Controversy Surrounds AI Lobbying Firm LobbyMatic and Its Alleged Big Tech Clients

Big Tech 'Clients' of Jacob Wohl's Secret AI Lobbying Firm Say They've Never Heard of It

Pfizer, Microsoft, Palantir, Home Depot, and Lockheed Martin were all shown as "clients" of LobbyMatic. All of them say they haven't worked with the company. Monday, Politico revealed that convicted fraudsters and right-wing activists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman have been secretly operating a company that purports to do AI-powered lobbying called LobbyMatic. 404 Media has learned that the company also, for months, advertised in screenshots that major companies were using its product; many of these companies told us that they have never been clients of LobbyMatic. LobbyMatic purports to be "the AI automation platform for lobbyists," and claims that it can help companies and lobbyists use AI to create a lobbying strategy, to create talking points, to analyze hearings and bills, and to track legislative progress of bills. Wohl and Burkman have been running the company under the pseudonyms "Jay Klein" and "Bill Sanders," and had signed up Toyota, the lobbying firm Boundary Stone Partners, and the drug company Lantheus, according to Politico. Back in January, I became aware of LobbyMatic and began to do some cursory reporting on the company. At the time, the company was writing blog posts on Medium under the name "Pat Smith," an AI-generated woman who doesn't exist. On its website, LobbyMatic was also showing demo screenshots of its software that seemed to suggest that its software was being widely used by lobbyists for major companies. One screenshot, for example, showed a sidebar that listed "Clients" including Visa, Toyota, SalesForce, and Pfizer. Other demo screenshots suggested it was lobbying on behalf of Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Fidelity, the lobbying firm Holland & Knight, Home Depot, Palantir, and Microsoft. I emailed all of these companies, and six of them (Pfizer, Microsoft, Palantir, Home Depot, Lockheed Martin, and Holland & Knight) told me that they were not clients of LobbyMatic (the others, Meta, Fidelity, Visa, Capital One, SalesForce, and Toyota, did not respond). Several of the companies that responded told me that they had never heard of LobbyMatic and had no idea why their companies were being shown in product demos. A Microsoft spokesperson told me that it is not a client of LobbyMatic. Pfizer said "I can confirm they are not a vendor." Palantir said "LobbyMatic is not and has never been a Palantir customer. Looks like they are using us as an example of a 'client' for a potential customer firm, which we are not, nor have we authorized the use of our name & logo." Lockheed Martin told me it had never heard of the company. Home Depot said "we're not a client of LobbyMatic." And Holland & Knight said "checked on this and we are not a client of LobbyMatic." Sometime after my round of emails, these screenshots were removed from LobbyMatic's website, or were cropped to remove the names of specific supposed clients. Some of these original screenshots are still available on the Internet Archive. In a statement, a LobbyMatic spokesperson said "Any logos that were used on the landing page were simply for the purpose of displaying a mockup of how the client management system works within the platform. A lobbyist with multiple clients would see them listed on the sidebar of the application." "With LobbyMatic's groundbreaking AI technology, you can draft technically detailed, legally fluent regulatory comment letters 10x faster than ever before," the company wrote in a Medium post. "LobbyMatic's advanced natural language generation capabilities allow you to instantly produce insightful comment letters on complex regulatory issues. You can even use LobbyMatic to draft a regulatory comment letter from the perspective of your opponent -- anticipating their likely talking points and arguments before they even make them." Boundary Stone Partners, one of the companies who actually did use the platform, however, told Politico that "we quickly determined the tool did not work and terminated our contract two months ago." Wohl and Burkman were convicted in 2022 of felony telecom fraud because they ran a robocall campaign in which they told people living in majority Black neighborhoods not to vote by mail. The two right-wing activists were fined $5 million by the FCC and were ordered to spend 500 hours registering people to vote. According to Politico, they launched LobbyMatic under the pseudonyms "Jay Klein" and "Bill Sanders," and operated the company under these pseudonyms for months. Eventually, one of their own employees grew suspicious of the company, and the fact that people kept referring to Wohl as "Jacob" and not "Jay." That employee took a photo of Wohl in the office, ran a reverse image search, and determined that "Jay Klein" was actually Jacob Wohl.

DC's Favorite Convicted Fraudsters Are Backing an AI Lobbying Company

Malignant MAGA personalities Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are promising the moon with their AI lobbying firm LobbyMatic. God’s perfect fools, Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, are back with another ridiculous scheme. This time the pair of convicted fraudsters are pushing an AI-powered lobbying company called LobbyMatic. Like all their plots, LobbyMatic is promising things it can’t deliver and Wohl and Burkman have already been caught in several lies. AI is the biggest buzzword in tech right now and there are thousands of companies peddling all kinds of services. Enter LobbyMatic, a company launched in 2022 that promises to “massively increase [a lobbyist’s]efficiency and effectiveness by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence.†According to LobbyMatic’s website, it has services that automate the monitoring of a hearing, “book dozens of meetings on Capitol Hill in a few clicks,†and “utilize our cutting-edge AI models, married together with real-time legislative and regulatory data to get answers in seconds.†Politico looked into the company, which is purported to be founded and run by “Jay Klein†and “Bill Sanders.†Klein is, in actuality, Wohl. Sanders is Burkman. Former employees were only too happy to tell journalists all about the new venture once they learned they were working for people who’d lied about their identity. Wohl and Burkman weren’t exactly smart about the ruse. “After getting hired by â€~Jay Klein,’ the employee soon grew suspicious about Wohl and the company after witnessing an apparent hesitation to obtain business licenses and hearing Wohl referred to as Jacob. The person discreetly took a photo of Wohl, did a Google image search and learned that Klein was actually Wohl,†Politico said. 404 Media dug deeper and discovered that LobbyMatic is misrepresenting its client list. A product demo on LobbyMatic’s site implied it had done business with Capital One, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Fidelity, the lobbying firm Holland & Knight, Home Depot, Palantir, Microsoft, Pfizer, SalesForce, Visa, and Toyota. Pfizer, Microsoft, Palantir, Home Depot, Lockheed Martin, and Holland & Knight all told 404 Media that they had no relationship with LobbyMatic. “Several of the companies that responded told me that they had never heard of LobbyMatic and had no idea why their companies were being shown in product demos,†404 Media said. The list of Burkman and Wohl’s schemes and frauds is too long to recount here. They’ve both been kicking around online in Washington for almost a decade. They’re responsible for several politically motivated stunts and financial crimes. It was Wohl who popularized the practice of conservative pundits lying about overhearing MAGA-friendly political positions in “hipster coffee shops.†Wohl and Burkman spent the better part of Trump’s presidency inventing sexual misconduct allegations against Robert Mueller, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Anthony Fauci. The pattern was always the same. The pair would make the claim, sometimes a woman would step forward, there’d be a surreal press conference, and then the press would inevitably uncover that Wohl and Burkman had made it all up. In some cases, they’d even paid the victim to lie. Wohl and Burkman have not responded to any journalist’s request for comments on the story. LobbyMatic’s website says it’s looking for employees.