Richard Hopkins, the US Postal Service employee who falsely claimed that he directly heard the Erie postmaster plot with other postal workers to backdate late mail-in ballots, told US Postal Inspectors that Project Veritas staff wrote the sworn affidavit he signed and later recanted, the Washington Post reports.

Saying that he only heard snippets of conversations and that he never actually heard anyone make the plan he claimed, Hopkins was asked by postal inspectors if he wanted to stand by his accusations.  “At this point? No,” Hopkins replied.

Hopkins said he didn’t write the statement he signed; Project Veritas did.  Hopkins claimed he didn’t even know what the majority of the statement said. 

Project Veritas, for its part, emailed a statement to the Post that the “affidavit was drafted with Mr. Hopkins’ input and requested revisions.”

Hopkins has been suspended by the USPS without pay, pending further investigation.  He set up a GoFundMe page which raised more than $135,000 before it was removed by the website because it failed to meet the criteria for the crowdfunding site.

James O’Keefe of Project Veritas interviewed Hopkins after news broke that he recanted his statement.  In that interview, Hopkins stated he didn’t recant his statements, in effect recanting his recantation.

Curiously, Project Veritas posted the interview USPS inspectors had with Hopkins on YouTube, which plainly shows Hopkins pulled back his sworn statement.  It is unclear how much of the interview Project Veritas edited, because both Hopkins and the USPS state the interview was more than three hours long; Project Veritas only posted two hours, though it claimed to have posted the “FULL COERCIVE INTERROGATION.”

Project Veritas also claims in the YouTube title of the interview that the interview was “coercive.”  However, USPS inspectors repeated remind Hopkins that the interview is voluntary and that he’s free to leave when he wants, and he declined the opportunity to have a lawyer present even though he claimed Project Veritas had a lawyer ready to help him.  Hopkins also agreed to sign a new statement undermining his earlier claims.