On Monday, an accusation against 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg surfaced and then was promptly debunked by the Daily Beast in just a matter of hours. In a Medium post, a "Hunter Kelly" claimed that Buttigieg came on to him this past February while he was too drunk to consent. The problem is that the actual Hunter Kelly didn't write this. In fact, he didn't even know the story was happening.

In a Facebook post, Kelly writes, "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."

It turns out that "political figure" is Jacob Wohl, who's probably most famous for a comically inept attempt to frame Robert Mueller for sexual misconduct. Back in October, news came out that Wohl had reportedly been offering women $20,000 to put their names on fabricated accusations against the former special counsel, and the scheme blew up so horrendously that it's hard to believe that Wohl wasn't trying to get caught. Now, he seems to be using the same awful plot to frame Buttigieg. The Daily Beast spoke to a second, anonymous GOP source who claims that Wohl and lobbyist Jack Burkman approached him before they settled on Kelly:

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. But the 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.

Thankfully, Wohl is completely inept. He's the rare breed of buffoon who has a kind of boundless, unearned confidence leading him to believe he could dupe FBI agents with nothing more than faked LinkedIn pages—and draws contempt from both the left and right. What could have been a pretty horrible smear against another innocent man turned out to just be a case of Wohl making a fool of himself, again.