Hunter Kelly, 21, alleged conservative activists authored a fake sexual assault allegation against Pete Buttigieg and published it in his name.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A recent college graduate who appeared to claim on Monday that he was sexually assaulted by Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana — a rising Democratic presidential candidate — said Tuesday in a statement shared with NBC News that the assault never happened. He said he was the victim of conservative activists who had duped him.
The accusation was made public Monday in the name of Hunter Kelly, 21, a Michigan resident, in a short post on the website Medium, which lets anyone publish. But Kelly said Tuesday that the post was fake and was instead written by conservative activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, both of whom have previously spread false accusations against perceived enemies of President Donald Trump, including a bogus sexual assault claim against special counsel Robert Mueller .
A statement shared with NBC News from Kelly's Facebook page and from a mobile phone number, which was found in his college directory, details his interactions with Burkman and Wohl. In the statement, Kelly, a recent graduate of Ferris State University in Michigan, said he was flown to the Washington area on Sunday by Burkman and Wohl. After taking a taxi to Burkman's home in Arlington, Virginia, the trio discussed their shared political interests.
Kelly said in the statement that he went to Washington under the assumption that he would be working on a task force that was "set up by the Donald Trump administration to slightly push back the progress of Democratic candidate (and Trump's only true contender) Peter Buttigieg."
But Kelly said Wohl and Burkman presented him with a draft of a blog post in which "Wohl pretended to be me and spewed a bunch of hateful accusations at Buttigieg." Kelly said he expressed unease and went to bed at 4 a.m. Monday morning, but not before texting Wohl again on Signal, an encrypted messaging app, and telling him he was "incredibly uncomfortable and not on board with their plan."
Kelly said that when he woke up on Monday morning, Wohl told Kelly he had published the blog post on Medium.
"That means, without my permission, a disgusting article pretending to be me was lambasted across the internet," Kelly said. "Next thing I know, Jack Burkman is telling me how I am a 'star' and people are eating me up."
The Medium post, which was deleted but is archived here , read, "I was sexually assaulted by Mayor Pete Buttigieg. I didn't know who he was back in February, only that he told me he was an important politician."
"Reading the story made me sick to my stomach," Kelly wrote in his statement Tuesday.
In an interview with NBC News, Wohl disputed Kelly's version of events, saying that Kelly reached out to him with a claim of sexual assault by Buttigieg.
"All we do is advocate for folks who have stories to tell," Wohl said. "We tried to help a young gay man air out his very serious accusations against a 2020 contender."
"Reporters called his family hundreds of times," Wohl added, referring to the reaction to the Medium post. "And so as a lawyer, in Jack's case, and advocate, all you can do is say, 'All right, do whatever you want, we won't force you to do anything.'"
Kelly said he told Wohl and Burkman on Monday that he wanted to leave Burkman's home. “After probably 45 minutes of me being stubborn and not wanting to do anything except leave, which 'was not an option,' I reluctantly signed a script that I was told had no legal standing," he said.
The Daily Beast first reported on the alleged scheme by Wohl and Burkman late Monday, just hours after the post appeared on Medium.
The document Kelly signed after publication of the Medium post stated that he had met Buttigieg at a Washington hotel bar in February and was "led by the mayor to a room in the hotel," where he was sexually assaulted.
Kelly told NBC News that never happened and that he has never met Buttigieg.
In a Twitter post shared late on Monday, Burkman posted images of Kelly and of the signed document to Twitter, saying the media had "bullied him & his family into submission."
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Hmmmm.....not the first time Wohl and Burkman have pulled something like this