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When it comes to shamelessly piggybacking on a major political story and tripping over ones own feet in the process, there is no more accomplished young man in America than Riversides own Jacob Wohl. The 21-year-old serial hoaxer and his fiftysomething partner in slime, lobbyist and conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman, are the Mutt and Jeff of American political sabotagehapless ideological hit men who have disastrously inserted themselves into just about every major scandal of the Trump era. Last year, at the height of the Mueller investigation, they hatched a scheme to discredit the special counsel by claiming that he had raped a woman. The alleged victim admitted that the charge was baseless. Six months later a similar attempt to smear Pete Buttigieg misfired when the college kid who was the supposed target of the mayors alleged amorous advances claimed that Wohl had duped him into making false charges. These setbacks have done nothing to diminish his notoriety. Before he was deplatformed from Twitter in February, Wohl had racked up 186,000 followers. Among his admirers was the president of the United States, who promoted his young acolyte by frequently retweeting him and meeting with him several times.

In September, as the Ukraine scandal engulfed the country, Wohl and Burkman unveiled their latest scheme: a $50,000 reward for information that would help unmask the CIA whistle-blower who reported the presidents phone call. Their bounty offer came a day after Trump suggested the whistle-blower was a spy who should be executed. Five days later the deceitful duo claimed they would reveal the Ukraine whistle-blowers identity at a press conference in the driveway of Burkmans Arlington townhouse. Spoiler alert: They didnt.

In the past, stunts like these attracted hordes of camera crews and reporters, but that production turned out to be a dud. While the conservative Washington Examiner dutifully reprinted every word of their press release, the mainstream media largely ignored it. One noteworthy exception was the news and opinion site Splinter News, which ran a withering post under the headline: Washingtons Biggest Idiots Offer $50K Reward to Expose Whistleblowers Identity.

Undaunted, Wohl and Burkman continued to insinuate themselves into media coverage of the incident. Wohl says he spent two months this past summer in Ukraine, digging up dirt on Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and he has promised to reveal his blockbuster findings since September. But a New Jersey Trump supporter, Deelip Mhaske, who claims Wohl burned him in a financial scheme, told me he didnt think Wohl ever stepped foot in the country. He showed me a bizarre video Wohl had sent Mhaske back in July when he was supposedly doing his oppo research. In it Wohl says the local time is almost 3 oclock, when in fact the time in Ukraine was 10 or 11. He might have been somewhere else, Mhaske said, but he wasnt in the location where he was saying.

Wohl is of one of a dozen social-media-savvy fanboys who became right-wing stars by embracing Donald Trump. Their all-consuming desire to own the libs seems to mirror the presidents. But even in this clique Wohl stands out. Fit and handsome in a creepy Patrick Bateman kind of way, he drops names of friends like Donald Trump Jr. and former Fox News chief Bill Shine. His father, David Wohl, is a recurring guest on Fox News and surrogate of the Trump campaign who had daily calls with the reality-TV-star candidate in 2016. This week, David announced the release of a 2020 MAGA calendar featuring boudoir photos of himself; hes selling it for $25 and donating the money to military charities.

Screenshot of @jacobawohl on Instagram

Screenshot of @jacobawohl on Instagram

Jacobs Instagram feed is packed with pics of Wohl clowning around with Trump world cronies such as Corey Lewandowski and Sebastian Gorka. They appear alongside dozens of vaguely porny photos of Wohl showing off his six-pack abs in a mirror or suggestively puffing on long cigars.

But as the 2020 election nears, the future of MAGA influencers like Wohl is uncertain. In the past year Twitter, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley giants finally started to crack down on targeted harassment and misinformation. Young celebrities of the far right are being exiled to lesser platforms such as Telegram and Gab. Wohls friend Milo Yiannopolous is a cautionary tale. After he was banished from Twitter and Facebook, the British journalist, who was once described as the Mick Jagger of the alt-right, could barely get himself arrested. He recently complained that he cant put food on the table because he is banned from major social media. Wohl shared the comments and added: I agree with all of this. But its not just dwindling followers that worry Wohl. He is facing possible prison time on a recent felony charge in Southern California that stems from a three-year-old incident in which his fraud may have led to a mans death. Prosecutors recently concluded what Wohls detractors have argued for years: The presidents biggest fan is a grifter who may land in jail.

