It’s a sad day on Twitter. With the permanent banning of former hedge fund prodigy, Trump replier, and general fraudster Jacob Wohl, one of the most insane and bizarre sagas of our time has come to an end.
Wohl, 21, was banned from Twitter today due to allegedly running fake accounts, according to The Daily Beast. But like every story associated with Wohl, this one had some real twists and turns.
Earlier today, a USA Today article profiling Wohl went online. In that piece, Wohl claimed to have started a birther conspiracy about 2020 candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, and bragged that he was planning to use fake accounts to manipulate the 2020 election. He said he was planning to create “enormous left-wing online properties” that would “steer the left-wing votes in the primaries to what we feel are weaker candidates compared with Trump.”
Unsurprisingly, Twitter did not respond well to this announcement.
“The account was suspended for multiple violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically creating and operating fake accounts,” a Twitter spokesperson told The Daily Beast.
One of these fake accounts, incredibly, was apparently @Women_for_Schultz, a Twitter account catering to the surely massive demographic of women gunning for former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz’s potential independent 2020 run.
The account has now been deleted, but screenshots reportedly taken from the account show that it made claims about other presidential candidates, including accusing Harris of “trading sexual favors” to get into public office.
Another now-deleted account allegedly created by Wohl, @jwohltreason, apparently argued that Wohl himself should do jail time.
In response to his banning, Wohl maintains he did nothing wrong.
“It is not illegal, unethical, or untoward for Americans to steer an American election,” he told NBC News, helpfully adding, “I’m an American.”
If you aren’t familiar with Wohl’s background, it’s worth taking a minute to understand it in its full absurdity. After the boy genius’s finance career was cut short by becoming the youngest person ever barred from futures trading, Wohl shifted to politics, making a name on Twitter as a prominent Trump replier and personality in the MAGA-sphere. He started his own blog, which quickly became notorious for stealing its ethics policy from ProPublica.
This era of Wohl’s career peaked in 2018, when he worked with fellow scam artist Jack Burkman to craft false sexual harassment allegations against Special Counsel Robert Mueller. To kick off the rumors, Wohl blogged a story citing sources knowledgable about the supposed harassment that included the investigative firm Surefire Intelligence. When reporters investigated the firm, they found Surefire’s URL was owned by Wohl and the phone number connected to Wohl’s mother.
To cap off their plot, Wohl and Burkman held a sparsely attended press conference in D.C. where they were supposed to introduce Mueller’s accuser to the world. She never showed. The woman now said she was tricked by Wohl into participating in the scheme, and Wohl and Burkman are now under FBI investigation.
Sadly, with Wohl’s banning, it seems the era of hipster coffee shop anecdotes and harebrained schemes to save Trump’s presidency is finally over. Another young man will have to step up and fill Wohl’s shoes as the flying monkey in Twitter’s political circus. Godspeed, Jacob. Try not to fuck up so badly next time.