CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A New York judge ordered two right-wing hoaxers accused of launching a robocall campaign designed to suppress Black voters to call everyone back and say they lied.
District Court Judge Victor Marrero gave Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman until 5 p.m. Thursday to arrange for a second robocall to be recorded and sent to the more than 80,000 people — including people in Cleveland and East Cleveland — who received the original call in August. The second call must say that a court has found the first one contained false information that had the effect of intimidating voters and interfering in the Nov. 3 election, Marrero ruled.
Marrero’s 66-page order accused the pair of carrying out “electoral terror.”
The order is part of a civil lawsuit that the National Coalition on Black Civil Participation, a New York-based nonprofit, filed on behalf of eight people who say they received the robocall.
A Cuyahoga County grand jury on Tuesday indicted Wohl, 22, of Irvine, California, and Burkman, 54, of Arlington, Virginia, with multiple felony counts of bribery and telecommunications fraud connected to the campaign. They are set for Nov. 13 arraignments in Common Pleas Court here.
The pair are charged in Michigan with similar charges in early October. They pleaded not guilty.
The charges stem from a call that people in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and New York received beginning in August, authorities said. In Michigan and Ohio, the calls were targeted to phone numbers with area codes in Detroit and Cleveland, both majority Black cities and Democratic strongholds, officials said.
The recorded message featured a caller who said her name was Tamika Taylor, according to a transcript of the call contained in Marrero’s order. She falsely claimed that people who vote by mail will end up on a database that police and credit agencies can use to track down outstanding warrants and collect credit card debt, according to authorities. The call also claimed that health officials are seeking to use the information to implement mandatory vaccinations, which is also false.
The National Coalition on Black Civil Participation sued the pair under the Ku Klux Klan Act and the Voter Protection Act. They asked a judge to grant a temporary protection order preventing Wohl and Burkman from sending out any more calls.
The pair appeared via video at a hearing on Monday in federal court in New York. They admitted they were behind the robocalls and hired a California-based company to disseminate the call, according to court records. The two insisted that the call was not threatening and was protected by the First Amendment.
Marrero ordered the two to record a new call, and wrote the script for them: “At the direction of a United States district court, this call is intended to inform you that a federal court has found that the message you previously received regarding mail-in voting from Project 1599, a political organization founded by Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, contained false information that has had the effect of intimidating voters, and thus interfering with the upcoming presidential election, in violation of federal voting-rights laws.”
If Wohl and Burkman do not comply with the order, Marrero said he would hold a Friday morning hearing in which he will consider holding them in contempt of court. He also said he would then let the National Coalition Black Civic Participation hire a robocall firm to disseminate the call and make the 1599 Project pay the group’s costs.
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The Link LonkOctober 29, 2020 at 10:33PM
https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2020/10/ny-judge-orders-jacob-wohl-jack-burkman-to-send-out-new-robocall-saying-first-one-resulted-in-voter-intimidation.html
NY judge orders Jacob Wohl, Jack Burkman to send out new robocall saying first one resulted in voter intimida - cleveland.com
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