In September I reached out to Wohl in an email, telling him I was interested in writing a story on his rise from teenage financial prodigy in Riverside to national media figure and troll for the Trump administration. He responded in 20 minutes. He officially resides in Irvine but frequently turns up in New York, DC, and tony hotels around the world. Despite his jet-setter lifestyle, its unclear how he makes a living. He describes himself as a political and corporate intel consultant. But the website for one of his ill-fated endeavors, Surefire Intelligence, featured photos of station chiefs that turned out to be stock images of people like supermodel Bar Refaeli.

When I finally got Wohl on the phone, he was unflappable and relentlessly on message. He twice mentioned his two-month trip to Ukraine. This was before the whistle-blower complaint was public knowledge, but on fringe sites like 4chan, the fabricated Biden Ukraine problem was already taking shape as Hillarys Emails 2.0. What did Wohl do over there? I asked him. Ukraine? he replied, eagerly. Just doing a little bit of Biden work, he said, looking into some of Bidens dealings over there, of which there were many.

He went on to brag about a range of things, including his supposedly gargantuan shoe size (I wear 15 or 16, depending on the brand), staunch anti-pot position (I think the war on drugs should be stepped up), his carnivore diet (I eat a lot of steak), his encyclopedic knowledge of cigars (My favorite all-time cigar is the Bolivar Libertador 2016 La Casa del Habano edition. Ill text you the correct spelling), and his self-taught fluency in Russian: I would describe my skills in Russian as on the border between conversational and fluent, he said. When I was in Ukraine for two months, I spoke no English.

Wohls detractors have long wondered how he has managed to avoid serious legal consequences despite his questionable practices.

Did Wohl ever visit Ukraine? Like most of his claims, the truth is rather murky. Internet sleuths noted that the pair of Instagram photos he posted of his trip were taken in two cities that are 2,200 miles apart. Oddly, both feature the same backdrop: a patio fence. Wait a sec, wrote r0kkitgirl in reply to one of the photos he had tagged as Minsk, Belarus. This is the same background as the Tel Aviv photo you posted the other day. Where are you? Doesnt matter, Wohl replied.

Two weeks later Wohl was caught in another Instagram lie. This time he had posted a bathroom selfie in front of a shabby-looking shower curtain and tiles and pretended it was from the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Internet users ridiculed his shamelessness by posting photos of an actual Ritz-Carlton guest room in Tysons Corner, and photoshopping pics of Wohl in front of fictitious backgrounds like The Lord of the Ringss Mordor and the Star Wars Death Star.

Wohls detractors have long wondered how he has managed to avoid serious legal consequences despite his questionable practices. His campaign against Mueller is a case in point. In October 2019, Wohl and Burkman announced with great fanfare that they had found a woman who claimed the special counsel had raped her. But a few hours before the press conference was to begin, the accuser disavowed her accusation and ran off, later claiming that Wohl had catfished her, presenting himself as a Mossad-trained investigator named Matthew Cohen. Mueller referred the case to the FBI.

The accuser in the Buttigieg fiasco, Michigan college student Hunter Kelly, said Wohl planted the false accusation on the internet without his knowledge or consent. Like the Mueller accuser, Kelly skipped out before a planned press conference and quickly repudiated the duos allegations. Wohl insists the restaurant in Michigan where Kellys mother works threatened to fire her if her son didnt recant. I think its very sad that he was bullied out of standing up for himself, Wohl said. Kelly declined to comment for this story.

