Postal Service: No evidence to support Pennsylvania worker’s fraud claims

The U.S. Postal Service’s internal watchdog says there’s no evidence to support a Pennsylvania postal worker’s claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

The conclusion was part of a report from the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) released on its website in late February regarding a claim from staffer Richard Hopkins that supervisors told workers to tamper with ballots that were mailed-in.

The Washington Post noted that the claim was also published to the blog 21st Century Postal Worker on Monday.

Hopkins allegedly “acknowledged that he had no evidence” of his claims when interviewed by the OIG’s investigators.

The claim garnered the attention of Republicans after the right-wing media organization Project Veritas posted a video of Hopkins accusing a postmaster of telling workers to backdate ballots that were mailed after Nov. 3 despite them being collected the day after or later.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), then-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the Department of Justice to investigate the claims after he said he received a sworn affidavit signed by Hawkins. Then-Attorney General William Barr also authorized the Justice Department to investigate allegations of voter fraud, though the agency later said it had found no evidence of substantial wrongdoing. 

The House Oversight and Reform Committee later announced that Hopkins had recanted his claim after being interviewed by the Postal Service’s OIG but didn’t explain why he signed a false affidavit.

According to the inspector general’s report, which was redacted, Hopkins “revised his initial 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.”

Eerie, Pa., Postmaster Rob Weisenbach had refuted the allegations, saying on Facebook that the post office “did not back date any ballots.”

Former President Trump and his GOP allies refused to concede the result of the presidential election, instead spending weeks seeking to challenge the outcome in court and baselessly alleging that widespread voter fraud cost Trump a second term in office.