Men Ordered To Admit They Lied In Calls Targeting Voters: Judge

CLEVELAND – A New York judge has ordered two men indicted earlier this week on bribery and telecommunications fraud to admit they lied and attempted to keep residents in Cleveland and East Cleveland from voting and compared their actions to the Ku Klux Klan.

Virginia resident Jack Burkman and California resident Jacob Wahl were charged with multiple felony counts this week in connections with 80,000 calls that placed around the Ohio and the Midwest in an August that were designed to intimidate residents into not voting, a judge said this week. Thousands of voters in minority Cleveland neighborhoods were among those who received the calls, which were placed in August and inferred there would be consequences if residents cast their ballot.

On Wednesday, district court judge Victor Marrero ruled that Burkman and Wohl must arrange for a new call to be placed by 5 p.m. Thursday. In the message of the call, the two men must say that a court has determined that material included in the original call included false information and was made with the intent of intimidating voters and interfering with the Nov. 3 election, according to a copy of the judge's 66-page order.

The men, who were also charged with the same offenses in Michigan, have pleaded not guilty in Michigan. The judge’s order is part of a lawsuit filed in New York by the National Coalition on Black Civil Participation on behalf of eight people who received the call. Burkman and Wohl are scheduled to appear in court in Cuyahoga County on Nov. 13.

In the judge’s 66-page order, callers received a message from a person saying her name is Tamika Taylor representing Project 1599 and that if residents vote by mail, their personal information will be used in a public database that will be used by police to track down old warrants and used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts.

Marrero said the two men committed “electoral terror” and compared their intimidation methods to those once used by the Ku Klux Klan.

“In the current version of events, the means (the defendants) use to intimidate voters, though born of fear and similarly powered by hate, are not guns, torches, burning crosses, and other dire methods perpetrated under the cover of white hoods. Rather, (the defendants) carry out electoral terror using telephones, computers, and modern technology adapted to serve the same deleterious ends.”