FBI raids home of conservative conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman (UPDATE... fake) [View all]

[demmiblue]

Last edited Tue Sep 15, 2020, 08:30 AM - Edit history (1)

Source: WaPo

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the home of lobbyist, conspiracy theorist and right-wing operative Jack Burkman early Monday morning.

Burkman confirmed the raid and said he was not arrested. His associate Jacob Wohl said the agents took computers, papers and cellphones from the home but that it was unclear what the federal investigators were seeking.

"It's quite strange," Wohl said. He said neither he nor Burkman, to his knowledge, have been questioned by the FBI.

A spokeswoman for the Washington Field Office of the FBI said, "We cannot confirm that at this time."

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/fbi-raids-home-of-conservative-conspiracy-theorist-jack-burkman/2020/09/14/cced27cc-f6a0-11ea-be57-d00bb9bc632d_story.html

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UPDATE:

[div class"excerpt"]Jacob Wohl Staged Fake FBI Raid on Business Partner, Actor Hired for Production Says

A supposed FBI raid of a home of an infamous Republican dirty trickster appears to have been a ruse--one that began falling apart even as its perpetrators managed to dupe a major national newspaper.

On Monday, a Virginia man who responded to a Craisglist ad seeking actors to play FBI agents for a television pilot came forward to say that he'd been roped into the latest hoax orchestrated by bumbling right-wing smear merchants Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl.

Tommy Abraham told The Daily Beast in an interview on Monday that the Craigslist ad offered $400 cash payments to white male actors who agreed to don FBI badges and windbreakers and film a series of scenes at Burkman's home in Arlington, Virginia. In the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, Abraham said that he and a handful of others who responded to the ad converged on Burkman's home and were filmed acting out an FBI raid there. Abraham supplied documentary evidence to back up his assertions, including emails from an address bearing the name of a company Wohl once ran.

By Monday afternoon, news of the fake raid had already been reported as genuine by The Washington Post, and Burkman was insinuating that high-level government officials were retaliating against him for his efforts to root out corruption in Washington. A person going by he name Bev Donahue sent a series of photos and video clips of the "raid" to reporters, and shared them on an eponymous twitter account created in August. But there's evidence that "Donahue" is just a pseudonym for Wohl. That Twitter account is associated with an email address beginning with "ja" and a cell phone number that, like Wohl's, ends with the digits 91.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jacob-wohl-staged-fake-fbi-raid-on-business-partner-actor-hired-for-production-says