Jacob Wohl, Jack Burkman ordered to spend 500 hours registering voters

by Zach Schonfeld - 11/29/22 10:09 PM ET

AP Photo/Matt Slocum
FILE – In this July 1, 2020, file photo, a woman walks past a vote-by-mail drop box for an upcoming New Jersey primary election outside the Camden, N.J., Administration Building.

Conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were sentenced to working 500 hours at a voter registration drive on Tuesday for sending out thousands of robocalls with false information in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.

The Cleveland-area state court also sentenced them to two years probation and six months of electronic monitoring from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. each night, prosecutors said.

The duo pleaded guilty last month to telecommunications fraud after being indicted in October 2020 for the robocalls, which promoted conspiracy theories about mail-in voting.

“These two individuals attempted to disrupt the foundation of our democracy. Their sentence of two years’ probation and 500 hours of community work service at a voter registration drive is appropriate,” Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley (D) said in a statement.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost (R), who originally referred the case to O’Malley’s office, indicated in October 2020 that thousands of calls were sent to Ohio voters, with a total of 67,396 phone numbers receiving the message nationwide.

“Voter intimidation won’t be tolerated in Ohio,” Yost said in a statement after the duo’s guilty plea.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), whose office became involved in a separate suit that remains ongoing, published the purported script of the calls last year.

“Hi, this is Tamika Taylor from Project 1599, the civil rights organization founded by Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl. Mail-in voting sounds great, but did you know that if you vote by mail, your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts?” the script allegedly read.

“The CDC is even pushing to use records for mail-in voting to track people for mandatory vaccines. Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man, stay safe and beware of vote by mail,” it continued.

Wohl and Burkman have previously promoted unsubstantiated hoaxes accusing Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former special counsel Robert Mueller and President Biden’s chief medical adviser, Anthony Fauci, of sexual assault.