty wide pickup. But to those of us who follow these kind of right-wing hoaxes,

this had all the hallmarks of a smear by Jacob Wohl and Jack Berkman, who are two kind of like pro-Trump operatives and sort of famous for their blundering attempts to smear people with sexual assault allegations. This was also suspicious because one of my colleagues at the Daily Beast already had a recording of Jacob Wohl and Jack Berkman approaching another young man and saying, trying to convince him to make up a sexual assault story about Pete Buttigieg. So then when this allegation comes out, it's really obvious that they've essentially succeeded in getting a young man to do it. So how does this allegation, accusation fall apart? So the story gets picked up for a couple hours. And then the Daily Beast runs a story.

Shortly after that, Hunter Kelly says, never mind. It was all fake. I was tricked into this in a Facebook post. And he lays out a story that is really wild. He essentially says that a couple weeks ago, Jacob Wohl noticed that he was following him on Instagram as kind of this, like, Hunter Kelly's this young Republican. And he said, you know, why don't you come to DC, according to Hunter Kelly, he said in this Instagram message, and we'll brainstorm, you know, how we can maybe dig up some dirt on Pete Buttigieg.

Now, Hunter Kelly claims that he wasn't told, you're going to make this sexual assault allegation. We're just going to kind of think about ways to take Buttigieg down. So then he gets to D.C. and he's taken to Jack Berkman's house. And Jack Berkman's this kind of like longtime Republican lobbyist, a real kind of a famous bumbler. And so they go to his house with Jacob Wohl. And Hunter Kelly claims it's really late at night. And they say, basically, you know, you're going to make this sexual assault allegation. And Hunter Kelly claims he said, oh, no, I don't want to, whatever. And then he goes to bed. The next morning, he wakes up. They've posted, supposedly posted it in his name with his face attached to it.

And he goes, oh, no. Yikes. So then essentially he they have a security guard there and he feels almost trapped, like he can't go anywhere. And so eventually he has this ruse, basically, where he calls his sister who lives in the area and packs his bags and says he's taking a nap. And secretly he's trying to negotiate his escape. And then he sort of runs out the door to be rescued by his family and then proceeds to say it's all fake. Why go after Mayor Pete? He's not even like a frontrunner.

He's kind of got a low profile. Right. Seems like a nice guy. So according to the recording of the Daily V Scott, Jacob Wohl in particular was very scared of Mayor Pete's electoral ability against Trump where he needed to win the primary. He said – he described him as this major threat. So it appears that they decided to sort of cook up an allegation against him to take him down. And did anyone actually buy this story before or after you and your colleagues debunked it?

Well, I think the way the stories work is even if they fall apart relatively quickly, the key is to sort of create the idea and to get it floating out there. Because the way conservative and sort of pro-Trump media works is there's not going to be a ton of disproving of ideas that work to their benefit. Yeah. disproving of ideas that work to their benefit. So for example, in the case of the Pete Buttigieg smear, we saw a lot of right-wing blogs jump on it immediately without any confirmation. No one had talked to Hunter Kelly, whatever. I mean, any person could have made that Medium post. So from there, it kind of circulates. It gets on Twitter.

And it just kind of lodges in people's heads. I talked to sort of an average Trump supporter the day this happened and she said, well, you know, I heard Pete Buttigieg sexually assaulted someone. And the demunking had come out hours before. But, you know, once you get that, it's like, OK, sounds good. You know, I mean you're not really following for updates on that. Tell me a bit more about this shady duo, Jacob and Jack. Jacob Wall and Jack Berkman are guys who have sort of gained reputations as tricksters, independent of one another. Jacob's really young. He's 21. His dad is a sort of a pro-Trump lawyer.

Jacob originally became famous for being the youngest person ever banned from futures trading after this sort of investment scheme he had went belly up and he basically got out of it just with this lifetime ban. In Jack's case, Jack Berkman is a longtime D.C. lobbyist known for big stunts. So before this, he's most notorious in Washington for being a big Seth Rich conspiracy theorist. So the Democratic National Committee staffer got murdered. D.C. police theorize it was a botched robbery, the latest in a string of attacks in the neighborhood. As Rich's family and friends mourned, he became the subject of a baseless conspiracy theory. The claim was that he was the source of the DNC emails about the Hillary Clinton campaign that WikiLeaks released later that month. Jack was claiming that it was like this ATF hit team that did it, all this stuff.

So these two guys linked up last year. And ever since then, they've sort of combined their powers of like chicanery and incompetence, I guess, to produce these really eye-catching stunts that fail almost immediately. So, Will, is Pete Buttigieg the first like prominent politician these two guys, Jack and Jacob, have gone after? No, far from it. They were most recently in the news for attempting to smear Robert Mueller when he was still the special counsel with a sexual assault allegation last November. So in this case, they had attached their names to it.

