Jacob Wohl, the MAGA troll who was exposed in a plot to smear U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller, and later tried to smear Senator Kamala Harris with birther rumors, turned his attention to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) last month, traveling to Minnesota to film a “documentary investigation” with fellow conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer about a disproven rumor that Omar married her brother.
In the film, Wohl, who was recently kicked off Twitter after he admitted to propagating a hoax, goes to a Minneapolis police station to report on death threats that he received.
The Daily Beast notes that Wohl faked the death threats against himself: ‘One of those threats came via direct message from a Twitter account called @Drakehomes612, who described himself as a Minneapolis “diversity coordinator.” “I hope you f**kin know that if [I] bump into you in Dinkytown or anywhere else in my city I’m going shoot you and sh*t on your fucking bodies,” the account wrote to Wohl’s team. “Get that f**k out my city you piece of sh*t. Now.” But @Drakehomes612 isn’t a real account. As journalist Tony Webster first noticed, @Drakehomes612 is one of the fake accounts Wohl created in the run-up to his Twitter ban. A source familiar with Wohl’s fake accounts confirmed to me that @Drakehomes612 was run by Wohl before being deleted by Twitter. That means Wohl was sending himself fake death threats, presumably in an attempt to up the drama during his Minneapolis videos. Wohl submitted the faked messages to police as proof that he was facing “terroristic threats” via Twitter. The faked messages threatening to “sh*t on your fucking bodies” were included in a packet of police documents related to the case issued on Wednesday by the Minneapolis Police Department.’
FOX News contributor Katherine Timpf, writing in the conservative National Review, says Wohl should be prosecuted if he did actually bring the fake attacks to the police.
Wrote Timpf: “I said it about Jussie Smollett, and I’ll say it again now: Faking any kind of violence — verbal or physical — against yourself just to get attention or clicks is not only pathetic, but it also hurts real victims. After all, racism and homophobia (which were apparently faked in the case of Smollett) and harassment of right-wing people for their political beliefs (which was apparently faked in the case of Wohl) are very real things. I’m libertarian, not right-wing, but I unfortunately have experienced some of this sort of harassment myself, presumably for my professional association with right-wing outlets. What’s more, I’m far from alone. Representative Bob Goodlatte (R., Va.) and one of his neighbors, Representative Thomas A. Garrett Jr. (R., Va.), both received apparently politically motivated death threats last year. Oh, and let’s also not forget James T. Hodgkinson, who took things many steps further by attempting to assassinate Republican lawmakers as they practiced for the Congressional Baseball Game in 2017 — severely wounding Representative Steve Scalise (R., La.). If there are, God forbid, future victims of this kind of harassment or violence, what Wohl has done here has made people less likely to believe their stories. His self-serving lies have given people a reason to offer doubt rather than support in these situations. In a climate where political harassment is a real problem, the actions of Wohl have hurt real victims. Wohl should be prosecuted for this reason, as well as because he clearly wasted the valuable time of Minneapolis law enforcement.”
