A former DC schoolteacher has sued Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman over a 2022 incident in which he says the pair, who specialize in bizarre political stunts that frequently backfire, lured him to a house in Maryland, intimidated him with “men dressed in security attire,” and “accused him of being a pedophile.” The sting attempt was part of Wohl and Burkman’s YouTube series Predator DC.
Tom Birner, says in the suit, which was first reported by Politico’s Josh Gerstein, that he lost his job at Hyde-Addison Elementary School in DC as a result of the incident. Birner claims that the pair arranged for him to meet someone on Tinder who invited him to a house in Edgewater, Maryland. After taking her suggestion that he disrobe, Birner says he was surprised by Burkman and Wohl, who then “interrogated” him on camera. Cops arrested him because he had Adderall in his backpack, Birner says, and he further says he lost his job after the pair contacted the school and posted about the encounter online.
Birner’s suit, which asks for $5 million in damages, claims that the woman said she was 19, then later said she was 16, but was actually a then 23-year-old named Storm Moya Bodernik. His suit claims he didn’t believe she was 16 because she “looked and acted” older, and that Maryland’s age of consent is 16 anyway. Burkman and Wohl’s series drew another lawsuit last year when another of their targets accused them of falsely calling him a predator. That case was dismissed in March, though the court noted the dismissal “should not be interpreted to, in any way, condone Defendants’ actions if proven in a court of competent jurisdiction.” Three people who worked on the show told the Verge in 2022 that their working conditions were very unpleasant.
Other Burkman and Wohl schemes have ended poorly. In 2022, a court ordered them to help register people to vote after they pleaded guilty to telecommunications fraud over robocalls that spread disinformation in areas with primarily Black voters. New York fined the pair over the same plot. The two have conducted other unusual efforts like staging an FBI raid on Burkman’s Arlington home and launching a fake TMZ DC site, and Burkman once got shot in his rear end by a disgruntled former associate. Last fall, Politico reported they operated a lobbying firm under pseudonyms.
Wohl has not yet responded to Washingtonian‘s request for comment on the suit, and we’ll update this post when he does.
You can read Birner’s suit below.
Birner Burkman Wohl by Washingtonian Magazine on Scribd
Andrew Beaujon joined Washingtonian in late 2014. He was previously with the Poynter Institute, TBD.com, and Washington City Paper. He lives in Del Ray.
