A Pennsylvania postal worker recanted allegations of ballot fraud, according to a House committee led by Democrats.
Richard Hopkins, identified as a U.S. Postal Service employee in Erie who signed a sworn affidavit claiming that postal supervisory officials hatched a plan to backdate ballots mailed after the election, told USPS inspector general officials on Monday that he no longer stood by the claims.
This comes after many major media outlets called Pennsylvania for Joe Biden on Saturday, giving him enough electoral votes to secure the White House. President Trump so far has refused to concede defeat, turning to legal challenges in states including Pennsylvania and recounts to possibly tip the election in his favor.
“BREAKING NEWS: Erie, Pa. #USPS whistleblower completely RECANTED his allegations of a supervisor tampering with mail-in ballots after being questioned by investigators, according to IG,” a tweet thread from the House Oversight Committee said on Tuesday.
“Here are the facts: Richard Hopkins is a USPS employee in Erie, Pa. He signed a sworn affidavit with allegations of ballot tampering/fraud and went public through Project Veritas. #USPS IG began investigating last week,” the thread continued.
“#USPS IG investigators informed Committee staff today that they interviewed Hopkins on Friday, but that Hopkins RECANTED HIS ALLEGATIONS yesterday and did not explain why he signed a false affidavit,” said another tweet from the committee headed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York.
Asked for confirmation, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General told the Washington Examiner the department does not comment on “ongoing matters.”
The sworn affidavit from Hopkins said that postal workers, including Erie Postmaster Rob Weisenbach, directed him and his co-workers to pick up ballots after Election Day and provide them to him.
Weisenbach posted on Facebook over the weekend to deny the claims.
“Good evening my friends,” Weisenbach wrote. “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.”
He added: “The Erie Post Office did not back date any ballots.”
After receiving the affidavit, Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, called for a Justice Department investigation into voting irregularities. Attorney General William Barr issued a memo on Monday that authorized investigations into potential election fraud, prompting the Justice Department’s election crimes chief to resign from his position.
Project Veritas, an investigative reporting project that has a mixed record on its sting operations over the years, including allegations of misleading editing, led the USPS inspector general to look into a video last week about claims of ballot fraud in Michigan. As for the Eerie case, the group claims there is more to the story.
“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.”
O’Keefe then shared a short clip of a man who identified himself as Hopkins saying he did not recant his statements, but that tweet was deleted and later replaced. Another tweet had video with purported audio snippets of the interview with federal agents as well as Hopkins replying in the affirmative when asked by O’Keefe if he still stood by his assertion that he heard Weisenbach tell a supervisor they were backdating ballots to make it appear as though they were collected on Nov. 3.
Neil McCabe, who heads communications for Project Veritas, told the Washington Examiner that Hopkins was wearing a wire on Monday for fear of retaliation from his superiors and labor representatives when he was interviewed by the USPS inspector general team. McCabe said Hopkins was told he could be charged with using deception to raise money on a GoFundMe page if he didn’t “update” his affidavit in exchange for protection.
McCabe also said that Hopkins was suspended without pay after the interview, which the Washington Post reported would last until the investigation is complete.
