"A false reality": Right-wing fraudsters Jacob Wahl and Jack Burkman launch political "AI" startup

A pair of far-right conspiracy theorists who have been convicted of felonies for election interference are running a Washington-based AI company under pseudonyms, Politico reported.

LobbyMatic, an automation platform for lobbyists that advertises “efficiency and effectiveness by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence,” was founded by Jacob Wahl and Jack Burkman, who both have a history of scamming and leveling fraudulent allegations againt prominent Democrats. The two men run the company under the pseudonyms “Jay Klein” and "Bill Sanders,” sources confirmed to Politico.

The platform’s website claims that it can do everything from book meetings on Capitol Hill “in a few clicks” to automatically monitoring congressional hearings.

The political AI tool is not the first sketchy business endeavor from Wahl and Burkman. In 2020, the two men used a robo caller to contact over 85,000 voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods across Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio, warning them not to vote by mail. They were convicted of felony telecom fraud in 2022 and ordered by an Ohio judge to spend 500 hours registering people to vote.

Also in 2020, Wahl and Burkman hired actors to fake an FBI raid on Burkman’s house, convincing The Washington Post to report on it. They’ve also tried to frame Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and special counsel Robert Mueller for sexual assault, while falsely claiming that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., had a extramarital relationship with a former Marine.

Two LobbyMatic employees quit the company after discovering Wahl and Burkman were the owners, but the company itself is still up and running.

“Working for them you knew you were never getting the full story and were often left trying to find the truth,” one of the employees told Politico. "If I had to sum up my work experience for them, I would describe them as living with their head in the clouds and in a false reality.”