Screenshot : NBC

Jacob Wohl, the far-right shithead whose odiousness is only matched by his stupidity and incompetence, appears to have been caught in yet another botched attempt to smear someone. His latest target? Pete Buttigieg.



Many eyebrows were raised on Monday when a post from someone named Hunter Kelly appeared on Medium. In the post, Kelly accused Buttigieg of having sexually assaulted him. It was Kelly’s only post on Medium, and his accompanying Twitter feed was similarly sparse, having been created just this month. Virtually no mainstream news outlets touched the story, which was probably a good idea. On Monday night, the Daily Beast reported that Wohl has allegedly been going around trying to gin up false accusations against Buttigieg.

From the Daily Beast:

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 former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, of engaging him sexually while he was too drunk to consent. [...] [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.


Putting aside the insanity, isn’t this, like, way too much credit to be giving Mayor Pete at this point in the election cycle? We at Splinter have already cautioned against predicting what’s going to happen in 2020. It’s way too early to say that Pete Buttigieg is a terminal anything to anyone!

Anyway, the story goes on. From the Beast:

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. [...] 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.


Kelly then posted this message to his Facebook account:

I WAS NOT SEXUALLY ASSAULTED It’s important for everyone to know that I was not sexually assaulted and would never falsely accuse anyone. To keep it brief for now- I was approached by a political figure to come to DC to discuss political situations from the standpoint of a gay Republican. When I arrived they discussed Peter Buttigieg and started talking about how they would be working a campaign against him. I went to bed and woke up to a fake Twitter @RealHunterKelly and an article that I in no way endorsed or wrote. I have since left and am working on a formal statement to give to everyone including the Buttigieg family. Thank you for standing behind me and knowing that I would never accept or allow any of this.


Wohl and Burkman didn’t respond to requests for comment from the Beast.

This is some wild stuff, and it is pretty despicable for Wohl and crew to enlist this poor kid in their schemes, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone, since Wohl is, by now, something of a Hall of Fame idiot when it comes to this kind of thing. Lest we forget, we’re talking about a man who was, among other things:


Keep reaching for the stars, Jacob! Read the entire, deranged tale over at the Daily Beast.

Update, 4/30/19, 8:14 a.m. ET: Kelly spoke to The Advocate on Monday evening, alleging that Wohl and Burkman had flown him to Washington for the scheme and had essentially coerced him into smearing Buttigieg.


Late Monday evening, Burkman mounted his defense on Twitter, posting what he said was a signed statement from Kelly.


But Kelly told The Advocate that he had signed the statement under duress:

“They basically forced me to sign that and take that photo,” Kelly told The Advocate shortly after this tweet. “I had no say in either. In the photo you can clearly see I had been crying.” Kelly adamantly denies being assaulted by Buttigieg and says he will be releasing more information at [a] later date.


He also gave more details about the alleged plot, alleging that Wohl and Burkman had used his image without his consent:

Wohl and Burkman picked up him from the airport Monday around 12:30 a.m. after his flight at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and then drove to Burkman’s home. During the ride and at the house, Kelly says the two men discussed how they must stop the candidate’s campaign for president. Kelly woke up on Monday around 11 a.m. to find that they had used his name and likeness to launch the campaign, and told him that he was the “star and hero” for being central to their plot. However, the student maintains that he didn’t agree with this. “I woke up at 11 a.m. and spent my whole day saying I did not want this to happen,” he says. “My sister and her husband came and got me.”


Read more at The Advocate.