MAGA fraudsters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are up to no good once again, this time with a shady new lobbying business. LobbyMatic, which Wohl and Burkman reportedly founded last year, purports to be an artificial intelligence tool that can help lobbyists with productivity.
The two men are best known for having been convicted on multiple charges—and forced to pay millions in fines—after perpetrating a racist robocall voter suppression campaign during the 2020 election cycle that also pushed misinformation about voting by mail. Unsurprisingly, the duo’s latest business venture seems to have many red flags.
One of those red flags, according to a Politico investigation, is that the two men are not using their real names. And while the website lists no leadership team, Politico was able to speak with former employees of the firm as well as review digital correspondence. Wohl, who is the company’s CEO, is going by the name “Jay Klein,” while Burkman seems to be using the alias “Bill Sanders.” Nothing shady there.
While some of the anonymous former employees who spoke with Politico say they left after realizing who their bosses were, others say they had no idea. But dubious signs—including an unfinished office with exposed sheetrock and missed payrolls—were enough to prompt them to get out.
One former employee told Politico they began seeing the organization with a jaundiced eye after “witnessing an apparent hesitation to obtain business licenses.” Another told a story about how Wohl routinely acted cagey about being asked for identification at potential clients’ office buildings.
404 Media looked into the supposed client list boasted about on LobbyMatic’s website. They found that many of the big names on that list either said they were not clients, or in the cases of Meta, Fidelity, Visa, Capital One, and SalesForce, said they had never heard of the company in the first place.
Zachary Reed, a spokesperson for Toyota, told Politico that they had met with someone named “Jay Klein” and had a free three-month trial that they allowed to expire in August. Jeff Navin, a co-founder of Boundary Stone Partners, gave a statement to the news outlet saying that after having some employees test out the LobbyMatic service, “We quickly determined the tool did not work and terminated our contract two months ago. At no point did BSP share any company information with LobbyMatic, nor did we know of Wohl or Burkman’s affiliation with LobbyMatic.”
LobbyMatic also boasted a “VP of Growth” named “Pat Smith.” According to both Politico and 404 Media, like the rest of the Wohl and Burkman repertoire, “Pat Smith” was a fabrication. Smith’s LinkedIn profile mysteriously lists no prior work history.
This is just the latest shady (and frequently illegal) set of dealings from a duo whose history is riddled with fraud charges, convictions, and attempting to create fake scandals targeting Donald Trump’s enemies. During the rise of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, recordings revealed Wohl trying to fabricate an extramarital affair scandal targeting Dr. Anthony Fauci. Before that, Wohl and Burkman attempted similar frame jobs on everyone from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to former FBI Director Robert Mueller to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
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