An Ode To Jacob Wohl, The Blundering Failson Of The #MAGA Movement

Jacob Wohl and his partner in multiple crimes Jack Burkman turned themselves in to authorities Thursday morning on charges of voter intimidation after the pair were caught in a robocall scheme meant to scare black people away from voting by mail in the upcoming presidential election.

The arraignment puts an end to one of the omnipresent questions of the last four years: Why isn't Jacob Wohl in prison yet?

If you don't know Jacob Wohl, here's a quick primer: Wohl is an astoundingly bumbling right-wing personality who seemingly three or four times a year re-entered the news after trying to drum up a comically false scandal around popular left-wing figures.

He initially entered the public eye after defrauding investors in his investment funds Wohl Capital Investment Group (WCIG), NeX Capital Management (NeX), and Montgomery Assets, Inc., getting him banned from the National Futures Association. Despite this, he rose to prominence online as a Trump reply guy after the 2016 election. It was around this time that Twitter first learned of his penchant for telling fantastical, transparent lies, starting with his claim that a bunch of liberals in a hipster coffee shop were all raving about how great President Trump handled a meeting with Vladmir Putin.

But a life of buttering up Trump on Twitter was not in the cards for Wohl, who sought to win conservative favor by taking down those who stood against the Trump administration through cockamamie schemes. His first and most notable botched smear attempt saw him attempting to bring down Robert Mueller with a #MeToo allegation as he was investigating Donald Trump ties to Russia. The story initially unnerved some Americans until it became how ridiculously apparent it was that the whole story was fantastically bogus.

For starters, after Wohl hyped up an incoming bombshell story about Mueller, a woman named "Lorraine" emailed reporters saying people had attempted to bribe her to make up stories about Mueller. This led reporters down the rabbit hole to discover Jack Burkman was allegedly behind the bribes, but Burkman said the information was coming from a group called "Surefire Intelligence," an organization Wohl had essentially set up to make the scheme work. Wohl denied his involvement with Surefire Intelligence, but it became obvious quickly that that was a very, very bad lie.

It all came to a head at a disastrous press conference in which Wohl and Burkman were going to drop their massive allegation, yet showed up with no accuser, no answers as to how their "accuser" knew Wohl, and were inconsistent the spelling of her name. It was a shameful display that got Wohl suspended from the conservative site he wrote for, Gateway Pundit, and seared Wohl's reputation as an incompetent grifter into the minds of the internet, one which he would continually reinforce over the following years.

It's still a mystery how the botched Mueller plot didn't land Wohl in prison for fraud, but he apparently was determined to attempt the same thing over and over again with the same bumbling incompetence until something stuck. In his most salacious attempt to drum up a scandal, he attempted to paint Elizabeth Warren as a cougar by bringing out a "former Marine" who had "a long-term sexual relationship" with the Senator and then-Democratic presidential candidate.

The "marine" claimed to have had a BDSM-relationship with Warren and showed off a scar on his back to prove it; a cursory look at his Instagram showed him bragging about getting the scar from a chain while taking down a swing.

Less-publicized but no less hilarious stunts by Wohl include a similarly bogus sexual assault claim on Pete Buttigieg, a failed attempt at drumming up a sexual assault claim on Dr. Fauci, a birtherism attack on now-Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris and a staged FBI raid on Wohl's house.

In hindsight, it's a wonder this much more benign but no less illegal robocall scam is the thing that looks like it will finally take down Wohl after several years orchestrating stunts that appear to be clear cases of libel and fraud. Wohl and Burkman are pleading not-guilty to their charges, naturally, but if convicted, they could face up to 24 years in prison. If this the end of Wohl, it will be the end of a reliable source of comedy and schadenfreude for the internet, a periodic mini-season of the political equivalent of Arrested Development. Godspeed, you giant dork.