Member-only story
Catfished by Jacob Wohl
How a Texas oil heiress got scammed — and then seduced — by Twitter’s most inept Trump-loving troll
Last October, two men came forward with a staggering claim: Robert Mueller, the two-year thorn in Trump’s side, had committed rape. They would hold a press conference in Arlington, Virginia, with Mueller’s alleged victim, a woman named Carolyne Cass. It was time, the two men said, to hear her story.
One of them was Jacob Wohl, a then-20-year-old, right-wing provocateur from Southern California. The other was Jack Burkman, a middle-aged lawyer, Republican lobbyist, and noted conspiracy theorist.
The conference, held in a drab room at a Holiday Inn, was a disaster. Wohl and Burkman arrived without Cass, whom they claimed had been scared off by death threats. Not that her presence would have mattered much: By the time the news conference had begun, the rape accusations had already been debunked, as reporters and internet sleuths easily discovered that Mueller was in Washington, D.C. on jury duty during the week of the alleged rape, which Wohl and Burkman say happened in New York City. The presser quickly devolved into an exercise in ignominy. When Wohl speculated that Mueller could have somehow been in both places at once, the journalists broke into laughter. Oh, and Burkman’s fly was down…
