It is one of those strange, almost vertigo-inducing turns of events that makes you wonder if the universe has a sense of irony. The same two men who once tried to destroy Pete Buttigieg’s reputation with a fabricated sexual assault allegation have now been caught on hidden camera, marketing themselves as high-dollar pardon brokers in the White House of Donald Trump. Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, the infamous far-right duo who have spent years manufacturing political dirty tricks, were featured in a 60 Minutes investigation that captured them meeting with a convicted felon named Ammon Covino, who was hoping to secure a pardon from President Trump. The men were recorded telling Covino that they could get the job done—for a price. They wanted $300,000. The meeting was part of a broader CBS News investigation into what has been called the “pardon economy,” a shadowy world of Washington insiders who promise access, influence, and presidential mercy to the highest bidder. It’s a staggering fall from their earlier, more theatrical era of fake accusations and orchestrated press conferences, yet in a way it is also a natural evolution: they have always traded in lies, manipulation, and the exploitation of vulnerable people. The difference is that now the currency is not just fake social media posts and exaggerated scandals, but real money and real hope.
To understand how they got here, you have to go back to 2019, when Pete Buttigieg was surging in the Democratic primary. Burkman and Wohl were already known for their brand of political vandalism, but the Buttigieg smear was one of their most audacious and cruel attempts to alter the course of American politics. They enlisted a real Ferris State University student named Hunter Kelly, telling him they were flying him to Washington to discuss political challenges facing gay Republicans. Kelly later told The Advocate that the two men shifted the conversation toward attacking Buttigieg, who was then the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. They wanted to use Kelly, a young gay man, to level false accusations of sexual assault against the rising Democratic candidate. But Kelly said he never agreed to participate. He was blindsided when, the day after their meeting, a fake post appeared on the online publishing platform Medium under his name, filled with lurid and damaging allegations against Buttigieg. The post claimed Kelly had been sexually assaulted by Buttigieg, a story that was entirely untrue. Kelly immediately issued a public statement denying any involvement, insisting he had never accused the mayor of anything, and confirming that he had never been sexually assaulted. The scheme unraveled quickly, but it left behind a trail of emotional wreckage—not just for Buttigieg, who had to publicly address a fabricated attack, but also for Kelly, a young man whose name and story were hijacked for political gain.
The Buttigieg hoax was not an isolated incident. By that point, Wohl and Burkman had already built a reputation for hurling accusations at Democratic figures that inevitably went nowhere. They had tried to smear special counsel Robert Mueller with fake sexual misconduct claims. They had targeted Senator Elizabeth Warren with dubious allegations. They had been caught time and time again, their schemes collapsing under the weight of their own sloppiness and the quick debunking of journalists and internet sleuths. When their attempt to defame Buttigieg fell apart, they held an awkward, widely mocked press conference in which they tried to defend themselves, only to appear increasingly foolish. The moment was so bizarre that even the far-right media figures who usually amplified their work began to distance themselves. They had become punchlines, two men who specialized in high-profile failures and were often described as feline-themed cartoon villains. But political hoaxing was never just a hobby for them. It was a business model. They used the chaos and outrage they generated to build profiles, attract attention, and raise money. When the old tricks stopped working, they simply needed a new racket. The pardon scheme appears to be their latest attempt to monetize their proximity to power, or at least their willingness to pretend they have it.
The 60 Minutes hidden camera investigation shows how that new racket actually works. Ammon Covino, a felon who had previously applied for a pardon from President Joe Biden, was turned down, largely because the Biden administration left a massive backlog of clemency requests unaddressed. When Trump returned to power, Covino and his wife Crystal felt a renewed sense of hope, but they also knew they needed help navigating a system that rewards connections and insider knowledge. That is where Burkman and Wohl came in. During the meeting, Burkman was captured explaining their allegedly sophisticated strategy: “With this particular White House you have to put pressure on the President from all directions in a consistent way to force his hand.” In other words, they claimed they could manufacture the kind of political noise that would persuade Trump to grant Covino a pardon. For that service, they demanded $300,000. The Covinos told 60 Minutes that they had only paid for postage when they applied for a pardon under the previous administration, so the sudden jump to a six-figure retainer was staggering. The pair also itemized expenses, including attending fundraisers with $10,000-a-plate dinners and paying social media influencers to create viral pressure campaigns demanding a pardon. The goal, apparently, was to make Covino’s case impossible to ignore, while also making it look like ordinary Americans were demanding justice. It was a classic astroturfing scheme, repackaged for the White House.
The bigger picture here is what 60 Minutes calls the “pardon economy.” Under Trump, pardons have been distributed at an unusual pace and with little transparency, creating an environment where lobbyists, lawyers, and self-styled fixers see an opportunity to cash in on the desperation of families who believe that a pardon might change their lives forever. The Covinos, like many others, were caught between hope and exploitation. They wanted to believe that Burkman and Wohl could help them, even though every instinct should have told them otherwise. That is the tragedy of the pardon economy: it preys on people who have already been bruised by the criminal justice system, people who may have made mistakes but who genuinely believe in second chances. The hidden camera footage is uncomfortable to watch not because Burkman and Wohl are terrifying, but because they are so casually transactional. They talk about the president as if he is a machine that can be manipulated, and they talk about the client as if he is a check that has not yet cleared. In that meeting, there is no sense of justice, no empathy, no concern for whether Covino actually deserves a pardon. There is only money and access, or the illusion of access. Even the details of their pitch—the expensive dinners, the influencer campaigns, the orchestrated pressure—reveal how hollow their promises really are. They are not selling legal expertise. They are selling a fantasy of power, and they are trying to do it for a fortune.
At the end of the day, the story of Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl is not just a story about two disgraced hoaxers finding a new way to get attention. It is a story about how lies can metastasize, how the people who manufacture falsehoods eventually find themselves unable to tell the truth even when real consequences are at stake. They once ruined a young man’s peace of mind to smear a presidential candidate. Now they are hovering at the edges of a presidential system of mercy, hoping to turn someone else’s pain into profit. The 60 Minutes investigation does not end with arrests, and it is not clear whether what they were doing crosses a legal line. But there is a moral line that was crossed long ago, somewhere between the fake Medium post and the $300,000 price tag. What makes this story so human in the end is the contrast between the Covinos and the con men. The Covinos are vulnerable, hopeful, and willing to believe that someone with knowledge of the White House can help them start over. Burkman and Wohl are cynical, manipulative, and utterly indifferent to the people they claim to serve. Their victims have changed—from a gay mayor and a gay college student to a felon and his wife—but the pattern remains the same. They take a person’s hopes, twist them into a scheme, and leave behind a mess for everyone else to clean up. The world may have moved on from their old scandals, but the lesson has not: when you build your life on lies, the truth eventually catches up, even if it takes a hidden camera to prove it.