NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) – Two conservative operatives who
launched a robocall campaign to intimidate and prevent Black New Yorkers from voting by mail ahead of the 2020 election will pay up to $1.25 million, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Tuesday.
Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were found liable by a federal judge in March 2023 for targeting Black voters and transmitting fake threatening messages to discourage voting.
“The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it belongs to everyone,” James said in a statement. “We will not allow anyone to threaten that right.”
An investigation by the OAG revealed that Wohl and Burkman, under the name Project 1599, illegally conducted robocalls to intimidate Black communities during the summer of 2020. They organized robocalls to approximately 85,000 voters in multiple states, falsely alleging that voting by mail would jeopardize their privacy by sharing personal data such as with law enforcement, debt collectors, and the government. They claimed that it would also cause the voter to be tracked for "outstanding warrants, credit card debt, and mandatory vaccines."
Wohl and Burkman hired Message Communications to send the robocall to voters nationwide, including those in New York which reached nearly 5,500 New Yorkers. The OAG also settled with Message Communications in August 2022 over its involvement in disseminating the illegal robocall orchestrated by Wohl and Burkman.
An example message read, “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 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.”
During the 2020 elections, President Donald Trump repeatedly criticized mail-in voting, alleging unsubstantiated instances of ballots found in wastepaper baskets, heightening concerns about its reliability. “There is fraud; they found them in creeks, they found them with the name Trump in a wastepaper basket,” Trump said during a debate in 2020. “This will be a fraud like you have never seen.”
According to court documents, one New York voter who received the robocall suffered severe anxiety and distress, and ended up withdrawing his voter registration.
The National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, listed as one of the plaintiffs, had to allocate significant resources to counter the false claims made in the call, ensuring people could vote safely.
“Wohl and Burkman orchestrated a depraved and disinformation-ridden campaign to intimidate Black voters in an attempt to sway the election in favor of their preferred candidate,” James said. “Now they will pay up to $1.25 million to my office, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, and the individuals who were harmed by their scheme. My office will always defend the right to vote.”
This isn't the first lawsuit for Wohl and Burkman. They previously pleaded guilty in October 2022 to telecommunications fraud in Ohio for using robocalls to discourage mail-in voting during the 2020 election. They each received two years of probation, a $2,500 fine, and 500 hours of community service.
In June 2023, Burkman and Wohl were fined $5.1 million by the Federal Communications Commission for making more than 1,100 illegal robocalls in August and September 2020.
After the incident, Burkman, who was a lawyer, had his license revoked in March by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
As part of the deal, which still has to be signed off on by a judge, Wohl and Burkman agreed to pay a $1 million fine to the OAG, NCBCP, and individual plaintiffs. If they don't pay $105,000 by Dec. 31, and don't resolve the issue within 30 days, the fine will rise to $1.25 million.