U.S. Postal Service investigators found no evidence to support one Pennsylvania USPS employee’s claim that he heard his superiors discuss tampering with mail-in ballots.
Richard Hopkins, identified as a U.S. Postal Service employee in Erie who signed a sworn affidavit claiming postal supervisory officials hatched a plan to backdate ballots mailed after the election, later recanted his story to investigators, according to the Postal Service’s inspector general.
During his second interview with investigators, Hopkins “revised his claims, eventually stating that he had not heard a conversation about ballots at all — rather he saw the Postmaster and Supervisor having a discussion and assumed it was about fraudulent ballot backdating,” the report, which was published in late February and posted to the blog 21st Century Postal Worker on Monday, states. He “acknowledged that he had no evidence of any backdated presidential ballots and could not recall any specific words said by the Postmaster or Supervisor.”
USPS EMPLOYEE ALLEGING BALLOT FRAUD IN PENNSYLVANIA RECANTS CLAIMS, HOUSE PANEL SAYS
Hopkins’s allegation was peddled among Republicans, including then-President Donald Trump, many of whom engaged in an attempt to change the outcome of the election by questioning the integrity of the votes and the constitutionality of some of the methods of voting that states turned to amid the coronavirus pandemic, although some of the election changes predate the outbreak.
After receiving the affidavit, Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, called for a Justice Department investigation into voting irregularities. Following the election, then-Attorney General William Barr issued a memo that authorized investigations into potential election fraud, prompting the Justice Department’s election crimes chief to resign from his position.
Hopkins, as he tried promoting the baseless claim in the immediate aftermath of the election, paired up with Project Veritas, an investigative reporting project that focuses on one-sided recording-style journalism with the goal of showing media bias.
The House Oversight Committee announced on Nov. 10, a week after the election and days after the media projected Joe Biden as the winner of the election, that Hopkins “completely RECANTED his allegations of a supervisor tampering with mail-in ballots after being questioned by investigators.”
“We have recordings of the federal agents, who COERCED this man through a 4 hour interrogation without representation, who stands by his original affidavit re: backdating ballots,” Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe tweeted in response to the House Oversight Committee. “Standby for recordings doubling down on backdating ballots. This is soviet style truth suppression.”
Trump praised Hopkins as “a brave patriot” on social media at the time.
At the time, Erie Postmaster Rob Weisenbach denied any wrongdoing.
“There has been awful things posted about the USPS and here is my statement. The allegations made against me and the Erie Post Office are 100% false made by an employee that was recently disciplined multiple times.” Weisenbach wrote. “The Erie Post Office did not back date any ballots.”
Hopkins has been suspended without pay since Nov. 10, according to the Washington Post.
Repeated attempts made by Republicans to discredit the integrity of the election morphed into a debate about voting rights and access following the administration change.
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Many Republicans argue that there is low voter confidence and more stringent laws are required to ensure accurate results, although their own questioning of the results likely contributed to those who are skeptical. Conversely, Democrats argue that this is a move made by Republicans, after losing normally red states such as Arizona and Georgia, designed to prevent likely Democratic voters from going to the polls.
This fight is being played at both the state and federal level, where governments are trying to pass laws to change how elections work moving forward.
