In a season of miserable news, national tragedy, and everything-slathered-with-hate, the scheme to tarnish the public image of special counsel Robert Mueller is … really special. Special special. Launched by Gateway Pundit writer Jacob Wohl and Newsmax “reporter” and right-wing lobbyist Jack Burkman, the effort to unveil Robert Mueller: Sex Monster, is so ridiculous that it seems like a momentary joke gone bad. But it’s not.
What’s special to the Nth degree is that this wasn’t just a tweet, or another of Gateway Pundit’s endless string of sex-pizza basement conspiracy theories. Nope. This one involved work. It involved a carefully constructed scheme including a fake security company that was complete down to the LinkedIn profiles of fake employees, weeks of attempts to pay someone to fill the role of Mueller accuser, false fronts, celebrity photos, bad accents, and the impeccable timing to bring this brilliant scheme to fruition in the last days before the midterm elections. And the time it took before the first hint of this plan being made public, and the whole thing unraveling in eye-rolling idiocy was … about five minutes.
Actually, it was more like negative two weeks, if you count the point at which Mueller caught wind of the attempts to buy testimony and referred the whole thing to the FBI. But even without professional investigators, casual perusal showed that the whole affair was constructed with the care of someone whose last big project involved the use of Duplo blocks.
On Monday night, Wohl showed his staggering connections when he revealed that “media sources tell me that a scandalous story about Mueller is breaking tomorrow.” Sure enough, Burkman appeared on Tuesday morning with “some sad news.” According to Burkman, Newsmax would be revealing the “first of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's sex assault victims” on Thursday morning.
Not long after that, the story broke … in Gateway Pundit. But for anyone thinking that at least Wohl’s “media contacts” extended to the guy in the next cube? No. That’s too much credit.
The story that ran in Gateway Pundit consisted of pseudo court documents in which a woman was harassed repeatedly by Robert Mueller in a bar—a session in which Mueller handily gave his name and the fact that he was with the FBI. Then Mueller dragged the woman back to his room and raped her, finishing by once again telling her that he was Robert Mueller, big shot. So she’d better be quiet.
The believability of this material was about what would be expected of a remake of Goodfellas on the Hallmark Channel. But it did appear to have a source: a security company called Surefire Intelligence. A quick look revealed that, yes, Surefire was a thing that appeared to exist. There was a web site that looked pretty reasonable. There were even LinkedIn profiles for around a dozen employees.
And, as bellingcat reports, that’s where things started looking a little less than real.
When searching for the various employees who list their employment as SureFire Intelligence, nearly all of them use stolen profile photographs. In particular, many of these photographs use the sepia-toned filter that was likely used to disrupt reverse image search algorithms.
Their “Tel Aviv Station Chief” uses a photograph of Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli.
The variety of people whose photos were stolen to populate the offices at Surefire—from a pastor, to a photographer, to Sigourney Weaver’s husband, with a couple of stock photos tossed in for good measure—delayed them all being traced back to their origins for maybe 30 seconds as the internet engaged with the story. Wohl, however, claimed to have no knowledge of or connection to Surefire. He learned of the story through his extensive connections in the news business, he said. Nothing more. And that lasted another 30 seconds.
… someone using the email jacob.wohl@nexmanagement.com was involved with the domain registration for surefireintelligence.com.
That was far from the only clue that nailed down Wohl as the genius behind surely the most elaborate false company since Michael Cohen cooked up an LLC to pay off hookers and launder bribes. It took only a few minutes longer to find any number of connections between Wohl and Surefire, but the absolute best was this one mentioned by NBC News.
… calls to a number listed on the Surefire Intelligence website went to a voicemail message which provided another phone number, listed in public records as belonging to Wohl's mother.
NBC also describes Wohl as “a disgraced hedge fund manager turned pro-Trump conspiracy theorist.” But that’s really selling Wohl short. He’s much more special than that. At 20 years old, Wohl is the youngest person to ever be banned for life from all forms of securities trading after he ran an investment scheme stealing tens of thousands from the accounts of gullible customers of the “teen wonder.” It was shortly after he was banned from trading in 2017 that Wohl began creating Surefire Intelligence—meaning that at least some part of his scheme to smear Mueller was underway for more than a year.
Both Gateway Pundit writer Jim Hoft and Burkman appeared to be backing off the attempt at some point over the last 24 hours, but at this point it appears that Wohl, Burkman, and Hoft are all riding this plane down together. Wohl continues to insist that “In less than 24 hours, Mueller’s victims will begin telling their stories.” And he’s gotten support from the crowned king of Republican fiction.
Is D’Souza pre-pardoned from this? Or will Trump have to wave his magic wand again? Since he already forgave D’Souza for making up donors, it seems entirely possible that Trump would be willing to give Wohl and Burkman and anyone else involved a pass. After all, they were doing this for Trump and trying to hurt Mueller, so … why should laws apply?
The week after the election will be a test of whether Republicans—especially Republicans packing their bags at the House and looking for future employment in the lucrative lobbying / think tank / institute land of Republican political welfare—will do anything more than give Trump a parting boost along Autocracy Road. Republican senators have already agreed that, as soon as we get past that pesky election thing, they’ll bid a happy farewell to former colleague Jefferson B. Sessions III and install attorney general Trumperson McPuppet Jr.
And once that new attorney general is in place, there’s nothing to stop him from telling Mueller that his job is done. Or informing Mueller that his investigation is limited to just looking at one Russian who talked to Donald Trump on a particular Tuesday in September. Wait … not that Tuesday. Anyway, the Mueller investigation is going to be under new management very shortly, and Republicans will have the chance to hamper, sabotage, and otherwise upset all apple carts until at least January.
There’s also nothing to stop that new attorney general from giving Wohl, Burkman, and crew a nice little pat on the head and telling them to run along. Though … there are still those pesky state AGs out there. It looks like Surefire claims to be a California company. And those phone calls soliciting false testimony appear to have come from another state. There’s plenty of fun to go around.