NUCLEAR WESSEL: Anti-Trump operatives targeted in online ‘catfishing’ scheme.

Steven Wessel is a convicted con man with a Big Apple flair, feigning connections to Ronald Reagan and pretending to be an Oxford man while bilking rich Manhattanites of $750,000. But his last scam before heading to prison this spring targeted a very different kind of mark: Republican operatives opposed to Donald Trump.

And now those operatives are wondering who put Wessel up to it.

Assuming a variety of fake online identities, including that of a female solicitor in England, Wessel gushed in emails, phone calls and Twitter messages about (made-up) extramarital affairs with the likes of the late Lee Atwater, showered marks with gift cards to the swanky Mandarin Oriental, and invited them to go pheasant-hunting in Scotland — all in an apparent attempt to glean more about the operatives and their intentions regarding Trump. That was until federal prosecutors learned of the activity and a judge revoked Wessel’s bail in April, sending him to prison to begin serving a 55-month sentence ahead of schedule.

In a campaign season marked by the mind-bending, the — until now unreported —caper of Wessel’s months-long “catfishing” of operatives Rick Wilson, Liz Mair and Cheri Jacobus ranks among more bizarre episodes. It could get more bizarre still. The targets of the scheme do not believe that Wessel, described by his own lawyer as mentally ill, was acting alone. This month Jacobus, who said she believes Wessel was working in concert with allies of Trump, renewed her efforts to get the FBI to investigate the scheme.

Politics ain’t beanbag. Read the whole thing.