Far-Right Tries to Slime Pete Buttigieg with False Sex Assault Claim

Jacob Wohl, one of the sleaze masters in the plot against Buttigieg.

I guess in some ways it was to be expected given the far rights hatred of gays, willingness to engage in personal destruction of opponents, and relentless willingness to lie, yet the brazenness of some of the sleaziest elements of the far right right to fabricate false claims of sexual assault against Pete Buttigieg is nonetheless stunning.  It s also instructive that among the "news outlets" that sought to quickly disseminate the lie was Big League Politics which played a leading role on the attacks on state wide Democrat office holders here in Virginia back in early February (others involved were crackpot conspiracy sites: Infowars and Gateway Pundit). The thankfully, unsuccessful effort is ironic for two reasons: (i) it is Republicans elected officials and right wing preachers that seemingly are the assault perpetrators in 99 out of 100 cases, and (ii) Buttigieg seeming is everything Trump - and most Republican congressional figures is not  - a military veteran, academically brilliant, versed in foreign languages, and has a guiding morality and decency.  In any event, the plot fell apart because when right wing sleaze masters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman tried to recruit young men to falsely claim they were sexually assaulted by Buttigieg, one of them recorded their conversation and  and gave it to The Daily Beast.  Here is more from The Daily Beast:

A pair of right-wing provocateurs are being accused of attempting to recruit young Republican men to level false allegations of sexual assault against Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg.

The details of the operatives’ attempt emerged as one man suddenly surfaced with a vague and uncorroborated allegation that Buttigieg had assaulted him. The claim was retracted hours later on a Facebook page appearing to belong to the man. A Republican source told The Daily Beast that lobbyist Jack Burkman and internet troll Jacob Wohl approached him last week to try to convince him to falsely accuse Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent.

The source who spoke to The Daily Beast said Burkman and Wohl made clear that their goal was to kneecap Buttigieg’s momentum in the 2020 presidential race. The man asked to remain anonymous out of a concern that the resulting publicity might imperil his employment, and because he said Wohl and Burkman have a reputation for vindictiveness.

[T]he source provided The Daily Beast with a surreptitious audio recording of the meeting, which corroborates his account. In it, Wohl appears to refer to Buttigieg as a “terminal threat” to President Donald Trump’s reelection next year.

Neither Burkman nor Wohl responded to repeated requests for comment on this story.  But after The Daily Beast contacted them last week, traces of the scheme disappeared from the web and social media.

On Monday, a separate individual using the name of Hunter Kelly published a post on the site Medium in which he alleged that Buttigieg sexually assaulted him in February. That post was tweeted out by David Wohl, Jacob’s father, and quickly re-written by the site Big League Politics, which is known as a landing ground for right wing conspiracy theories.

Kelly’s supposed Medium and Twitter accounts both say they were created this month. His Facebook page includes several posts lauding Trump and criticizing Hillary Clinton.
The Daily Beast reached out to Kelly on a cell phone listed to him in the student directory at his  Michigan college. Told we were reporting on apparent efforts by Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman to drum up false sexual assault allegations against Buttigieg, Kelly replied, “I was unaware this was happening. But yes it is true.”

Kelly wrote that he did not control the newly-created Medium and Twitter accounts that posted the allegations under his name. When asked if he could verify his identity, he texted the Daily Beast a selfie that matched the photo seen on Medium and on Kelly’s longstanding Facebook accounts.

“Here is a selfie of me, sorry I have been crying,” he wrote. “Today and the promises made didn’t go as planned.”

Kelly declined to provide more details. But two hours later he posted a message to his Facebook timeline headed, “I WAS NOT SEXUALLY ASSAULTED.”

Again, it is ironic that the Christofascist and right wing trolls like Wohl and Burkman see Buttigieg as some sort of existential threat - most likely because he shines a light on their rank hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy, as well as that of Trump.