Since he was booted off Twitter in February, Wohl has allegedly branched out into seedier forms of grift. Two women estranged from perennial South L.A. congressional candidate Omar Navarro, an ally of Wohl, alleged in August that Navarro had hired Wohl to harass them with threatening text messages and death threats. The threats to Navarros ex-girlfriend and a former campaign aide came from a phone number associated with Wohl, the Daily Beast reported. In response to another incident, Deelip Mhaske has accused Wohl of bank fraud. He told federal prosecutors that he paid Wohl $20,000 to get Trump to keynote a conference Mhaske was organizing. Though the appearance never happened, Wohl kept the money.

Until the felony charge was brought against Wohl in September, however, the most serious consequence of his reckless displays of ineptitude was being kicked off Twitter after he admitted earlier this year to USA Today that he was creating fake accounts to influence voters in the 2020 election. (There is also the lifetime ban he earned as a teen from the National Futures Association and an order to cease and desist and pay a $5,000 fine and $32,000 in restitution that was issued by the Arizona Corporation Commission in 2017. He never paid, according to the Arizona Attorney Generals Office.)

That Wohl, like Trump, is Teflon may well have something to do with the fact that his father, David Wohl, is a criminal defense attorney in private practice in Riverside. One of the fathers clients is Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist who was busted in February for trespassing on the lawn of the Governors Mansion in Sacramento.

The elder Wohl has had his own problems with the government. He has been the subject of at least a dozen state and federal tax liens in Orange and Riverside counties since 1995, USA Today reported. Though several of the liens were paid, a recent one for $22,002.31 remains active.

Jacob told me a few times he would do stuff, and his dad would always have his back, says Shane Bouvet, a pro-Trump celebrity and one-time friend of the younger Wohl. Bouvet says he blocked Wohl on all social media because he has the complex of a serial killer. He learned a lot from his dad, Bouvet continued. How to write up legal contracts. How to do law language where wording can get you out of trouble. He feels like hes bulletproof.

Wohls alleged crime in Riverside stems from the pre-Trump days of 2015 when Wohl, while still a student at Santiago High School, reinvented himself as a corporate raider he called The Wohl of Wall Street. A handicapped Arizona man who watched Wohl on Fox Business News, where he was portraying himself as the 17-year-old principal of a $500,000 asset fund, liked what he saw and gave Wohl $75,000 to invest. A year later the same man called in a tip to the Riverside County District Attorneys Office that Wohl and a business partner had lost it all. The investor subsequently killed himself. Wohl is awaiting trial on one felony count of unlicensed sale of a security stemming from the case. If convicted, he could be sentenced to three years.

When I ask him about this, Wohl replies that his counsel, by which he means his father, has advised him not to comment. Then he changes the subject to the big things hes working on, though he wont offer specifics. I mean big, as in number-one trending on Twitter in the news, he says. (Three weeks later he made national news when he tried smearing Elizabeth Warren.) It strikes me, not for the first time, that Wohls greatest strength is his ability to keep a straight face.

RELATED: Scientists Are Trying to Figure Out Why People Are OK with Trumps Endless Supply of Lies

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Who Is Jacob Wohl? The Right-Wing Political Operative Faces a Felony - LA Magazine

On the campus of Baylor University in Waco, Texas Thursday, bestselling author and editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire Ben Shapiro explained why the Left, which portrays itself as the great promoter and defender of science, frequently rejects it, discarding scientific evidence whenever it conflicts with progressive ideology.

Tonight Im talking about why the Left hates science, Shapiro began (video below). Now to a lot of folks on the Left, this sounds ridiculous. After all, its right-wingers who are climate deniers, science deniers, and they believe in that book, the Bible, and theyre all wild and crazy they dont believe in anything like the scientific method.But the truth is, right now many of the attacks on science are coming from the political Left.

