GOP slouches into the Crazy -IMMIGRATION Edition | Trump Won’t Condemn Bomb Threats in Springfield OH

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gizmodo.com

DC's Favorite Convicted Fraudsters Are Backing an AI Lobbying Company

Malignant MAGA personalities Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are promising the moon with their AI lobbying firm LobbyMatic.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, are back with another ridiculous scheme. This time the pair of convicted fraudsters are pushing an AI-powered lobbying company called LobbyMatic. Like all their plots, LobbyMatic is promising things it can’t deliver and Wohl and Burkman have already been caught in several lies.

AI is the biggest buzzword in tech right now and there are thousands of companies peddling all kinds of services. Enter LobbyMatic, a company launched in 2022 that promises to “massively increase [a lobbyist’s]efficiency and effectiveness by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence.”

According to LobbyMatic’s website, it has services that automate the monitoring of a hearing, “book dozens of meetings on Capitol Hill in a few clicks,” and “utilize our cutting-edge AI models, married together with real-time legislative and regulatory data to get answers in seconds.”

Politico looked into the company, which is purported to be founded and run by “Jay Klein” and “Bill Sanders.” Klein is, in actuality, Wohl. Sanders is Burkman. Former employees were only too happy to tell journalists all about the new venture once they learned they were working for people who’d lied about their identity.

Wohl and Burkman weren’t exactly smart about the ruse. “After getting hired by ‘Jay Klein,’ the employee soon grew suspicious about Wohl and the company after witnessing an apparent hesitation to obtain business licenses and hearing Wohl referred to as Jacob. The person discreetly took a photo of Wohl, did a Google image search and learned that Klein was actually Wohl,” Politico said.

404 Media dug deeper and discovered that LobbyMatic is misrepresenting its client list. A product demo on LobbyMatic’s site implied it had done business with Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Fidelity, the lobbying firm Holland & Knight, Home Depot, Palantir, Microsoft, Pfizer, SalesForce, Visa, and Toyota.

Pfizer, Microsoft, Palantir, Home Depot, Lockheed Martin, and Holland & Knight all told 404 Media that they had no relationship with LobbyMatic. “Several of the companies that responded told me that they had never heard of LobbyMatic and had no idea why their companies were being shown in product demos,” 404 Media said.
 
altmin said:
gizmodo.com

DC's Favorite Convicted Fraudsters Are Backing an AI Lobbying Company

Malignant MAGA personalities Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are promising the moon with their AI lobbying firm LobbyMatic.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, are back with another ridiculous scheme. This time the pair of convicted fraudsters are pushing an AI-powered lobbying company called LobbyMatic. Like all their plots, LobbyMatic is promising things it can’t deliver and Wohl and Burkman have already been caught in several lies.

AI is the biggest buzzword in tech right now and there are thousands of companies peddling all kinds of services. Enter LobbyMatic, a company launched in 2022 that promises to “massively increase [a lobbyist’s]efficiency and effectiveness by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence.”

According to LobbyMatic’s website, it has services that automate the monitoring of a hearing, “book dozens of meetings on Capitol Hill in a few clicks,” and “utilize our cutting-edge AI models, married together with real-time legislative and regulatory data to get answers in seconds.”

Politico looked into the company, which is purported to be founded and run by “Jay Klein” and “Bill Sanders.” Klein is, in actuality, Wohl. Sanders is Burkman. Former employees were only too happy to tell journalists all about the new venture once they learned they were working for people who’d lied about their identity.

Wohl and Burkman weren’t exactly smart about the ruse. “After getting hired by ‘Jay Klein,’ the employee soon grew suspicious about Wohl and the company after witnessing an apparent hesitation to obtain business licenses and hearing Wohl referred to as Jacob. The person discreetly took a photo of Wohl, did a Google image search and learned that Klein was actually Wohl,” Politico said.

404 Media dug deeper and discovered that LobbyMatic is misrepresenting its client list. A product demo on LobbyMatic’s site implied it had done business with Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Fidelity, the lobbying firm Holland & Knight, Home Depot, Palantir, Microsoft, Pfizer, SalesForce, Visa, and Toyota.

Pfizer, Microsoft, Palantir, Home Depot, Lockheed Martin, and Holland & Knight all told 404 Media that they had no relationship with LobbyMatic. “Several of the companies that responded told me that they had never heard of LobbyMatic and had no idea why their companies were being shown in product demos,” 404 Media said.
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How are these two idiots not in prison by now??
 
nycfan said:
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Happy Cracking Up GIF by MOODMAN

I pay quite a bit of attention to politics and I wouldn't recognize (the two who I think are supposed to be) Gabbard and RFK, Jr if I weren't already familiar with the current circus that is the Trump campaign. I mean, I can tell pretty quickly who Trump and Musk are, but those two look very different than in real life. And then poor JD didn't get any help at all, just plunked up there in all his natural glory.
 
nycfan said:
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Scary thing is that he doesn’t see that he was wrong—that he was lied to and he believed those lies in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

He’s pissed at Trump for seemingly giving up the cause—he’s not pissed at Trump for lying to him and causing him to lose all his shit.

