Ohio prosecutors in October 2020 charged right-wing operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl with telecommunications fraud in connection with the scheme, and two years later, the two men pleaded guilty.
Now, they have their punishment: They must spend 500 hours helping register people to vote.
Judge John Sutula in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court also sentenced Burkman and Wohl to two years of probation, fines of $2,500 each and electronic monitoring from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. for six months, according to the county prosecutor’s office.
“I think it’s a despicable thing that you guys have done,” the judge said on Tuesday, comparing the robocall scam to efforts to suppress Southern Black voters in the 1960s, Cleveland.com reported.
Burkman, 56, and Wohl, 24, staged several irreverent stunts to add to the stream of disinformation that bombarded Americans in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. In addition to the robocalls, the pair called a news conference promising to produce a sexual assault accuser against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, though the alleged accuser never showed. They allegedly recruited young…