And they had essentially said, we have this young woman who Mueller sexually assaulted when he was FBI director. And again, they had a name attached to it. And they said, you know, come to our press conference and we'll prove it all. But even from the beginning, their scheme, all of these operatives across the world looking for information on Robert Mueller. But it was actually just photos of Hollywood celebrities and models. So like Christoph Waltz from Inglourious Bastards, for example, was like the head of the agency. And the picture of the guy who really ran the agency was really dark. But if you used Photoshop to brighten it, it was just a picture of Jacob.

Wow. And they didn't go to jail. They did not go to jail. They do not appear to have faced any legal consequences. I should say that the alleged Mueller accuser they had a couple months later came out and said that Jack and Jacob had essentially tricked her into it just as Hunter Kelly now says he was tricked into it. So she's denounced them and said that they made it all up. Do these dudes have jobs? Right.

In terms of what they do for a living, it's really unclear what Jacob does. He's a young guy. Obviously, he can't trade futures because he's been banned from that. So it seems like he kind of just professionally like comes up with schemes. But these schemes don't sound like they pay much. Right. I mean, it's very mysterious. And I will say one thing is like a big question is if anyone is funding them and, you know, whether they're getting funding from either a Republican donor or where that money is coming from. In Jack's terms, he's a lobbyist, although not a very high-powered one. He's a lawyer in D.C., which also I think raises questions about how he's still barred. After claiming that these people are his clients, they had this affidavit about Mueller that later turned out to be –

they said, oh, look, there's – this victim's signature is on it. It turned out to be DocuSigned oh, look, there's, you know, this victim's signature is on it. It turned out to be docu-signed. So essentially anyone could have done it. Wow. And so there seemed to be a lot of like very interesting criminal issues here that have not been fully explored or, you know, should be left to the authorities. So it doesn't sound like this will be like the last we hear from these two guys. It does not appear to be the end of Jack or Jacob, at least for now.

I mean, they really do not seem to have learned from their lessons or been chastened in any way. So, I think they'll a template that's worked before. I'm Sean Ramos from The Anatomy of a Smear, after the break on Today Explained. Hello? Hello, Lily? Hi, Sean. Rumor has it you and Peter are getting married. This August. And in advance of that marriage, you have both

purchased his and her quips? We did. They're really cute. Where did you get them? I got them at getquip.com slash explained. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash explained? The one and only. Lily, I have great news for you and for Peter and for your his and her

quips. What? Quip now has a kid's quip. Did you know about this? Oh, gosh, we're getting pressure from all of you. No pressure, but, you know, it's like the same old quip, but with a smaller brush head for the kids and anti-cavity watermelon toothpaste, Lily. I can't get over this anti-cavity watermelon toothpaste.

You know, I might just get it for myself. I love watermelon-flavored toothpaste. They have them at the getquip.com slash explain where the quip starts at just $25. As you well know, and your first set of refills is free. Have you gotten your first refills for free yet? We haven't yet. The quips are very new. Can we check in once you do? Sure. Okay, great. Hey, say hi to Peter. I hear he's shy.

I will do. Okay, great. Hey, say hi to Peter. I hear he's shy. I will do. Thanks, Sean. Well, Jacob and Jack didn't invent this game, right? Didn't even come close? No, I mean, certainly, I think one of the most obvious examples would be James O'Keefe, sort of a notorious right-wing prankster, undercover operative, what have you. Hates on Planned Parenthood a lot. Right, exactly. You know, supposedly dressed as a pimp and went in. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

During the height of the Alabama Senate race, he attempted to basically place false rape allegations against Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate at the Washington Post. Yeah. You know, essentially he would trick the Post into running these claims and then embarrass them. So this isn't the first time that a fake news story or particularly a fake sexual assault story has been dangled in front of reporters. I mean, probably the most successful one would be the birther conspiracy theory, right, about Barack Obama's birth certificate supposedly being born in Kenya.

Why doesn't he show his birth certificate? And you know what? I wish he would. President Trump obviously helped that one chart, but who actually did the legwork? Well, so, I mean, I think the most obvious person in that case would be Jerome Corsi. The sort of longtime right-wing conspiracy theorist who's now swept up in the Mueller investigation. Conservative writer Jerome Corsi today filed a 78-page criminal complaint against Robert Mueller, accusing special counsel of

engaging in a coup. And this is a guy who, if you were looking for someone who's much more successful at these kind of dirty tricks, that's probably who you'd look to. Because, you know, he sort of creates these things out of whole cloth, and they take on a life of their own. They are taken on by various people in the right-wing media who have their own agendas and who certainly see the advantages in terms of audience and profit to promoting these ideas. And then it kind of goes from there. So Jacob and Jack are sort of a poor man's version of Jerome Corsi. Because a Corsi conspiracy actually makes it to the big leagues, to Fox News?