Shapiro first zeroed in on the significant difference in the Left and Rights diverging views of human nature, the former pushing the idea of infinite human malleability, which posits that human beings can be altered from anything to anything, particularly by government coercion thus providing the impetus for top-down governmental control.

If you can remove the remediating institutions of society, human beings can be remade from the top down, Shapiro explained in summary of the Lefts view of an infinitely malleable human nature.The problem, Shapiro argued, is that this view is undermined by reality. Infinite engineering of humankind, unfortunately, tends to be undermined by the facts of human nature, he stated.

Conservatives view human beings in a more scientific way, Shapiro suggested, believing that we operate in part by a fixed human nature and accept the premise that human beings are happiest when they exercise reason in accordance with that nature.

While the Left likes to pretend that it loves science, Shapiro argued, much of what it terms science is not in fact science. As examples, Shapiro pointed to the Lefts embrace of political science and the social sciences, which often do not meet the rigorous standards of science.

What the Left actually means by science, Shapiro underscored, is anything that is not religion.

Thats because people on the secular Left see religion as an obstacle to progress all progress, the bestselling author explained. Theyre not merely concerned with Galileo who, by the way, was an ardent believer in the Divine. Theyre concerned that religion acts as a retrograde check on their ambitions to rewrite society, including the rewriting of fundamental societal truths, like distinctions between the sexes and the value of the family unit.

This animus for religion, said Shapiro, is why so many on the Left will routinely characterize science-based conservative positions as religious in nature.

As an example, he pointed to the Lefts criticism of pro-lifers, which focuses mainly on the fact that many pro-lifers believe in the Bible as a definitive authoritative source. While it may be true that pro-lifers are often people of faith, that point is simply a convenient strawman for the political Left, said Shapiro.

The distinction the Left attempts to impose between religion and science, Shapiro maintained, is ultimately false, resting on an utter misunderstanding of both science and religion.

Watch Shapiros speech below:

Shapiros speech at Baylor is part of the Young Americas Foundations Fred Allen Lecture Series. Last week, Shapiro visited the campus of Boston University to address the Lefts Claim that America was built on slavery, a view Shapiro argued is based on reductive presuppositions that result in a grim and flawed vision of what defines the country. (Watch the speech here.)

A week earlier, Shapiro spoke at Stanford University, focusing on the dangerous game being played by the Alt-Right, whose leaders he condemned as espousing racist and anti-Semitic views diametrically opposed to conservatism, and their counterparts on the radical Left, who attempt to brand conservatives as Alt-Right despite their glaringly diverging views. (Watch the speech here.)

Related: WATCH: Hecklers Attempt To Trap Ben Shapiro, Fail Miserably

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WATCH: Ben Shapiro: How The Left Pretends To Love Science But Actually Hates It - The Daily Wire

Mia Levine, Scarlet StaffNovember 22, 2019

Most people in todays world love social media. Popular social media apps include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Each of these platforms has differing user factors and offer different types of content. Facebook is or supposedly is a way to connect with close friends and family. When I open Facebook, I tend to see photos posted by awkwardly-friended estranged relatives and baby pictures of my friends posted by their Great Aunt whom I do not know. Personally, Facebook feels like a more professional or family-friendly social media source, while other platforms such as Twitter feel completely different.

While Facebook is more image-based, Twitter is usually full of text chains posted within the 280- character limit. Twitter is a place where people ranging from Jojo Siwa to our own commander in chief Donald J. Trump to the average millennial can post whatever comes to mind at any given moment. Opening Twitter usually results in spending 30 minutes going through my personalized feed liking tweets I find funny or keeping up with angsty politicians and other political opinions. Most of my generation tend to pay attention to and listen to politics through various tweets rather than through people one knows on Facebook.

Starting this past fall, Facebook has come under a lot of fire in terms of its policies relating to political ads. Facebook had announced that it would not be fact-checking political speeches including various campaign financed ads. Essentially, they said that they would not remove any political advertisements.

