{"id":28940,"date":"2020-07-10T09:11:45","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T14:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=28940"},"modified":"2020-07-10T09:11:45","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T14:11:45","slug":"west-virginia-mail-carrier-admits-to-attempted-election-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2020\/07\/10\/west-virginia-mail-carrier-admits-to-attempted-election-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"West Virginia mail carrier admits to attempted election fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ELKINS, WEST VIRGINIA \u2013 DOJ 7\/9\/20 &#8211; Thomas Cooper, a mail carrier in Pendleton County, has admitted to attempted election fraud, U.S. Attorney Bill Powell announced.<\/p>\n<p>Cooper, age 47, of Dry Fork, West Virginia, pled guilty to one count of \u201cAttempt to Defraud the Residents of West Virginia of a Fair Election\u201d and one count of \u201cInjury to the Mail.\u201d Cooper held a U.S. Postal Service contract to deliver mail in Pendleton County. In April 2020, the Clerk of Pendleton County received \u201c2020 Primary Election COVID-19 Mail-In Absentee Request&#8221; forms from eight voters on which the voter&#8217;s party-ballot request appeared to have been altered.<\/p>\n<p>The clerk reported the finding to the West Virginia Secretary of State\u2019s office, which began an investigation. The investigation found five ballot requests that had been altered from \u201cDemocrat\u201d to \u201cRepublican.\u201d On three other requests, the party wasn\u2019t changed, but the request had been altered.<\/p>\n<p>Cooper was responsible for the mail delivery of the three towns from which the tampered requests were mailed: Onego, Riverton, and Franklin, West Virginia. Cooper admitted today to altering some of the requests.<\/p>\n<p>Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen D. Warner is prosecuting the case on behalf of the government. The West Virginia Secretary of State\u2019s Office, the West Virginia Attorney General\u2019s Office, and the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General investigated.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael John Aloi presided.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-27588\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/justice1aa.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"478\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/justice1aa.jpg 478w, https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/justice1aa-300x157.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 478px) 100vw, 478px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ELKINS, WEST VIRGINIA \u2013 DOJ 7\/9\/20 &#8211; Thomas Cooper, a mail carrier in Pendleton County, has admitted to attempted election fraud, U.S. Attorney Bill Powell announced. Cooper, age 47, of Dry Fork, West Virginia, pled guilty to one count of \u201cAttempt to Defraud the Residents of West Virginia of a Fair Election\u201d and one count [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27588,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","category-theftandfraud","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28940"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28940\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28941,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28940\/revisions\/28941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}