I think that's the idea. On the other hand, I think Jack and Jacob are discovering it's not that easy, particularly in the case of sexual assault claims, which are pretty closely vetted because of the damaging nature of the allegations. But I think at the same time, they also, I think, wisely realize that Democrats are particularly sensitive to allegations of sexual assault from their own candidates. And so that if they could somehow make this stick in the primary, they could, you know, have a pretty good chance of injuring a particular candidate's chances. And this kind of happened to Cory Booker recently too, right? So yeah, so sort of the antecedent to this Pete Buttigieg smear was this anonymous Twitter account that was claiming that – to be a man who was sexually assaulted by Cory Booker.

There wasn't a real person making the accusation. There wasn't a name attached to it. Nevertheless, all these – the same right-wing blogs that picked up the Buttigieg thing picked this up just based on a couple of tweets. They said, wow, this is real I guess. It got all over the place and this was during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. So it was sort of like, well, you Democrats win. Will you answer for Cory Booker? Completely nonsense claims.

But it nevertheless really sort of worked its way into the right-wing firmament and people thought of it as a legitimate thing. So – and in that case, we never found out who was behind it. You know, this Republican lawyer claimed to be representing the accuser, but we never found out any more about it. So, you know, in that case, it was unfortunately a success. Another instance is Elizabeth Warren, who's facing all of these just wild accusations about her. So, for example, recently there was this hoax circulating that she takes this anti-psychotic drug called Risperdal.

And this was a relatively little known thing in right-wing media that was floating around. But Elizabeth Warren's campaign came out and they had this site that included a part that said, Elizabeth Warren does not take Risperdal. Now, I think for a lot of people, no one had ever heard of that. And so that sort of ends up fueling the rumor as well. So you sort of end up in this situation where you're sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't. So, you know, Democratic campaigns are trying to figure out how you deal with these rumors, these hoaxes. And unfortunately, I think a lot of times the way they decide to deal with them, and often the only way you can deal with them is by acknowledging them, which usually ends up just giving it more oxygen. You know, speaking about all these

Democrats who have been accused of stuff like this makes me wonder, have leftist groups done this to Republicans recently? Or is this kind of hogwash always flowing in the same direction? You know, that's a good question. You know, I would hate to say it's never happened. But, you know, certainly in recent memory, I don't think so. Yeah, it's interesting, because I think a lot of what Jack and Jacob are working with here, and what we also see with the James O'Keefe thing, is they're operating on this idea that comes up whenever there's a Republican accused in a high-profile sexual assault case. So whether that's all the women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault or

Roy Moore or Brett Kavanaugh. So basically, the right-wing media tells viewers and voters, they say, you know, this is totally made up. This person is probably getting money on the side. This is just a political ploy. So then it appears that Jack and Jacob see this and they say, well, why don't we do that? And not face any real consequences. Right.

I mean, I think that one open question is how many legal issues Jack and Jacob are going to face over this or over their previous stuff. At the same time, I think we're seeing the social media networks take a lot more aggressive of approach versus what they had in 2016. And I think that's mainly because they've kind of been – just yelled at a lot in Congress. So they're being more aggressive. I mean Jacob has been kicked off Twitter for operating various fake Twitter accounts. So I think all these people are aware that if they sort of push too hard with this fake news kind of stuff, they'll get kicked off social media.

I mean, and frankly, that's sort of the only thing we have right now. But like we're caught between not wanting to take allegations like these seriously or breathe any life into them and then absolutely wanting to take Me Too type allegations seriously and believe accusers. Right. What position does that put like your average news consumer in? Right. I mean, I think Jack and Jacob are recognizing that issue, which is that, you know, if you were saying, if they said, you know, Pete Buttigieg robbed a bank or something, you know, people would just say, you know, get out of here.

That's ridiculous. But because, you know, especially after Me Too, you know, I think we're seeing people treat victims or accusers with a lot more respect and credibility. And so that's sort of what they're playing on in a particularly insidious way essentially is by using that sort of – that special status reserve for these sexual assault allegations. They are using that to their advantage. You know, Jack and Jacob are basically running a clown show, but they're pointing at a real thing that they're sort of grasping for, which is the effectiveness of kind of false allegations and smears against political candidates.

And it's in the way that the right-wing media and the internet and social media can take those, even the flimsiest allegations, and just blow them really wide. And so while Jack and Jacob have proven to be exceptionally incompetent at it, I think if you had someone who was better at it, this could become a very significant issue. Will Sommer reports on technology and the internet for the Daily Beast. He's also got a newsletter about right-wing media. It's called Right Richter, like the Richter Scale. You can sign up for it at rightrichter.com. Thanks to the Quip Electric Toothbrush Company for supporting the show today. The Quip does now have a kid's Quip.

No childish gimmicks. They just want your kids to brush like a grown-up. You can go to getquip.com slash explained right now to find out more. The Quip starts at just $25, and your first pack of refills is free at getquip.com slash explained.