CONCORD, N.H. — A New Orleans street magician said Friday that a Democratic consultant working for Dean Phillips’ presidential campaign hired him to create the audio for what authorities have said could be the first known attempt to use artificial intelligence to disrupt American elections.
Paul Carpenter, who specializes in card tricks and illusions, told The Associated Press that he was hired by Steve Kramer to use AI to imitate President Joe Biden’s voice for the robocalls. He said he was surprised when he later learned that the call was used in an effort to discourage people from voting for Biden during New Hampshire’s first primary last month.
“I made the gun. I didn’t shoot it,” he said.
New Hampshire authorities have said the recorded message, sent to thousands of voters two days before the Jan. 23 election, violated the state’s voter suppression laws. They have issued cease and desist orders to two Texas companies they believe were involved. The connection to the Louisiana magician was first reported by NBC News.
A spokesperson for Attorney General John Formella declined to comment Friday on whether investigators are investigating Carpenter or Kramer, saying only that the investigation continues.
The Phillips campaign denounced Kramer’s calls and alleged actions, saying the $260,000 they paid him in December and January was for election outreach assistance in New York and Pennsylvania.
“If it is true that Mr. Kramer had any involvement in creating deepfake robocalls, he did so of his own volition, which had nothing to do with our campaign,” spokeswoman Katie Dolan said in an emailed statement. “The fundamental idea of our campaign is the importance of competition, choice and democracy. We are outraged to hear that Mr. Kramer is allegedly behind this call, and if the allegations are true, we absolutely condemn his actions.”
Reached by text message, Kramer referred questions Friday to his spokesman, political consultant Hank Sheinkopf, who declined to comment.
Liz Purdy, a senior adviser for the Biden-Harris campaign in New Hampshire, said it supports efforts to hold accountable anyone trying to disrupt the election and remains “hyper-vigilant” to threats of disinformation.
In his interview with the AP, Carpenter described himself as a transient “digital nomad” who travels by motorcycle with his long-haired dachshund, Moose. He describes the dog as a “psychiatric service animal” that helps him cope with the trauma he suffered from gunfire several years ago in New Orleans, when a dispute broke out among acquaintances.
Carpenter said he does close-up magic tricks — including illusions where he appears to bend spoons and forks at will — on the streets and at conventions. He told NBC that he holds world records for fork bends and straitjacket escapes.
He also travels with a beat-up laptop and other electronic equipment that he uses to create social media content and projects related to digital assets known as NFTs, or non-fungible tokens.
Carpenter said he met Kramer last year through mutual acquaintances, and said Kramer initially hired him to create AI audio using Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s spoofed voice before hiring him to create the Biden audio.
Carpenter said he believed Kramer was working for the Biden campaign, and said the job was offered to him as a possible time- and cost-saving measure that would eliminate the candidate’s need to go to a recording studio.
“I didn’t know anything about his involvement in the other presidential campaign,” Carpenter said.
Screenshots Carpenter shared with NBC News and the AP include a text Kramer sent him three days before the New Hampshire primary saying he had emailed Carpenter a script. Venmo transactions show that an account with the same name as Kramer’s father paid Carpenter $150 on Jan. 20, three days before the primary election.
Two days later, as news of the fake Biden robocall broke, Carpenter’s texts show Kramer texting him a link to a story and the message “Shhhhhhh.”
“I immediately called him and said, ‘Dude, what’s going on?’” Carpenter said when interviewed by the AP in New Orleans. Kramer, he said, treated the matter lightly, but also said Carpenter should delete emails about the work.
“Hahaha. It’s okay. Don’t worry about it, just delete all the emails and act like nothing happened,” Carpenter said, describing the conversations with Kramer. “Don’t worry about it, it will go away,” he told me.
Later, Carpenter said, he learned that criminal investigations had been launched. That made him nervous, so he contacted an NBC reporter. He told the AP that he has a lawyer and is considering legal action against Kramer.
The recorded robocall was sent to between 5,000 and 25,000 voters. Using a voice similar to Biden’s, he used his oft-used phrase, “What a load of malarkey,” and falsely suggested that voting in the primaries would deter voters from voting in the November general election.
Biden won the Democratic primary as a write-in candidate after keeping his name off the ballot in deference to South Carolina’s new lead-off position for the Democratic primary.
Recipients found the calls were mistakenly made from the personal cell phone number of Kathy Sullivan, a former state Democratic Party chair who helps run Granite for America, a super PAC that backed the Biden write-in campaign.
Sullivan said in an email Friday that she had never heard of Kramer until she read the NBC story, and that she “has not received an apology from Dean Phillips because his highly paid advisor spoofed my number.”
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McGill reported from New Orleans.
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