I‘d call Jacob Wohl evil, but most evil requires at least a double-digit IQ.
For his latest stunt, the professional fraudster and his partner-in-attempted-crime Jack Burkman allegedly — I use this word lightly — attempted to recruit men to falsely accuse South Bend mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg of sexual assault. If the scheme sounds familiar, it’s because it followed the same plan Wohl and Burkman attempted to use against special counsel Robert Mueller. (The allegation was rapidly debunked, and Mueller referred Wohl and Burkman to the FBI as a result.)
Wohl and Burkman allegedly convinced a Michigan teenager named Hunter Kelly to come to the capital to take down Buttigieg. Wohl and Burkman then appropriated Kelly’s identity without his consent on Twitter and Medium, falsely accusing Buttigieg of a sexual assault in D.C. in February.
The post seemed fishy from the start. It didn’t include any details, just the promise of more to come. Stay tuned for rape! It was also introduced on the internet by Wohl’s father, David, who is, remarkably, an attorney. Also, Kelly’s fake Twitter account was made just days ago. Luckily the media held their fire, and most people have only learned of the story because Wohl and Burkman have been revealed to have orchestrated it.
Yet, the only actual crime Wohl is probably guilty of at this point is stupidity. As the always eloquent Ken White puts it:
I know I promised @jbarro that Jacob Wohl would commit his own big-boy federal crime soon but I’m starting to think it’s going to have to be one without a specific intent requirement because the boy’s building a pretty convincing “too fucking stupid to crime” defense
— BeautifulArmsHat (@Popehat) April 30, 2019
This story serves as a vital reminder that innocence must be presumed until evidence indicates otherwise. But it also shows how easy it is to debunk many false rape allegations. As Sandra Newman, who has studied false accusers in detail, explained in 2017:
But while false accusers often have similar histories, they have various motives. These can be divided into roughly four categories: personal gain, mental illness, revenge, and the need for an alibi.
The Buttigieg hoax fits squarely in the personal gain category. It’s why we’re implicitly more inclined to believe allegations, such as those against Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, because they’re levied by fellow left-wing Democrats, rather than those who present personal gain via political machinations.
For what it’s worth, Kelly has publicly declared that he was not sexually assaulted by Buttigieg, nor had he ever even been to Washington, D.C. before. Not all rape hoaxes are executed by such idiots, but not all receive such clear and unambiguous refutation, either. If anything, Jacob Wohl provided us an account of how the press and the public ought to treat these accounts.