Twitter responded to this by removing all political ads beginning soon after Facebooks announcement. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, said: This will be the broadest possible ban and will specifically cover ads regarding individual candidates and issues. Within Twitters terms and conditions they write anyone who is affiliated with a group either on- or offline that is found to engage in and/or promote violence against civilians to advance a political, religious and/or social cause is in violation of Twitter policy. However, Twitter still has thousands of users that spread lies and promote violence within their tweets. So then, if these new guidelines regarding political ad bans are to be implemented, how can users trust that Twitter will follow through when they have not clearly been able to complete their mission regarding average users?

Earlier this month, audio of Richard Spencer, an American Neo-Nazi and white supremacist, was leaked on twitter. The clip, allegedly recorded during the Summer of 2017, hears Spencer hurling racial and ethnic slurs in reference to the Unite the Right rally, an alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Within the clip, Spencer says my ancestors enslaved those pieces of f*!^%&g s&!t. While many see this phrase as Spencer clearly affirming and voicing his stance as both a racist and a white nationalist, Twitter does not feel that the audio bite violates their aforementioned policy. In a statement from the company, Twitter said that we have not received reports of content that would result in [Spencer being] suspended and that Spencer did not have any known affiliations to hate groups, though, in my opinion, both this specific clip and many other statements Spencer has made prove the contrary.

If Twitter is worried about advertising being able to target communities and ambush them with false information, then I do not understand why they are allowing the founder of a modern Neo-Nazi movement to maintain space on their platform. If Twitter wont allow prominent political figures to post ads and expand on their ideologies but allows Neo-Nazis to express their opinions, what does that say about the morality behind Twitters leaders and their future policies? Twitter bans political ads concerned with abortion and gun control but allows white-supremacists to boast their bigoted opinions on their platform. Jack Dorsey has a lot of explaining to do.

Read the rest here:
Political Ads, Twitter, and Neo-Nazis - The Scarlet

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., ripped Rep. Tulsi Gabbard during the Democratic debate in Atlanta, tearing into the Hawaii congresswoman for her comments on Democratsand accusing her of bashing President Barack Obama on Fox News.

The attack came after Gabbard said the Democratic Party "is not the party that is of, by and for the people." In response, Harris accused Gabbard of being harsh toward Democrats while cozying up to President Donald Trump and his former chief strategist Steve Bannon.

"I think that its unfortunate that we have someone on this stage who is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States who during the Obama administration spent four years, full time, on Fox News criticizing President Obama," Harris said.

We decided to dig into the archives and examine Gabbards record as a guest on Fox News, a network considered friendly to Trump and his Republican allies.

Saying Gabbard was on Fox "full time" seems like an exaggeration, but Gabbard did make frequent appearances on the network during Obamas second term. And she often bashed the former presidents foreign policy in the process.

As for Harris, she appeared just once on "Hannity" in 2009 to talk about health care while she was San Franciscos district attorney, we found.

A frequent Fox News guest

Gabbards arrival in Congress overlapped with the start of Obamas second term. From 2013 to 2017, she became a regular guest on Fox News. Its important to note that Gabbard was appearing as a sitting member of Congress, not as a pundit

Searching the Nexis database, we counted more than 20 appearances Gabbard made on Fox News while Obama was in office. That does not include times when she was mentioned on Fox News or featured in video clips the networks hosts played on air.

She was interviewed by a number of current and former Fox News hosts, from anchor Greta Van Susteren to talk show host Tucker Carlson.

Gabbard criticized Obamas foreign policy

Gabbards anti-war foreign policy views have long put her at odds with members of both parties who believe the United States should have an active hand in resolving international issues.

As she campaigns for the White House, Gabbard has promised to fight for peace and stay out of what she calls "regime-change wars" overseas.

RELATED STORY: Why Tulsi Gabbard calls the war in Syria a regime change war

Not surprisingly, her early appearances on Fox News were often critical of the Obama administrations actions to combat terrorism and manage other issues in the Middle East.

