Two right-wing political operatives who used a robocall campaign to try to discourage Black New Yorkers from voting in the 2020 election will pay up to $1.25 million for their actions, the New York State attorney general’s office announced on Tuesday.
During the summer of 2020, around 5,500 New Yorkers received robocalls falsely claiming that if they voted by mail, their personal information would be sent to law enforcement agencies, debt collectors and the government. The calls were made at a time when many states were encouraging voters to cast their ballots by mail because of the coronavirus pandemic.
One New Yorker was so disturbed by one of the calls that he experienced “severe anxiety and distress and ultimately withdrew his voter registration,” according to the attorney general’s office.
The office said the calls came from a “sham” organization called Project 1599, which was created by the operatives, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman.
The attorney general, Letitia James, called Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman’s robocall campaign “depraved and disinformation-ridden” and said her office would “always defend the right to vote.”
“The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it belongs to everyone,” Ms. James said in the statement.
David Schwartz, a lawyer from the firm Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins who is representing Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman, said in a statement that his clients were “pleased to put this case behind them, so they can focus on their families and careers.”
New York is not the first state to discipline the two operatives for their robocall scheme, in which calls disseminating false information are believed to have been made to 85,000 numbers across the country.
Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman were charged with election fraud in 2020 in both Michigan and Ohio, where a judge also sentenced them to spending hundreds of hours registering new voters.
In New York, a federal judge ordered them to call back the voters they had targeted and inform them that the original calls had included false information.
The Federal Communications Commission in June 2023 also fined them more than $5 million for making more than 1,100 unlawful robocalls.
Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman hired Message Communications, a robocalling platform, to contact voters in August 2020.
In the call, voters heard from a representative claiming to be from “a civil rights organization” called Project 1599. They were told that if they voted by mail, their information would be put in a public database, where it could be used to track them for outstanding warrants, credit card debt and vaccines.
The call ended with this line: “Don’t be finessed into giving your private information to the man, stay safe and beware of vote by mail.”
The majority of the calls made to New Yorkers went to people with area codes in and around New York City, the attorney general’s office said.
Ms. James filed a lawsuit against Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman in 2021, and her office reached a settlement with Message Communications the following year for its role in sending out the robocalls.
Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman “clearly and deliberately targeted Black communities in carrying out their widespread robocall campaign,” a 2022 statement from the attorney general’s office said.
The nonpartisan National Coalition on Black Civic Participation used some of its own resources to address the false claims made during the calls.
“This settlement serves as a marker for those who seek to engage in such efforts,” said Melanie Campbell, the president and chief executive of the organization, in a statement on Tuesday. “They will pay for the harm they cause to our democracy.”
Mr. Wohl and Mr. Burkman must pay $1 million to Ms. Campbell’s group, the attorney general’s office and individual plaintiffs. The amount will increase to $1.25 million if the operatives fail to pay at least $105,000 by the end of this year and do not address that failure within 30 days.
The pair has been accused of spreading conspiracy theories and false information in the past. In 2019, they were accused of recruiting a Michigan college student to falsely claim he had been raped by Pete Buttigieg, then a Democratic presidential candidate. The year before, they were involved in spreading false sexual assault allegations against Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating President Donald J. Trump.
