The Hill staff writer Morgan Gstalter misquoted source material to swing the angle of a story about a postal worker who was caught failing to delivery pieces of mail, with Gstalter falsely claiming that the postal worker did it for political purposes.

“During his first court appearance in October, assistant U.S. Attorney Sara F. Merin said there was evidence at the time indicating that Beauchene’s actions were politically motivated, local outlet NJ.com reported. Beauchene’s attorney reportedly agreed but declined to comment further,” Gstalter wrote in his story about a 26-year-old mail carrier who didn’t deliver approximately 2,000 pieces of mail, including 99 mail-in ballots. The story posted at 2:41 p.m. ET, according to The Hill’s timestamp.

Unfortunately, the original story from NJ.com Gstalter cites states exactly the opposite:  “In his first appearance in federal court after being charged in October, assistant U.S. Attorney Sara F. Merin said Beauchene gave a statement admitting he discarded the mail. However, the prosecutor said there was no evidence at the time indicating that Beauchene’s actions were politically motivated. “Beauchene’s attorney concurred that it was not politically motivated, but declined to comment further.”

Gstalter continues on, saying that the undelivered ballots supports Donald Trump’s claims that mail in ballots were corrupt and faulty, saying, “However, experts have insisted that Trump’s claims are baseless and there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud.”

The misrepresentation of the motive could be put off to a typo if it was not made twice in the same story: once attributing the statement that it was politically motivated to the prosecutor and then saying the postal worker’s attorney agreed but declined to comment.

Should The Hill correct the text, it will likely simply change the story without acknowledging the error and apologizing for the misinformation. According to The Hill contributor Joe Concha, as he said on Fox News, such “under the radar” corrections are typically made by disreputable outlets caught in lies.

An email to The Hill for comment has gone unanswered.

UPDATE (7:55 p.m. ET):  It seems The Hill read the numerous, numerous comments about them lying getting the story wrong about four hours after it was initially pointed out.  There was no time noted for the change, nor was there the boilerplate, “The Hill apologizes for the error.”

Thanks to Now_tense for the tip.