on ballots that had been mailed in this the presidential election. he said basically there were a bunch of ballots at that post office that had been sent in too late. they had been mailed in after election day was over, but his supervisor, he said, he heard talking about plans to doctor those ballots, to change the date, change i guess the postmarks on all of those ballots to make it look like they were sent in time, even though they weren't. da da da! very dramatic claim that would be a very illegal thing to do, right? so what did this letter carrier do with this information after he says he overheard this very damning, very concerning conversation that involved his supervisor? well, he went the a right wing activist group, and they drew up an affidavit, a statement that he then signed swearing that what i just described is what he witnessed. signed his name to the bottom of it, and then this right wing activist group publicly released this sworn affidavit as evidence of massive voter fraud. this is like the sworn affidavit thing, this is one of the weird things you kept hearing about from trump supporters and the trump campaign, people trying to overturn the election results once biden won. they kept saying they had sworn affidavits. and ooh, these sworn affidavits, these were the proof they were going to expose everything, stop the steal, unleash the kraken, free britney, all of it, whatever. >> you're in the process of getting these affidavits. for example, you brought a pile of them with you tonight? >> that's right, i did, sean. we keep hearing the drumbeat of where is the evidence. right here, sean. 234 pages of sworn affidavits. these are real people, real allegations. >> there are so many of them. you flip your papers, they make a flipping sound. a sworn affidavit sounds like a very impressive legal thing. in this instance, what they're talking about is just something someone has written down, any scrap of paper will do, and then they've signed it at the bottom saying this is me and i say this thing happened. that's all it is. there is nothing magic about calling something an affidavit. it doesn't inherently have any legal standing or bear any standard of proof whatsoever in itself. but, you know, when you put them in a stack, i don't know, maybe they get more power. nevertheless, fox news and republicans in congress got very excited about this affidavit from this guy from the erie, pennsylvania post office. senator lindsey graham, chairman of the judiciary committee in the senate at the time, he released a formal statement in response to the affidavit declaring his grave concerns about the allegations it contained on the basis of that affidavit, he wrote to the u.s. justice department demanding that the justice department open a federal criminal investigation immediately since obviously this affidavit proved that the entire election in pennsylvania was fraudulent and the whole state was stolen for biden. now reality check. had you surveyed the landscape here a little bit at the moment, there was immediately at least some sign that there might not be that much water in the pool they were all about to high-dive into here. not for nothing, but the perp in question, the post office supervisor who was supposedly overheard describing this nefarious plot to change the dates on all these ballots to make the late ballots look like they were on time, that supervisor immediately publicly responded to the allegation. he said it was completely false. he had never had a conversation anything like that let alone done anything like that. he said he welcomed any legitimate investigation of these claims because they were 100% false, and he said, by the way, check the source here. the letter carrier who has made this allegation is an employee at our post office who has recently been disciplined multiple times for misconduct at work. he is on really shaky ground as an employee. he has a terrible record and he has motivation to lie about his bosses who he is furious with because he has recently gotten in a lot of trouble. that said, of course the post office supervisor would say things like that, wouldn't he? nefarious plotter. there is a sworn affidavit that says otherwise. so obviously -- so this guy writes an affidavit. his supervisor is like na, dude. investigate me, for sure. it's okay. what are you talking about? nevertheless, senator lindsey graham, chairman of the judiciary committee in the united states senate finds this to be so compelling that he writes to the justice department demanding a criminal investigation into these claims by the u.s. department of justice. the attorney general at the time william barr responded immediately by in fact changing justice department policy, telling federal prosecutors all over the country that actually, they need the get in there and start opening federal investigations into all of this terrible voter fraud everywhere, even before the votes are certified, they need to get in there and open investigations now. that was a total reversal of previous justice department policy about how the department is supposed to behave around elections, but barr ordered that wholesale change anyway. the head of the department at the elections actually stepped down from his position in protest. that happened november 9th. november 10th, then president trump started tweeting about the letter carrier in erie, pennsylvania, the pennsylvania affidavit guy, called him a brave patriot for telling this brave story about the conversation he says he overheard where his supervisor said he was going to back-date all the late ballots, this brave patriot coming forward to tell the story being bolstered here by the president of the united states. problem that same day, slight problem was that brave patriot, the letter carrier from the erie, pennsylvania post office, despite the fact that he had sworn that affidavit on november 10th, he recanted his story. quote, in an interview with federal agent, hopkins, quote, revised his initial claims, eventually stating that he had not heard a conversation about ballots at all. rather, he saw the postmaster