Politics Robert Mueller asks FBI to review alleged sexual harassment hoax, his spokesman says

WASHINGTON – A scheme in which women were allegedly offered money to falsely implicate Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller in sexual misconduct has been referred to the FBI for review, Mueller's spokesman said Tuesday.

The hoax surfaced more than a week ago when a number of journalists were contacted via email by a person who reported receiving a telephone call from an individual making the offer.

“When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the special counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation," Mueller spokesman Peter Carr said.

Mueller, who leads the inquiry into Russia's interference in the 2016 election, has been the target of a barrage of criticism from President Donald Trump and some of his Republican allies in Congress who have accused the special counsel of unfairly targeting the president.

One of the journalists who was contacted, a correspondent for HillReporter.com, recounted the bizarre episode in an article published Tuesday.

The alleged offer, according to the publication, came from a man who proposed paying off the person's credit card debt, and issuing a check for $20,000. According article, the caller then asked the person to move to an encrypted communications application where he could elaborate on the proposition.

"Reluctantly, I downloaded the app and he called me on that app a few minutes later," the person said in the email to the reporter. "He said (and I will never forget exactly what it was) 'I want you to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert Mueller, and I want you to sign a sworn affidavit to that effect.'”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ed-sex-misconduct-hoax-fbi-review/1821254002/

 

I'll do it for $50,000!

 

Pro-Trump troll busted for running fake intelligence firm tied to Mueller smear

https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/jacob-wohl-surefire-intellifence-robert-mueller/

 

The incredibly shoddy plot to smear Robert Mueller, explained
Mueller’s office has asked the FBI to investigate what happened.

An apparent attempt to drum up phony sexual misconduct allegations against special counsel Robert Mueller collapsed spectacularly Tuesday, and may have landed some conservative activists in hot water with the FBI.

“When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation,” Mueller’s spokesperson said in a statement.

Exactly what was going on remains unclear — including the object of the apparent scheme. But it spilled into public view after pro-Trump Twitter personality Jacob Wohl ominously suggested Monday night that a story about such allegations was coming, and journalists who had heard about this shady operation reacted with alarm on Twitter, saying it seemed to be a smear attempt.

The key people involved to some extent appear to be:

• Jacob Wohl: a 20-year-old conservative who’s most famous for sending speedy sycophantic replies to Trump’s tweets and making implausible, factually dubious claims. He also ran some shady hedge funds.
• Jack Burkman: a Republican lobbyist and conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly made false claims to have bombshell political information (such as a mystery witness proving DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered by the government, or someone who would come forward accusing a member of Congress of sexual harassment).

What happened
The gist is that Wohl, Burkman, or both may have been involved in a plot to drum up these allegations. Or they may have just been trolling the media. Or Wohl might even have been tricking Burkman on some level.

What we know so far is that:

• On October 17, a bunch of prominent reporters and Twitter personalities got a weird email, supposedly from a woman named “Lorraine,” who claimed that someone working for Jack Burkman had offered to pay her to make accusations of sexual misconduct against Mueller. However, no one has yet been able to verify her identity or that she even exists (and indeed, Burkman now claims that she “doesn’t exist”). The email may well be total bullshit.
• In any case, some recipients of this email got “Lorraine” to provide the info of the man who supposedly contacted her. They got in touch with him and were each told they were “in over your head” and to “drop” the matter. One says he then got a phone call from a man who identified himself as working for “Surefire Intelligence.”
• Around this time, Jack Burkman said on social media that he was trying to get women with allegations about Mueller to come forward. Jacob Wohl, meanwhile, claimed on Twitter to have heard a rumor that something like this would soon happen.
• On October 22, law professor Jennifer Taub got an email from someone with a Surefire Intelligence account, asking her about her “past encounters with Robert Mueller” and offering to “compensate” her for a phone call. Taub told the Atlantic that she’s never met Mueller, that she didn’t respond to the email, and that she forwarded the email to Mueller’s office.
• Finally, last night, Wohl tweeted: “Several media sources tell me that a scandalous story about Mueller is breaking tomorrow. Should be interesting. Stay tuned!” Various journalists who received the “Lorraine” email then started tweeting about it, and opining that it was shady and unconvincing.

This was an embarrassingly thin scam
This caused the whole matter to spill out into public, and internet sleuths began to dig into Surefire Intelligence, the supposed private intelligence company investigating these allegations.

Wohl was publicly cagey about his involvement in Surefire or the plot generally. But Burkman freely told Hill Reporter that “Surefire is a real company” run by “Jacob Wohl.” And after journalists and online researchers got to work, it started to look like Surefire was ... Jacob Wohl, and only Jacob Wohl.

• Surefire’s official phone number goes to Jacob Wohl’s mother’s voicemail.
• Wohl’s email is listed in the domain records for Surefire’s website.
• The office Surefire listed as its address is in fact occupied by a law firm that says it has nothing to do with them.
• An LLC with the company’s name was incorporated just a few weeks ago.
• LinkedIn profiles for several supposed Surefire employees use photos that are actually of other people (including model Bar Refaeli and actor Christoph Waltz).
• The photo for Surefire’s supposed “managing partner” appears to be of Wohl himself.

So, it looks like Surefire is essentially Better Call Saul’s Jimmy McGill doing a series of different voices over the phone to convince prosecutors that a whole church congregation supports his client. It is not clear if Burkman, who insisted Surefire was “real,” is also being tricked, or if he is a willing participant in this scam.

Nonetheless, on Tuesday afternoon, the far-right conspiracist website Gateway Pundit, for which Wohl writes, posted a heavily redacted document making a rape allegation against Mueller. The name of the document’s author was blacked out, but it used a slogan that was also on the Surefire website. Then, after much Twitter mockery, Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft took the document down and said he was “looking into” the “serious allegations against Jacob Wohl.”

Now, it’s in the FBI’s hands. “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation,” Mueller’s spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday.

If this is just trolling, then it sort of worked
Wohl may end up being the ultimate loser in this scenario, depending on what the FBI finds. But if the purpose of the scam was as much to troll journalists as to smear Mueller and the investigation, then in a way, he’s already won.

Yes, Mueller’s office commented on the allegations and “made news” by saying they’d referred the allegations to the FBI. Still, NBC News, the Atlantic, the Daily Beast, BuzzFeed News, the New York Times, and several other media outlets (including, now, Vox) wrote articles about this nonsense — if only to debunk Wohl’s claims. By doing so, they devoted scarce journalistic resources to this topic rather than others, just days before the midterm elections.

Burkman still claims that this Thursday he will reveal “the first” of Mueller’s victims at a press conference. If this is anything like his previous hyped press conferences, it will be a dud. But if on some level trolls just want to steal the spotlight and change the subject, then the plan succeeded.

https://www.vox.com/2018/10/30/18044110/robert-mueller-jacob-wohl-jack-burkman-surefire

 

"Mom, when the phone rings, I need you to answer 'Vandelay Industries'"

 

Next step is to pull off the ultimate troll, and go to jail. Imagine having the libtards pay for your room and board! Winning!

barfo

 

Muller is getting close

 

The fuck is even happening anymore?

When the fuck is it going to get better? Because it sure as hell isn't happening with Trump. He doesn't get a title, because he's not worthy of a name given all he's done since is divide this country. And it's gone FAST.

There has been -NO- good in the last two years. Just division, division, division. It's sickening.

And no, anyone who says there is any good happening since Trump has been there, is looking at it in a micro sense, and not a macro. Because macrolly, I've never seen it so divided in my lifetime. And I hope we go back to some civility at some time... but it's fucking dark days.