The conservative group Project Veritas and its former leader are taking the unusual step of publicly acknowledging that claims of ballot mishandling at a Pennsylvania post office in 2020 were untrue.

The statements from Project Veritas and founder James O’Keefe came as a lawsuit filed against them by a Pennsylvania postmaster was settled Monday.

The group produced videos in the wake of the 2020 presidential election based on claims from a postal worker in Erie, Pennsylvania, who said he had overheard a conversation between the postmaster and a supervisor about illegally backdating mail-in presidential ballots.

  • originalucifer
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    6710 months ago

    The statements from Project Veritas and founder James O’Keefe came as a lawsuit filed against them by a Pennsylvania postmaster was settled Monday.

    so as part of the settlement, it sounds like they were forced to publicly admit it.

    good. i hope it ruins their lives. you shout fire in a theater not on fire, you deserve what you get.

    • chaogomu
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      4610 months ago

      These jackasses have been caught lying before, and yet they’re still around peddling their obvious lies.

        • @the_third@feddit.de
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          1010 months ago

          The chairman and CEO was also accused of spending “an excessive amount of donor funds” on personal luxuries.

          Ah yes. Grifters gonna grift.

          • @MagosInformaticus@sopuli.xyz
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            310 months ago

            It’s genuinely funny to me that one of O’Keefe’s major sins in the eyes of his conservative donors was being such a theater kid he staged a musical hagiography of himself.

      • Aniki 🌱🌿
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        10 months ago

        Guarantee you won’t find this anywhere on Fox news. This will not penetrate the right wing media sphere, and for good reason.

        • @BossDj@lemm.ee
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          310 months ago

          Nah. The line will be “the liberal courts forced them to say it. They don’t actually mean it.” And they’ll still get full support

    • Ook the Librarian
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      210 months ago

      This is shocking though. It’s usually subtext that they are lying. I think something was discovered in the constant litigation they need to get ahead of.

  • @MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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    1610 months ago

    Wait, how would the post office be able to back-date them? Isn’t the date written by the voter, and the post handled largely digitally? As in, there’d be no way in hell for the claim to ever be true unless there is additional manual dating that the post office does specifically for mail in ballots? Even then, any automatic scanning is going to log something I’m sure at least for internal auditing purposes backdating wouldn’t match…

    Why is it news they admitted to lying about an obvious farce!?

    Is this a situation where we’re confused because the face who always lies created a paradox by admitting to it?

    • @jordanlund@lemmy.worldM
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      2210 months ago

      So here’s what was going on… Pennsylvania passed a law requiring that mail in ballots have a hand-written date on the envelope in order to be valid.

      This is completely pointless, because a) you could write any date you wanted on an envelope, and b) the date that MATTERS is the postmark value.

      If a ballot is recieved in time, it doesn’t matter what the hand-written date says or doesn’t say.

      https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-voting-mail-ballot-date-lawsuit-86928b6ed5495e44fdb004dbc1e4302e

      Post office employee knew that and was like “yeah, post date it, it doesn’t matter.”

      Someone overheard that and though he was talking about post dating ballots that had arrived too late to be counted.

      That wasn’t TRUE, but then Project Veritas doesn’t operate based on what’s true. :)

  • Talaraine
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    910 months ago

    It’s almost like hearing a guy say he heard something from another guy is hearsay! Who knew??

  • nkat2112
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    810 months ago

    Weisenbach, who voted for Trump, has previously said the false ballot backdating accusations destroyed his reputation and forced him to flee his home after his address was circulated online and he was confronted by a man yelling at him as he pulled into his driveway, according to court documents.

    Good, I’m glad.

    Also, the yelling dude rocks - whoever and wherever he may be. You rock, sir.

    • @lewdian69@lemmy.world
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      610 months ago

      Weisenbach was the one accused even though he did nothing wrong and voted for the guy they wanted to win. Why are you glad?

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    510 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    ERIE, Pa. (AP) — The conservative group Project Veritas and its former leader are taking the unusual step of publicly acknowledging that claims of ballot mishandling at a Pennsylvania post office in 2020 were untrue.

    The statements from Project Veritas and founder James O’Keefe came as a lawsuit filed against them by a Pennsylvania postmaster was settled Monday.

    The claims about the Erie postmaster sparked calls for an investigation from Republicans and were cited in court by the Trump campaign to support voter fraud allegations.

    The former president’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been dismissed by a succession of judges and refuted by state election officials and his former attorney general, William Barr.

    Weisenbach, who voted for Trump, has previously said the false ballot backdating accusations destroyed his reputation and forced him to flee his home after his address was circulated online and he was confronted by a man yelling at him as he pulled into his driveway, according to court documents.

    Postal Service also investigated Hopkins’s claims, but found no evidence of backdated ballots, according to a report released in February 2021.


    The original article contains 505 words, the summary contains 184 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!