U.S. News
Project Veritas Releases Audio of Federal Agent Interrogating USPS Ballot Backdating Whistleblower
“I am not scaring you. But I am scaring you.”
An update to this story can be read here.
James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has released an audio recording of a federal agent interrogating the Erie, Pennsylvania United States Postal Service worker who blew the whistle on a potential ballot backdating scheme going on at the mail service.
“They were grilling the hell out of me,” said Richard Hopkins, who approached Project Veritas last week with an account of overhearing his USPS office superior talking about backdating a late ballot to November 3, election day.
In the audio released by Veritas you can hear federal agent Russell Strasser seemingly trying to convince Hopkins to water down the story he jumpstarted.
“… let me make good on that promise right away … This storm is getting crazy, right?” Strasser says. “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,” the agent adds.
Strasser goes on to bring up the fact that senators, the DOJ and, Trump lawyers are all currently looking at the whistleblowers testimony (likely pointing to its high profile nature) before uttering a few rather intimidating lines of words.
“I am not – 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 says.
“We like to control our mind and when we do that, we can convince ourselves of a memory,” the agents says, only to go on:
“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 clearer and we’re going to do a different exercise too, to make you mind a little bit clearer. So, but this is on all on purpose. I am not scaring you. But I am scaring you.“
Hopkins tells O’Keefe that he believes the agents that he spoke with were trying to make him distrust Project Veritas and does not believe they had any interest in investigating the potential voter fraud carried out by the USPS.
Just prior to the release of the interrogation audio, Project Veritas tweeted out a video of Hopkins debunking a Monday story out of the Washington Post which cited anonymous sources claiming that the USPS worker had recanted his statements about ballot tampering at the Erie, PA postal office.
“I’m here to say I did not recant my statements,” Hopkins says. “That did not happen.”
Currently a sworn affidavit from Hopkins is in the possession of Senator Lindsey Graham, who had reportedly received the document from the Trump campaign.
“I will be calling on the Department of Justice to investigate these claims,” Graham stated over the weekend. “I’ll also be in contact with the Postmaster General, requesting he to look into these allegations, ones that may follow, and help secure the testimony of Mr. Hopkins. Mr. Hopkins is entitled to all whistleblower protections, and I will ensure they extend to other postal workers who may come forward with claims of irregulates, misconduct, fraud, etc.”
Hopkins has been placed on unpaid leave from the postal service since talking to Project Veritas.
So, as the mainstream media runs with the WaPo story claiming the whistleblower recanted his testimony of overhearing potential voter fraud being committed at the USPS (even though he didn’t) its probably safe to assume steam is currently fuming from agent Strasser’s ears over the fact Hopkins didn’t play ball with the story.
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Joseph Jankowski is an Editor-at-Large for Planet Free Will. His works have been published by major news publications such as ZeroHedge.com and Infowars.com.