Speaking of hoaxes
by digby
I would argue that this is much worse than what Jussie Smollett is accused of doing.
Carolyne Cass, the woman at the center of Trump supporter Jacob Wohl’s bogus rape claim against special Robert Mueller, has told USA Today that he tricked her into going along with his scheme to smear the man investigating President Donald Trump.
In her interview with the newspaper, Cass revealed that Wohl first approached her by pretending to be a man named Matthew Cohen, who was purportedly a private detective who had received training from Israeli intelligence agencies.
Although Wohl, posing as Cohen, initially said he wanted to help Cass deal with some individuals whom she claims stole money from her, it eventually became clear that he wanted her to go on the record and make a false rape accusation against the special counsel.
“They made it up,” Cass said of a sworn statement about a sexual assault by Mueller that she purportedly signed and that was given to reporters at Wohl’s infamous press conference. “They wrote it and docu-signed it.”
Cass also said that Wohl “completely lied to me” about his identity and his intentions, while also explaining that she had to “escape” from Wohl to avoid going to his planned press event detailing the phony accusation.
Despite this, however, Cass says she has still not been contacted by the FBI, which received a referral from the special counsel’s office last year.
Smollett’s hoax was awful because it makes people skeptical of hate crime victims. This does the same thing with rape victims but it takes a step farther. Wohl and this woman accused a specific person of rape. That’s doubly horrible.
This accusation only took hold on the far right, luckily, but there’s a long history of such accusations festering in the fever swamps. Even though the accusation has been withdrawn, a fair number of those people will always believe it happened.
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