“i didn’t leave the movement—the movement left me.”
 
EyeballKid said:
Scary thing is that he doesn’t see that he was wrong—that he was lied to and he believed those lies in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

He’s pissed at Trump for seemingly giving up the cause—he’s not pissed at Trump for lying to him and causing him to lose all his shit.

“i didn’t leave the movement—the movement left me.”
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This dude was born in 1999? Man, being MAGA does ugly things to people. He looks AT LEAST 35 years old.
 
www.nytimes.com

To the World, He Is an Anti-Trafficking Hero. Women Tell a Different Story.

Tim Ballard’s work on sex trafficking became the basis of the hit movie “Sound of Freedom.” But a series of women, in lawsuits and interviews, have accused him of being a sex predator.
www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
Tim Ballard had fashioned himself into a made-for-Hollywood hero.

For years, he led a nonprofit that proclaimed daring undercover missions to rescue children from the horrors of international sex trafficking. Politicians embraced his call for more barriers on the Southern border to block smuggling. President Donald J. Trump brought him on as an adviser. Last year, the hit movie “Sound of Freedom” showcased his life and work, making more than $250 million and becoming one of the most successful independent films of all time.

But while the world knew him as a champion of the vulnerable, many of the women he worked with now tell a much darker story: that Mr. Ballard himself was grooming, manipulating, harassing and sexually assaulting women. In lawsuits beginning last year, the women said that Mr. Ballard preyed on their desire to help trafficking victims, coercing or forcing them into sexual encounters as part of their undercover work in brothels, strip clubs and massage parlors.

A former Homeland Security agent, Mr. Ballard had built his nonprofit, Operation Underground Railroad, at a time when the issue of child sex trafficking was already on the rise. High-profile cases — some of them appallingly real, some of them inventions of conspiracy theorists — drove outrage about minors being forced into sexual servitude and exploited by U.S. elites.
...

In Utah, where the organization’s leadership is based, Mr. Ballard talked up his close connections to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at times appearing alongside one of the church’s 12 powerful apostles
As concerns about his conduct began percolating last year, the empire he created appeared to be crumbling. In June 2023, he stepped down from Operation Underground Railroad. The Latter-day Saints church last September denounced Mr. Ballard’s “morally unacceptable” activities in a statement to VICE News, which had published a series of stories raising questions about the nonprofit’s operations.

And yet, in many conservative circles, Mr. Ballard’s star keeps rising.

...

But questions about Mr. Ballard’s conduct at Operation Underground Railroad have continued, and more women have come forward. The New York Times interviewed 10 who worked with Mr. Ballard at the organization and now describe their time there as a nightmare of sexual harassment, coerced sexual contact and sexual assault.

Many had long ties to the Latter-day Saints and said in lawsuits and interviews that they initially trusted Mr. Ballard because of his broad acclaim and the support he had received from the church leadership, and they believed deeply in the cause of saving children.
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In interviews and legal papers, the women described similar scenarios: Mr. Ballard recruited them to act as his romantic partner in undercover operations in which they would pose as wealthy sex tourists, a tactic he referred to as a “couple’s ruse.” It had two purposes, he told them: It provided an easy excuse to avoid having sexual contact with the sex workers, and some people might be more open to confiding in a woman.

But many of the women say that Mr. Ballard turned the “ruse” into an opportunity to assault them.

Six women filed lawsuits accusing Mr. Ballard of sexually assaulting them, with some describing situations in which he used his strength to overpower them despite their explicit pleas to stop.

Three of the women told The Times that they witnessed Mr. Ballard engaging in erotic encounters with sex workers, ranging from lap dances to oral sex.

The women recalled being stunned and confused by Mr. Ballard’s conduct, alarmed not only by how he acted on operations but how much he expected the women to “practice” their romance in private. Many described feeling isolated and fearful as Mr. Ballard warned that disclosing operational details could allow powerful traffickers to identify and kill them.

Amy Morgan Davis, a former Miss Utah who worked as Mr. Ballard’s makeup artist on a variety of occasions over several years, is among the women who said that Mr. Ballard exploited her desire to participate in the cause of rescuing children. She recalled meetings with Mr. Ballard in which he repeatedly told her to prove that the two of them had a “connection” and then made escalating sexual advances that included caressing her body with his hands.
 
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