Magician says Dean Phillips operative hired him to create AI deepfake Biden robocalls ahead of NH primary
A New Orleans-based magician says a Democratic consultant paid him $150 to create fake robocalls of President Biden that discouraged voter turnout in the New Hampshire primary, according to a new report.
Paul Carpenter, a traveling magician who also works in tech and artificial intelligence, claims he was hired by operative Steve Kramer, who was employed at the time by Biden rival Dean Phillips, to produce the recording using AI, NBC News reported Friday.
“I created the audio used in the robocall. I did not distribute it,” Carpenter said, sharing text messages, call logs and Venmo transactions with the outlet to corroborate the claim.
“I was in a situation where someone offered me some money to do something, and I did it. There was no malicious intent. I didn’t know how it was going to be distributed.”
As many as 25,000 of the calls, which cost just $1 to produce, were made two days before the Jan. 23 primary, in which 125,000 Democrats turned out to cast ballots and deliver Biden the victory as part of a massive write-in campaign.
The New Hampshire attorney general’s office announced a criminal investigation into the matter in early February, and the Federal Election Commission issued cease-and-desist letters to two Texas companies alleged to be behind the distribution of the AI-generated calls.
Kramer was retained during that month by Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota who is challenging Biden for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.
A Philips spokeswoman told The Post that the consultant’s work focused on ballot access in New York and Pennsylvania.
“Steve Kramer was hired as a consultant to collect signatures to get Dean Phillips on the ballot in the states of New York and Pennsylvania — a choice we made reluctantly to overcome the absurd and artificial barriers to entry put in place to get on ballots in those states,” Phillips campaign spokeswoman Katie Dolan said.
“If it is true that Mr. Kramer had any involvement in the creation of deepfake robocalls, he did so of his own volition which had nothing to do with our campaign,” she added.
“The fundamental notion of our campaign is the importance of competition, choice, and democracy. We are disgusted to learn that Mr. Kramer is allegedly behind this call, and if the allegations are true, we absolutely denounce his actions.”
Kramer later produced an op-ed via a spokesman that confirmed he had “sent out an automated call to 5,000 most likely to vote Democrats” using “a script of my specific choosing” that replicated the president’s voice and was made in “less than a half-hour.”
He urged regulators to take “immediate action” given that other campaigns have tried to hire him for similar AI-generated fake calls and, as in his case, “self-policing won’t work.”
“With a mere $500 investment, anyone could replicate my intentional call,” Kramer added. “A voter list can be purchased quickly and easily through any political vendor.”
Carpenter did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s also unclear their connection to the two Texas companies already under investigation.
The Phillips campaign ended its association with Kramer in mid-February before learning of his alleged connections to the call — and after having paid him nearly $260,000 in December and January, according to campaign filings.
Kramer told NBC and Dolan that he is publishing an op-ed about the ordeal on Saturday.
As a longtime political operative, he previously worked on ballot access for the 2020 presidential campaign of Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, and the following year for Republican New York City mayoral candidate Sara Tirschwell, who sued him for “disastrous misconduct” in failing to get her on the ballot.
Kramer had promised to obtain at least 2,250 valid signatures, but when submitted to the Board of Elections only 546 were accepted — a breach of contract that “shocks the conscience,” according to Tirschwell’s attorneys.
Tirschwell did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the pending case.
Carpenter — a record-holder for straitjacket escapes and fork bending with a talent for card tricks — told NBC he regretted making the recording but also joked about being included at all in the political robo-prank.
“The only thing missing from the political circus is a magician and here I am,” he said.
His attorney, Brandon Kizy, also told the outlet: “Paul had no prior knowledge of what the AI-generated content would be used for and Paul did not have any knowledge that it would be used to potentially affect or be used in connection with any election or voter activity.”
Kramer met Carpenter last year through a mutual acquaintance who vouched for the magician’s web design, programming and AI capabilities.
The Democratic operative first asked the magician in September to create three robocalls — two that imitated Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and one that imitated Biden — for which he used the AI text-to-speech generator Eleven Labs.
Kramer paid for the Biden audio three days before the New Hampshire primary through a Venmo account for his father, Bruce Kramer, who declined to comment to NBC about the transaction.
He also texted Carpenter “Shhhhhhh” after news broke of the fake robocalls on Jan. 22 and convinced the magician in follow-up phone calls to delete their email exchanges, which had scripts written of the phone calls.
Four days later, Eleven Labs locked Carpenter out of his account “due to unusual activity.”
