Alleged Victim Hunter Kelly claims that Wohl and Burkman told him that they were working for a “task force set up by the Donald Trump administration to slightly push back the progress of Democratic candidate Peter Buttigieg.” Victim also claims that the two men offered to buy him a home and that he felt as though he was trapped in Burkman’s Virginia house. He felt so trapped that he had to hatch an escape plan, pretending to nap, and then running out of the home.
A man purporting to be the real college student named Hunter Kelly described a situation in which he was set up and coerced to take part in a scheme to frame Democratic candidate for president Pete Buttigieg.
The plot is detailed extensively through reporting from The Daily Beast, in which a second unnamed Republican source confirms that he, too, was contacted by Burkman and Wohl to take part in the scheme to accuse Buttigieg, falsely, of sexual assault.
The plan, which Kelly described in detail within a press release and further recounted in private messages he made directly with HillReporter.com, was to accuse Buttigieg of sexual assault through social media posts and a press conference, in which Kelly would level the accusations against the Democratic candidate, at the behest of infamous internet troll Jacob Wohl and conservative lobbyist Jack Burkman.
The two operatives planned out to level the accusations against Buttigieg by pretending to be Kelly himself through a now-deleted Medium blog post. The idea wasn’t always that straightforward, however, according to the man who claims to be the real Hunter Kelly, who stated he was blindsided by the plot.
On April 25, Kelly had his first interaction with Wohl about coming to Washington D.C., although the pair had interacted through Instagram previously. Wohl asked Kelly if he would “do whatever it took to get the job done” to re-elect President Donald Trump.
To Kelly, “this just meant working hard and long to get FACTS gathered and not fallacies,” he told HillReporter.
He added that “[Wohl] told me this was a ‘task force’ set up by the Donald Trump administration to slightly push back the progress of Democratic candidate (and Trump’s only true contender) Peter Buttigieg.”
This comment seems to corroborate what the former alleged Mueller accuser, Carolyne Cass told HillReporter.com earlier this year. Cass said that Burkman had offer her $50,000 and that he told her that he was funded by “the State”.
In a separate conversation exclusive to HillReporter.com, Kelly said that he could not determine who exactly was behind the plan.
“[T]he people who were behind everything were Jack and Jacob, outside of that I do not know anything else about their ‘operation,'” he wrote.
Kelly arrived in D.C. around 12:30 a.m. on the morning of April 29, after which he, Wohl, and Burkman drove back to Burkman’s home. There, he was shown “a draft” version of what would become the eventual Medium post made on his behalf by Wohl.
The draft blog “spewed a bunch of hateful accusations at Buttigieg,” Kelly said, including claims that the Democratic presidential candidate had sexually assaulted Kelly in February. Kelly told the two conservative operatives that he was hesitant to lend his name to the blog post, especially since the article was factually inaccurate. The three agreed to sleep on it.
At 4:30 in the morning, Kelly messaged Wohl to tell him he was “incredibly uncomfortable” about the plan. Wohl messaged back at 7:30, Kelly said, to say that they would talk about it more once he woke up.
At 11 a.m. Kelly walked out of his bedroom and met Wohl and Burkman. At this point, Wohl told Kelly that the article had been posted. In fact, Kelly looked at the timestamp of the article and saw it had been posted before he even arrived in D.C.
“Without my permission a disgusting article pretending to be me was lambasted across the internet,” Kelly told us.
Wohl and Burkman also created a Twitter account called @realHunterKelly which would be utilized to disseminate the fake accounts against Buttigieg (the fake account has since been suspended from the platform).
“Next thing I know, Jack Burkman is telling me how I am a ‘star’ and people are eating me up,” Kelly said. “Reading the story made me sick to my stomach…This was a lie I never wanted to be a part of.”
During lunch after learning of the post’s existence, Kelly said Wohl and Burkman told him it was too late to turn back from the plan because it would make all three “look bad.” Wohl and Burkman also coerced Kelly to sign a script for him to use at an impending press conference, in which Kelly would corroborate the faked accusations detailed in the blog post.
The whole situation left Kelly feeling uneasy, and in talking with his parents over messenger, he knew he couldn’t go through with it. He hatched an escape plan to get out of Burkman’s home, pretending to need to take a nap in order to pack his clothes and then rushing out of the house when family members arrived to pick him up.
“I rushed downstairs and told Wohl I could not do this because that is not the type of person I am,” Kelly stated.
Burkman has tried to strike back at Kelly’s recantations of the events, posting on Twitter an image of Kelly posing to get ID confirmation from Medium, as well as a letter that is purportedly signed by Kelly describing the accusations made against Buttigieg.
1. Very first thing Hunter Kelly did is sign a statement attesting to his accusation
2. He was in full control of all public disclosures, even taking a selfie with his ID to confirm his identity to @MediumSupport MSM bullied him & his family into submission pic.twitter.com/myXPc1YegL— Jack Burkman (@Jack_Burkman) April 30, 2019
“[The] Very first thing Hunter Kelly did is sign a statement attesting to his accusation,” Burkman wrote in his tweet. The mainstream media, Burkman claims, “bullied him & his family into submission” and retraction of the story.
Kelly wasn’t offered a direct contract or payment for his part in the scheme, but he told HillReporter.com through Facebook Messenger that “Jack Burkman was, apparently, prepared to purchase a home for me.”
But it wasn’t enough for Kelly to compromise his principles. “Jack Burkman may have promised me a lavish lifestyle, but at a price that would cost me the two most important things to me: honesty and integrity,” Kelly said.