there are also very serious allegations against jacob wohl. we are looking into this. e, we spoke with jacob and we are interviewing him tomorrow. we will post the interview. so, the place where jacob wohl works is now going to try to milk this for another couple of days. the one serious place this thing lands is that robert mueller and the special counsel's office has now referred this matter to the fbi for investigation. from the spokesman to the special counsel, who never says anything, quote, when we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims about the special counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the fbi for investigation. joining us now is nbc news tech and media reporter ben collins, who reported this out today. ben, great to have you here. >> thanks for having me. >> this is super weird. >> it is. >> the thing that we all first learned about this was that the special counsel's office had referred this for investigation to the fbi, and it was like whoa, first of all, the special counsel's office speaks. second of

trusting jacob wohl to begin with if you're a person who follows donald trump is probably not a good is an effort the way mr. wohl's employer, this conservative website, it's definitely a conspiracy theory promoting pro-trump website 100%. they're also in this republican politics environment, they tend to be sort of influential. they start conspiracy theories that other people on the right tend to run with. to the extent that this is happening one week before the election, it does appear to be an effort on the far right to launch some sort of october surprise scandal about robert mueller. >> yeah. >> and the question is whether or not it's going to be seen as a scandal about these guys who are trying to do it or whether it will get any traction. >> so it's so transparently bad from the get-go, again, the fake celebrities and things like that. jacob is known for this sort of thing. last year he was pushing the migrant caravan conspiracy. you saw what that leads to this weekend. has been down this path millions of times before. there have been trial balloons in the past about fake alle

jacob wohl is about 20 years old. we're not sure if he lives with his mother.the lessons of the day is do not, and, i mean, do not try to frame robert mueller if your phone number redirects to your mother's voicemail. joining us now is natasha bertrand, staff writer at the "atlantic" and msnbc contributor. you have the floor. this one is a complicated one to describe. >> to say the least. we first started hearing about this this woman a couple weeks back when she started contacting reporters saying that she had received an odd phone call from the man who identified himself as an investigator that had been hired by jack burkman. it's important to note that no woman has actually made any allegations against robert mueller. the only allegations that have been made are that surefire intelligence and jack burkman have been working in conjunction to try to pay off women to make false claims about mueller just eight days before the midterm elections. >> natasha, i was reading that the women specifically said that never happened. nothing untoward ever happened with rob

we found it all linked directly to jacob wohl down to the phone number listed on his website.ected callers to his mother's cell phone. it seems like this is all one big interconnected web and we're not sure where it stands but the fact of the matter is that mueller took this very seriously and he doesn't want to take any chances. >> i think the word, the phrase fake news comes to mind. thank you. >>> up next, voter enthusiasm is off the charts with early voting under way in many states. we'll see about younger people. conventional wisdom says that's good news for the democrats but will that hold true in the age of trump? we'll see. we're all going to see tuesday night. vo: you're feeling the squeeze. costs are rising. it's hard to keep up. in washington, one party is calling the shots and the middle class isn't being heard. we need a new congress that will cut taxes for the middle class, ensure coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, and protect social security and medicare. vote for a democratic congress; for an economy that works for everyone. independence usa pac

the placers in this, there's this guy named jacob wohl.hey will probably know him from his interesting tweets talking about a hipster coffee show in l.a. where he heard these young democrats saying how much they secretly like donald trump. he's something of a running joke on twitter. how is he involved? >> he's been connected by nbc news and other news organizations to this company called sure fire intelligence which appears to have been created only recently even though he denies any connection to this. we should not be blind to the possibility that oall of this i designed to make us cover it an repeat these false allegations putting them in the minds of some people. that's dangerous thing. we have to take it seriously those because the special counsel rewent on the record an saying they are referring it to the fbi. >> the phone numbers all go back to jacob wohl's mother's house. >> that's right. there's been e-mail metadata he's connected to. >> it all points back to him. >> darren, it's been quite, taugitaug i -- talking about the speci

were able to connect it to a conservative blogger named jacob wohl. internet records show he set up the website. reporters discovered some of the executives at the surefire executives aren't real. frick's picture on linkedin, he looks strikingly like christoph walz, from the quentin tarantino movies, like "jango." in fact, it is the exact same picture. wohl talked with reporters from nbc but declined connection with surefire intelligence and then he stopped talking to reporters at all. why? nbc reports wohl stopped responding to nbc news after being told surefire's official phone number redirects to his mother's voice mail. despite all this, the press conference is still on for thursday. we'll continue to follow it. we'll follow that on twitter. follow me there @scottmcgrew. >> thanks, scott. >>> happening today, a nasa probe made at uc berkeley will be making its first solar encounter there. it launched back in august. the park solar probe is closer to the sha spacecraft and broke a record for the fastest spacecraft traveling relative to the sun. the

we could make fun of jacob wohl all we want, but this is a huge deal that the special counsel's officeo refer this to the fbi. when we get a statement from mueller's office, any kind of statement, it is an absolute earthquake because he never comments. this is extremely rare. when we saw he issued this statement in response to reporters who were asking about these allegations, we knew this was a moment we had to really jump on this story and that it was not something that was going to go away on its own. >> ruth marcus, one characterize that most criminals share is that they are stupid, and it is why they are criminals. it should not surprise us when some criminal conspiracies become laughable as soon as you bring them to the light of day, but watergate had some bumbling gang that couldn't shoot straight components too, but that was a conspiracy ultimately that brought down the president. >> this is both laughable and tawdry. i mean, this is sick. it is sick if it's true to try to gin up false charges of sexual misconduct against a man, robert mueller. there's no evidence that he's eve

identities, appears to stem from a scheme by social media personality and fervent trump-supporter jacob wohlnd conservative conspiracy theorist jack burkman. mueller is expected to deliver key findings stemming from his probe investigating possible russia meddling in the 2016 elections soon after the november midterms.s. in washington, the interior department has referred interior secretary ryan zinke to the justice department for possible criminal investigation. details of the probe are not known. it comes as federal officials have launched at least 18 formal ethics investigations into zinke's conduct at the interior department. earlier this month, the interior department's independent watchdog concluded that zinke had violated department travel policies. and notorious south boston mobster "whitey" bulger was beaten to death by fellow prisoners tuesday in a west virginia prison. whitey bulger was convicted in 2013 of a host of crimes, including 11 murders and sentenced to life in prison. bulger served as an fbi informant, and the agency helped enable his reign of terror in the 1970's and 19