In a September 2013 interview with Van Susteren, Gabbard said she was against military strikes as Obama was weighing whether to authorize them against the Syrian government.

In June 2014 and August 2014 interviews on the same show, she shared concerns about Obamas decisions to send military advisers to Iraq and target the Islamic State with airstrikes.

Gabbard ramped up her appearances in 2015, going on Fox News several times to blast Obama over his refusal to refer to the Islamic States beliefs and terrorism as "Islamic extremism" or "radical Islam."

"Unless you clearly identify your enemy, then you cannot come up with a very effective strategy to defeat that enemy," she told host Neil Cavuto on Jan. 21, 2015.

"This is not just about words. It's not about semantics," she told Van Susteren days later. "It's really about having a real, true understanding of who our enemy is and how important that is."

She later criticized the administrations strategy to defeat ISIS, telling Van Susteren that "the White House needs to change its policy" and give more support to U.S. allies in the Middle East.

And she repeatedly appeared on Fox News to argue that the United States should not work to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, at one point warning that removing Assad would leave Syria as a repeat of "the failed Libyan state" she said Obamas foreign policy helped produce.

Gabbard touched on other topics in foreign policy, as well. She weighed in on Israel and the then-ongoing negotiations with Iran over the countrys efforts to build nuclear weapons, which she said should result in a deal that allowed Iranian sites to be inspected without warning.

She also stepped outside of the foreign policy arena, at one point condemning the Democratic National Committee for allegedly disinviting her from a primary debate in October 2015, while she was the committees vice chair, andoffering the then-candidates debate advice.

But even then, her advice to candidates sounded like a swipe against Obama when she said they should answer questions on Syria by speaking out against Turkeys "targeting" of the United States Kurdish allies in the region.

"The fact that the administration has stood silently by and allowed this to happen, including NATO, I think it's important for those candidates on the stage tonight to address this situation and to address how they will approach this and taking action," she said.

Gabbard has returned to Fox News more than a few times this go-around, joining Carlson and fellow talk show host Sean Hannityto discuss her foreign policy views, the criteria for qualifying for this years Democratic debates and former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons suggestion that Gabbard is a "Russian asset."

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Tulsi Gabbard's Fox News presence in the Obama years - PolitiFact

President Trump suggested that Barack Obama knew of the allegedly illegal conduct committed in order to obtain a warrant to spy on onetime Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

A former low-level attorney with the FBI is being accused of altering a document that led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court granting permission to spy on Page. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz uncovered the document during his investigation into alleged FISA abuse and passed along the information to U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is pursuing a criminal investigation into the origin of the Russia investigation.

Trump was asked about the attorney who's under investigation during a Friday morning interview on Fox & Friends. He suggested Durham's report will be "historic," leading anchor Steve Doocy to ask if he believes "it could actually go up into the West Wing of the Obama administration?"

"What youre dealing at the highest levels of government," Trump answered. "They were spying on my campaign. This is my opinion. I said it a long time ago. Remember when I put out a tweet? And I talked about the wiretapping, in quotes, meaning modern-day version whatever wiretapping may be. And all hell broke loose."

The president then added, "I think, personally, it went all the way."

"For [John] Brennan, and for [James] Clapper, and for all of these losers that you had over there, I think it is impossible for them to be doing things, and lets see what it all says," he went on. "But its impossible Susan Rice, the person that worked at the United Nations, who went after FISA reports and went after reports like she ate them for lunch. Look at the previous administration; they went after like a few. She was getting them at levels nobody even imagined before. It had nothing to do with her. No, I think this goes to the highest level. I hate to say it. I think its a disgrace."

The change the lawyer who forged the document made was substantive enough to change its meaning. That individual was interviewed by Horowitz. No charges appear to have been filed in court at this time.

The rest is here:
Trump believes Obama knew of forged document related to Carter Page surveillance - Washington Examiner