and supervisor having a discussion and he assumed it was about fraudulent ballot back-dating. see, i saw them talking. i didn't know about what. i couldn't actually hear the content of their discussion at all, but they were talking. and so i assumed, you know, they were like plotting murders and stuff. signed affidavit. ta-da! quote, hopkins acknowledged that he had no evidence of any backdated presidential ballots, and that he could not recall any specific words said by the postmaster or the supervisor in the conversation that he witnessed. we could hear none of their words, none of them. so, he figured, what the words must have been were we're going to steal the election for biden by changing all of these ballots. that's what i made up, signed affidavit. also, no, i never saw any indication that any ballots were actually changed at all, but still, have you seen my signed affidavit? it is signed. would you like to put it in a stack? the letter carrier from the erie, pennsylvania post office later said that his signed affidavit is not super-g he actually wrote. the right wing activist group he says wrote it, and he just signed whatever it was they wrote down. but he says yeah, he didn't actually hear his supervisor talking about anything like that. and he doesn't have any evidence that anything like that happened. but that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we get to the point we are in right now in 2021 where mail-in ballots are a major problem that must be stopped. that guy's affidavit is the back story of how we got the trump campaign and republican claim that mail-in ballots were proven in this election to be very prone to fraud and therefore they must be stopped. it was a signed affidavit. the inspector general of the u.s. postal service actually investigated this claim, even after the guy recanted his freaking affidavit. here is "the washington post" today describing their findings. quote, agents of the inspector general visited the erie county courthouse to interview elections officials and review ballots processed at the local post office. both the interview of the erie county election supervisor and the physical examination of the ballots produced, and the physical examination of the ballots produced no evidence of any backdated presidential election ballots at the erie, pennsylvania post office. so dude having trouble at work makes allegations against his boss who he really doesn't like. right-wing group goes big promoting his claims as the best evidence they have in the whole country that the election was definitely stolen in pennsylvania and probably everywhere else just like that. the guy then basically immediately admits he made up those allegations, but the then republican-controlled senate is already running with it. the justice department under william barr changes its long-standing policies about election-related investigations in response to this troubling affidavit, prompting the recognition of top justice department officials in protest. the public starts publicly tweeting about it. even with the allegation being withdrawn, it becomes the core of the entire republican party embracing this weird idea that voting by mail has been proven to be a terrible fraudulent thing. and eventually the allegation is not only rescinded by the guy who supposedly made it, it's categorically and conclusively proven false by federal investigators who actually took the time to physically track down the ballots in question and found that they were fine, nothing was wrong. still, though, we better crack down on mail-in ballots just to be sure, right? it was a signed affidavit. but of course the post election claims from president trump and his supporters were not just about some mythical pennsylvania backdaing supervisor. they were also about venezuela and dead hugo chavez and cuba and china and all sorts of other foreign countries that seemed leftist if you squint at them. all these countries somehow inserted themselves into the voting machines and took all the trump votes and turned them into biden votes. this was the nonsense you heard from the trump and the republican side after the election about smartmatic and dominion voting machines. you heard so much about this from the president himself, from rudy giuliani, from other lawyers acting on behalf of the president. republicans in some states are still clinging to this one as they use these claims as part of their pretext for the more than 250 bills they are pushing in more than 40 states to try to roll back voting rights. now this week i know there has been a lot going on, so this didn't get that much attention. but this week the department of justice and the homeland security department put out a joint report on, here's the title, foreign interference targeting election infrastructure or political organization campaign or candidate infrastructure related to the 2020 u.s. federal elections. you put a title that that's awkward on something when you have to produce a report like this in response to a law that directs that you do it. and we actually got two reports required by law at basically the same time this week. we got that report from the justice department and homeland security. much more high profile release of a report at basically the same time from the director of national intelligence. and the national intelligence report was about what foreign adversaries did to target this election. and these reports came out at the same time for a reason, because the report from the director of national intelligence explicitly said when it laid out its scope at the beginning of the report that they were only -- the intelligence community in the united states only assessed the behavior of foreign adversaries. they only looked at what foreign adversaries did and tried to do to us during our election, because the intelligence community is focused on other countries and not on us, they explicitly and purposely didn't look at what effect the actions of those foreign countries might have had inside the united states on our election. they just looked at what the foreign entities did. because