Peter Carr, spokesman for the Special Counsel’s office to Hill Reporter: “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation.”
A little over a week ago several journalists, including myself, received an email from an individual claiming to have been offered money in exchange for alleging sexual misconduct on the part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
“I was contacted via phone call by a man named Bill Christensen, who had a British accent, and said that he would like to ask me a couple of questions about Robert Mueller, whom I worked with when I was a paralegal for Pillsbury, Madison, and Sutro in 1974 (now called Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman),” the individual claimed. “I asked him who he was working for, and he told me his boss was some sort of politics guy in Washington named Jack Burkman (or Berkman… Not sure how it’s spelled)…….
….He (Bill Christensen) then offered to pay off all of my credit card debt, plus bring me a check for $20,000 if I would do one thing. In more of an effort to get him to go away than anything else, I asked him what in the hell he wanted me to do. He said that we could not talk about it on the phone, and he asked me to download an app on my phone called Signal, which he said was more secure. Reluctantly, I downloaded the app and he called me on that app a few minutes later. He said (and I will never forget exactly what it was) ‘I want you to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert Mueller, and I want you to sign a sworn affidavit to that effect’.”
This individual said that they were a female living in Fort Myers, Florida, but she would not speak to any reporters over the phone. Hill Reporter looked into this woman, as did many other journalists we have spoken with, and we all reached a conclusion that this was likely a hoax of some sort. No one by the name provided lived in Fort Myers, Florida according to the numerous background checks which we ran.
We also reached out to Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, and they informed us “we have no record of this individual working for our firm.” They also confirmed that they had no record of the woman’s maiden name, as it was provided to Hill Reporter.
We decided to investigate this matter to see who could be behind this apparent hoax. First, we reached out to a phone number that this woman gave us. After calling the number, we promptly received what we viewed as a threatening text message back, which read,
“You’re in over your head…. Drop this”. The message included the home addresses of two of our editors, including myself.
Then out of nowhere, we received a phone call from another number originating from the same area code, of a man who claimed to be Mike Wilcox of a company called ‘Surefire Intelligence’. He again threatened us, telling us to “stop communicating with” the woman who had contacted us previously. (Both phone numbers have since been disconnected).
Around the same time as we and other journalists received this questionable email, a Republican lobbyist, radio host and right-wing conspiracy theorist, Jack Burkman (also mentioned in the questionable email), began promoting, via his Facebook page, that he is investigating sexual misconduct and alcohol-related allegations against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Between reporting the threatening text message and phone call to the Special Counsel and discussing the matter with other well-known journalists, Hill Reporter reached out to Jack Burkman himself. Burkman would not discuss his investigation, other than telling us that he had “one woman ready to go public” and “discussions ongoing with a second [woman]”. He then informed us that he is familiar with a company called “Surefire Intelligence” and that a man named
Jacob Wohl runs it.
“Surefire is a real company, an intel operation in Los Angeles,” Burkman told Hill Reporter. ” We have known them for a long time. The guy’s name is Jacob Wohl. They do a lot of intel work. They do a lot of good research.”
Jacob Wohl, for those of you who are unaware, is a far-right Twitter troll who has had his own
run-ins with the law in the past. Hill Reporter did a DNS check on the domain name for Surefire Intelligence, which found that Wohl’s email address was listed on the SOA RNAME: record.
