Democratic operative admits to commissioning fake Biden robocall that used AI

Steve Kramer, a veteran political consultant working for a rival candidate, acknowledged Sunday that he commissioned the robocall that impersonated President Joe Biden using artificial intelligence, confirming an NBC News report that he was behind the call.

In a statement and interview with NBC News, Kramer expressed no remorse for creating the deepfake, in which an imitation of the president’s voice discouraged participation in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary. The call launched several law enforcement investigations and provoked outcry from election officials and watchdogs.

“I’m not afraid to testify, I know why I did everything,” he said an interview late Sunday, his first since coming forward. “If a House oversight committee wants me to testify, I’m going to demand they put it on TV because I know more than them.”

Kramer said he has received a subpoena from the Federal Communications Commission, suspected he might get sued by a half dozen people and said he could even face jail time, but that he would keep working in politics.

NBC News has reached out to the FCC for comment.

Kramer claimed he planned the fake robocall from the start as an act of civil disobedience to call attention to the dangers of AI in politics. He compared himself to American Revolutionary heroes Paul Revere and Thomas Paine. He said more enforcement is necessary to stop people like him from doing what he did.

“This is a way for me to make a difference, and I have,” he said in the interview. “For $500, I got about $5 million worth of action, whether that be media attention or regulatory action.”

Kramer said he came up with the idea for the hoax entirely on his own and that it had nothing to do with his client, Biden’s long-shot primary challenger, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn. Phillips had paid Kramer over $250,000 around the time the robocall went out in January, according to his campaign finance reports.

Phillips and his campaign have denounced the robocall, saying they had no knowledge of Kramer’s involvement and would have immediately terminated him if they had known.

Phillips’ press secretary Katie Dolan said in response to Kramer’s statement Sunday, “Our campaign repeats its condemnation of these calls and any efforts to suppress the vote.”

Phillips’ team hired Kramer in December and January for ballot access work in New York and Pennsylvania, which involves collecting thousands of signatures from voters so a candidate can qualify for the ballot.

“I’m sure that a half dozen people will try to sue me, but they’re used to dealing with people like themselves,” Kramer said in the interview. “I can tell you they’re not used to me. I wrestled in college.”

He also acknowledged commissioning an earlier deep fake robocall impersonating Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., which he said was just a test.

The calls went to 300 South Carolina likely Republican primary voters. It was a poll that had Graham’s voice ask recipients whom they supported in the GOP primary. Kramer said the response rate from the familiar voice of Graham was four times higher than the response rate to an automated call.

Kramer was first linked to the fake Biden robocall Friday by an NBC News report.

So why did Kramer wait to come forward to until he was caught, if this was his plan all along?

“I was waiting for the South Carolina primary to be over, I didn’t want to interfere with that,” he said in the interview. He also said that his calls impersonating the president, which went to more than 5,000 New Hampshire voters telling them not to vote, “wasn’t going to change anything” in that primary.

“If I had come out right away, it takes away from the goal of the call,” he added, claiming the time was necessary to allow regulators to act.