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April 9 (UPI) -- New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Tuesday that two men will pay $1.25 million for robocalls targeting Black New Yorkers before the 2020 general election discouraging them from voting by mail. Conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were found liable in March 2023 for transmitting false information to more than 5,000 Black voters in the New York area in a threatening manner meant to discourage them from voting by mail.
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Some of the claims made by the men, James said, suggested that voting information would be shared with law enforcement, debt collectors and the government.
"The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy, and its belongs to everyone," James said in a statement. "Wohl and Burkman orchestrated a depraved and disinformation-ridden campaign to intimidate Black voters in an attempt to sway the election in favor of their preferred candidate. My office will always defend the right to vote."
In October 2022, Wohl and Burkman each pleaded guilty in Ohio to a single felony charge in connection to making some 67,000 robocalls across the country that targeted minorities and suspected Democratic voters, warning them not to vote by mail.
James' office said one of the recorded calls said: "Did you know that if you vote by mail, your personal information will be part of a public database that will be used by police departments to track down old warrants and be used by credit card companies to collect outstanding debts? The CDC is even pushing to use the records for mail-in voting to track people for mandatory vaccines."
James' office said all of that information was false and against the law.
"This groundbreaking settlement should send an emphatic message to anyone who aims to prevent Black people from exercising their right to vote," Damon Hewitt, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement. "Voter suppression and voter intimidation are illegal, immoral and anti-democratic."
