Audio recording shows Pennsylvania postal worker recanting ballot-tampering claim | PostalReporter.com
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Audio recording shows Pennsylvania postal worker recanting ballot-tampering claim

WaPo:

In an interview this week with federal agents, a Pennsylvania postal worker walked back his allegation that a supervisor had tampered with mailed ballots, saying he had made “assumptions” based on overheard snippets of conversation, according to an audio recording of the interview posted online Wednesday by activists who have championed his cause.

The two-hour recording shows that Richard Hopkins recanted claims he had made in a sworn affidavit that top Republicans cited over the weekend as potential evidence of widespread election irregularities and fraud.

Hopkins told federal investigators on Monday his allegations were based on fragments of conversation among co-workers in a noisy mail facility in Erie, Pa., according to the recording.

When an agent from the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General asked Hopkins if he stood by his sworn statement that a supervisor “was backdating ballots” mailed after Election Day, Hopkins answered: “At this point? No.”

He also agreed to sign a revised statement that undercut his earlier affidavit.

Those previous allegations had prompted Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to call for the Justice Department to investigate. The Trump campaign also cited them in a lawsuit seeking to delay the certification of election results in Pennsylvania, part of a broad effort to challenge the presidential election results.

Hopkins did not respond to messages seeking comment on Wednesday.

Hopkins surreptitiously recorded the interview on Monday, then revealed to the agents that he had done so at the end of the session, according to the recording. Project Veritas, an organization that initially aired Hopkins’s claims last week, released the recording on Wednesday, claiming that it showed he was coerced and pressured into signing a “watered down statement drafted by them using their words.”

Hopkins also repeatedly expressed regret for signing the initial affidavit because it overstated what he knew and witnessed, according to the recording.

He told agents the affidavit was written by Project Veritas.

He said he was not fully aware of its contents because he was in “so much shock I wasn’t paying that much attention to what they were telling me.”

A spokesman for the group said in a statement emailed to The Post that the “affidavit was drafted with Mr. Hopkins’ input and requested revisions.”

It is not clear if Project Veritas, an organization that uses deceptive tactics to expose what it says is liberal bias and corruption in the mainstream media and government, altered or edited the recording before releasing it Wednesday afternoon. The group, which had described the interview as a three-hour interrogation, said in the statement that a portion of the interview was not recorded.

In the interview with federal agents, though, Hopkins said he overheard only a few portions of a conversation between the postmaster and another worker. The two were standing at a distance that made it difficult to hear the full conversation, but Hopkins said he could make out three phrases: “ballots on the 4th,” “all for the 3rd,” and “one postmarked on the 4th.”

“My mind probably added the rest,” he told the investigators, before acknowledging that he never heard anyone use the word “backdate.”

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3 thoughts on “Audio recording shows Pennsylvania postal worker recanting ballot-tampering claim

  1. He was grilled for over 4 hours without representation.

    The fix was in. Castigating and ruining the lives of whistle blowers.

    How truly, Progressive. Just like in the old USSR.

  2. How many times are you going to change your lie? Your pal, Das Fat Degenerate has lied more than you will ever be able to. A journalism professor at York University did research that our “very stable genius leader” has lied over 17,000 times. try and beat that!. You don’t care if you lose your job, why else would you vote for some one that wanted to destroy the Postal Service, your employment, health insurance, and retirement? Don’t worry, Veritas will hire you.

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