onservative media activist James O'Keefe DALLAS, TX - NOVEMBER 29: Conservative media activist James O'Keefe speaks at an event hosted by the Southern Methodist University chapter of Young Americans for Freedom, a campus organization started by William F. Buckley in 1960, at the Hughes-Trigg Student Center on November 29, 2017 on the SMU campus in Dallas, Texas. O'Keefe is head of Project Veritas, a right-wing media activist group that found itself in the news this week after a woman was seen entering the offices of the organization after trying to convince Washington Post reporters that she had been sexually assaulted by U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama when she was 15 years old and then driven by Moore to Mississippi for an abortion. (Photo by Stewart F. House/Getty Images)
James O’Keefe and his former organization Project Veritas settled a lawsuit with a Pennsylvania postman over claims of election fraud.
O’Keefe helped provide USPS postman Richard Hopkins with a platform through Project Veritas to report his claim that he overheard two USPS workers discussing plans to commit election fraud.
Project Veritas is O’Keefe’s former news organization that claims its purpose is to “help expose corruption at any cost” and has a following of more than one million on social media platform X. During the 2020 presidential election, O’Keefe welcomed Hopkins’ claims and featured them on Project Veritas to give rise to accusations that the election was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump.
Hopkins said that he overheard Erie, Pennsylvania, USPS worker Robert Weisenbach tell a second supervisor that he had been backdating mail-in voting ballots that were collected past the voting date.
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Trump responded to Hopkins’ claims with a tweet. “A brave patriot. More & more people are stepping forward to expose this Rigged Election!” he posted.
Hopkins later retracted his statements. A day later, Project Veritas posted a video of Hopkins stating that he did not retract his statements and followed this up the next day with a two-hour-long audio interview between Hopkins and postal service investigators looking into his claims.
In a tweet, O’Keefe set the record straight with a statement declaring that his previous reports of election fraud based on Hopkins’ claims were baseless since Hopkins learned that his assumptions were false.
“Neither Mr. Weisenbach nor any other USPS employee in Erie, Pennsylvania engaged in election fraud or any other wrongdoing related to mail-in ballots. With this update, I am aware of no evidence or other allegation that election fraud occurred in the Erie Post Office during the 2020 Presidential election,” he tweeted. He posted this with an update from Hopkins himself, in which he states that he was wrong and apologizes to those he hurt with his claims.
“I apologize to Mr. Weisenbach, his family, the employees of the Erie Post Office, and anyone that has been negatively impacted by my report. I implore everyone reading this statement to leave the Weisenbach family alone and allow them to return to their normal, peaceful lives,” Hopkins wrote.
O’Keefe stepped down as head of Project Veritas in February 2023.
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