Pa. postal worker denies recanting fraud claims
USA TODAY Network reviews Erie postmarks
The Erie man’s allegations were already falling apart before news he recanted his statement to investigators.
A U.S. Postal Service employee in Erie, Pennsylvania, who claimed last week that his superiors were backdating ballots that were sent after Election Day recanted his statements in interviews with investigators, according to reports.
On Tuesday evening, The Washington Post reported that Richard Hopkins admitted fabricating the allegations while being interviewed by Postal Service investigators in recent days. The Post cited three people briefed on the investigation and a statement on Twitter from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.
But hours later, in a video retweeted by President Donald Trump, Hopkins denied he had recanted his allegations: “I’m here to say I did not recant my statements. That did not happen. That is not what happened.”
The video in just a few hours had received more than 1.3 million views.
Hopkins’ allegations, though, were beginning to fall apart before news broke that he had recanted.
The Erie Times-News on Tuesday morning reviewed 129 mail-in ballot envelopes that were postmarked Nov. 3 but arrived at the Erie County Board of Elections after Election Day. Of those 129 ballots, only two postmarked Nov. 3 were processed through the Erie facility, the Times-News discovered in its review, which was conducted in the presence of county Board of Elections Chairman Carl Anderson and others.
A bulk of the ballots were processed at locations across the state and the country, from as far west as Tacoma, Washington, and as far south as Florida. Most were postmarked in Pittsburgh. The voters are registered in Erie County but likely are out of the area for work, college or travel, Anderson said.
The courts have ordered that all late-arriving mail-in ballots be segregated. On Monday, they also ordered that the ballots not be included in any Pennsylvania county’s overall tally.
The allegation that employees at the Erie Postal Service facility were “back-dating” mail-in ballots that arrived after Election Day was made by Hopkins, 32, last week. The claims came as Trump and his supporters have filed a slew of lawsuits and made numerous public, but yet-to-be-proved claims of voter fraud in Pennsylvania and other states.
Hopkins initially told the conservative activist group Project Veritas that he and other carriers were instructed by Postmaster Robert Weisenbach to bring him all ballots that they picked up after Election Day.
Hopkins also claimed to overhear Weisenbach tell another supervisor that he, Weisenbach, was back-dating ballots “to make it appear as though the ballots had been collected on Nov. 3, 2020, despite them in fact being collected on November 4 and possibly later,” according to an affidavit circulated by the group and purportedly signed by Hopkins. Hopkins initially said “all but one” of the ballots received Nov. 4 had been back-dated to Nov. 3.
On Nov. 5, Hopkins said he “overheard Weisenbach tell (another supervisor) that they ‘messed up yesterday’ – Nov. 4, 2020 – by accidentally postmarking one ballot as having been collected Nov. 4, 2020 (when it had actually been collected),” the signed affidavit says.
Not only did the Times-News review find that only two late-arriving ballots processed at the Erie facility have a Nov. 3 postmark, but it also found that nine late ballots processed in Erie were postmarked Nov. 4 or later.
Project Veritas, founded by James O’Keefe in 2010, is known for undercover reporting used to reveal what it sees as liberal bias. Some content it circulates has been found to be false or misleading.
Weisenbach issued a statement Saturday evening saying the allegations are “100% false.”