Are conspiracy theory dudes even supposed to have puppy dogs?
For today's installment of Great Moments In Rightwing Investigations we bring you the sad story of Jack Burkman, a former lobbyist for the Family Research Council who enlivened Wonkette's pages a decade ago when he tried to pick up two gals for sexytimes fun at the Mayflower Hotel while they were visiting DC during Pride Week in 2006 (he was not successful!). Jack's Conservative Family Values name also mysteriously showed up on the DC Madam's list in 2007. More recently, in 2014, he pushed for a bill to ban gays from the NFL, possibly because they were more successful at recruiting during Pride Week than he'd been.
Since then, Burkman has branched out into the fun world of rightwing conspiracy-mongering, including something he called the "Profiling Project," which set out to prove that DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered by Hillary Clinton for leaking the DNC emails, because lord knows our friends the Russians would never do such a thing.
Unfortunately, one of the stable geniuses Burkman hired as an "investigator" on that project, one Kevin Doherty, turned out to be even more bugfuck crazy than the average run of conspiracy theory guys, and Doherty was arrested Sunday for allegedly shooting and running over Burkman last week. Burkman told the Washington Post all about his "horror story," which ought to make for a pretty good episode of "Archer," maybe.
Burkman, who's still recovering from the injuries he sustained in the attack, told WaPo Doherty seemed like a pretty cool dude at first:
Burkman said Doherty presented an impressive resume — ex-Marine, ex-special agent — and did good work. But tension quickly developed. In Burkman's view, Doherty began speaking to reporters out of turn and tried to take over the investigation [...] “He became somewhat angry because he thought the Profiling Project belonged to him," Burkman said. In July, he cut Doherty loose and sent him a cease and desist letter.
“I just figured the matter was closed," Burkman said. “But what happened is, I guess, he was simmering and simmering and simmering."
You know, just like one of those frogs that the government is turning gay, in a pot of water that gets slowly hotter until it begins boiling with tyranny and all our rights are stripped away before we even notice, because we're not just boiling frogs, we're sheep. Conspiracy theory people really know all about simmering.
In any case, by February, Burkman had concluded that Seth Rich had definitely been a professional hit (remember how that made all the news and was totally not dismissed as pure bullshit?) and he was chasing down leads in another conspiracy. He'd offered a reward of $25,000 to any FBI insiders who'd come forward and provide proof that the agency tried to rig the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton, and someone claiming to be one of the FBI's Top Men contacted Burkman to say he had the real scoop on Andrew McCabe. As is apparently a perfectly normal thing for secret agent LARPers to do, the informant "dropped off two packets of emails under a cone in a garage at the Key Bridge Marriott in Rosslyn." As one would.
Burkman was sure he "had the story of the decade" because, you see, the emails "looked super real," so he arranged to make one last pickup from the garage last week, of the genuinely real Justice Department inspector general's report on McCabe, with all the secrets. We will now hand the narrative duties over to WaPo's Rachel Weiner, because she is a professional, unlike everyone else in this story:
Instead, when Burkman bent over to pull the papers out from under the cone, he was shot in the buttocks and thigh. As he ran out of the garage with his dachshund in his arms, he was hit by an SUV. He said the car backed up to hit him again.
“It looked like he was coming to kill me," Burkman said. But he said a woman watching from a window of the hotel screamed. A guard came running and the SUV sped off, Burkman said.
Burkman spent three days in the hospital. His dog, Jack Jr., was uninjured.
THE DOG IS FINE, YOU CAN STOP READING NOW.
Also, who names their own dog after themselves? Ms. Weiner -- truly the only person WaPo's editors could have assigned to this story, dutifully notes that "Police would not comment on Burkman's account of the incident." Not that you should read anything into that at all.
Mr. Burkman also claimed back in January that someone wearing a mask that "looked like something you would see in one of the movies of a bank robber" had parked a dark SUV in his driveway while he was out on an errand, then sprayed him in the face with a "caustic substance" and then hit him in the head.
Burkman, who wouldn't dream of being the least bit dramatic, said at the time that when he first saw the assailant, he thought "The end is coming" and also believed "It looked professional, but who knows."
(The dachshund was not apparently at any risk in the earlier attack, and police have made no arrests in that incident. Asked to comment on all this fuckery, Jack Jr. the dachshund rolled over on his back and widdled on the reporter's hand.)
[wonkbar]<a href="http://www.wonkette.com/631219/can-seth-richs-grieving-parents-gawker-fox-news-out-of-existence"></a>[/wonkbar]Burkman is now wondering if maybe Doherty was a hired assassin the whole time, because even if Seth Rich's parents are suing completely different people for spreading bullshit conspiracy stories about their son, there's no reason Burkman shouldn't try to milk his own misfortune for some publicity in the conspiracysphere:
“This in my mind makes the whole Seth story stranger and stranger," Burkman said.
Yeppers. Burkman was obviously getting too close to the truth, so the Illuminati/Clinton/Gay-Football hit teams are after him. Clearly, he's going to need a big GoFundMe to increase his security team, and to dig deeper for the TRUTH.
[WaPo]
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