A few days after the election, in November 2020, a brave whistleblower by the name of Richard Hopkins reached out to Project Veritas. He alleged that he overheard his supervisors discussing the backdating of ballots in his Erie, Pennsylvania post office in order for those ballots to count in the election. This story quickly went viral and was brought to the attention of high-profile elected officials in Washington, D.C.
“All these ballots that were coming in--today, tomorrow, yesterday—are all supposed to be postmarked the third,” said the postal service employee, who works out of the USPS General Mail Facility here.
The Project Veritas Insider said the supervisors are collecting the ballots and making sure they are postmarked.
“They're getting these ballots in and they're getting, they're taking them from us,” he said.
“We have to separate out the ballots and give them directly to the supervisors,” he said. “They're postmarking and they're at the office and taking them directly to the ballot box.”
“A lot of the stuff that's going on behind the scenes, like what I'm talking about them doing at the PO [post office],” he said. “I don't think--I wasn't supposed to hear that--I was one of the last carriers in the building. I don't even think he realized I was still there; you know what I'm saying? Backdating.”
He said he heard about the backdating, as he was preparing his mail for delivery, and he saw the Postmaster Rob Weisenbach with Darrell Locke, one of the supervisors.
“This morning, I was casing my route and I saw the postmaster pull one of our supervisors to the side,” he said. “He was pulling the supervisor, it was - and it was really close to where my case was—so, I was able to hear, listen in and I heard him say to the supervisor that they messed up yesterday.”
The Insider said he was curious about what was messed up.
“He told the supervisor they had postmarked one of the ballots for the fourth, instead of the third, because they were supposed to put them for third,” he said.
Post Office Inspector General Agent Russell Strasser bullied, coerced Hopkins
“OK, this storm is getting crazy, right? It's out of a lot of people's control, and so the reason they called me in is to try to harness that storm, try to reel it back in before it gets really crazy,” said Strasser. “We have senators involved. We have the Department of Justice involved.”
Strasser presented himself as a friend and fellow veteran looking to protect him, Hopkins said.
“I’m not while I am, actually, I am trying to twist you a little bit because in that believe it or not, your mind will kick in,” Strasser said to Hopkins. “We like to control our mind and when we do that, we can convince ourselves of a memory, but when you're under a little bit of stress, which is what I'm doing to you purposely, your mind can be a little bit clear.”
Hopkins said he told Strasser that Project Veritas retained lawyers for him, but Strasser told him that did not count. There was also no union representative present.
The postal service inspector general agent told Hopkins that part of his job of protecting him was to “shave” his memory of what he heard.