of that limitation in the intelligence report, there was also this companion report released, and this wasn't from the intelligence community. it was from homeland and the justice department. and they were charged at looking at the domestic impact, what impact there might have been on our election in our country from foreign efforts to target us and to target our election. so those two reports this week came out as companions. one looking at what foreign adversaries did. one looking at what the effect was of foreign interference efforts in the election. and that latter report got much louisiana less attention, largely because what they found out was the effect was negligible. whatever foreign adversaries did to target our election, it didn't do much. and in some cases claims about what foreign adversaries did to target our elections, those claims were totally made up. look at what they found. this is so blunt. government reports are never written like this. this is so blunt, it lands like a punch. quote, we are aware of multiple public claims that one or more foreign governments including venezuela, cuba, or china owned, directed or controlled election infrastructure used in the 2020 federal elections, implemented a scheme to manipulate election infrastructure, or tallied, changed or otherwise manipulated vote counts. follow the election, the justice department, including the fbi and the department of homeland security investigated these public claims and determined they are not credible. quote, we have no evidence, not through intelligence collecting on the foreign actors themselves, not through physical security and cyber security monitoring of voting systems across the country, not through post election audits, not through any other means that a foreign government or other actors compromised election infrastructure to manipulate election results. no evidence, none. all of your fantasies and all of these claims and trump lawsuits about dead fidel castro and dead hugo chavez, and maybe it's the chinese, maybe it's them somehow rigging the election through the voting machine, right? attorneys acting on behalf of president trump really did try to litigate this in real u.s. courts, and they were laughed out of every court they tried it. but here is the official u.s. government of claims, and the answer is no, you are insane. none of that happened, and we looked at it from every possible angle. as i said, that didn't get a lot of attention this week. that report came out as a sort of companion report at roughly the same time that the director of national intelligence put out its report on that office's report on what foreign adversaries did try to influence the election and how they did it. and this one got a lot more attention because this was a real attack on our country that was pitched at an alarming target, and that hits a lot of buttons in our politics. key judgment. we assess that russian president putin authorized and a range of russian government organizations conducted influence operations aimed at denigrating president biden's candidacy and the democratic party, supporting former president trump and undermining public confidence in the electoral process. russia came back and did it again in 2020 after they did it in 2016. also this, which ends up being almost just as important. quote, we assess that china did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the u.s. presidential election. so this is what the director of national intelligence published this week, a declassified report for public eyes about what they learned and concluded with high confidence about the 2020 election, which is that russia did it again, like they did in 2016. but china, no, they didn't do it. they thought about it. they didn't do it. this is the conclusion of the u.s. intelligence community. and not the u.s. intelligence community under president biden. interestingly, this report was actually concluded while trump was still president before the inauguration. this was concluded the first week in january. all the biden folks did was declassify it. so that means the intelligence community, even under trump knew this, knew that russia interfered on his behalf again in this election, and china didn't do anything that is what they knew. which makes it important that that is the exact opposite of what they told us, the public. >> is it russia again? >> well, look, we know it's china. >> russia, china, and iran, which is the most assertive, the most aggressive in this area? >> i believe it's china. >> which one? >> china. >> china more than russia right now? >> yes. >> why do you say that? >> because i've seen the intelligence. that's what i have concluded. >> attorney general barr said earlier this week that he feels china is being more aggressive in meddling in the election than russia is. do you agree with that assessment? >> i agree with him 100%. the chinese have taken the most active role. but the russians and the iranians and other countries are involved as well. when it comes to elections and what the intelligence committee has made very clear, first you have china, which has the most massive program to influence the united states politically. >> some foreign governments have preferences about our elections and have taken our planned malign activities in support of their preferences, including efforts by china. >> china is using a massive and sophisticated influence campaign that dwarfs anything that any other country is doing. >> that saul horse hockey. none of that is true. none of that was true when they said it, and they knew it. i mean, the intelligence community under trump concludes putin authorized and a range of russian organizations conducted, and we assess that china did not deploy interference efforts. but nevertheless, there's the attorney general under trump, the deputy attorney general under trump, trump's national security adviser robert o'brien, trump's director of national intelligence, john ratcliffe, all just shoveling that bull. i'm not worried about russia. russia is not doing anything. china is really. we now know that when they said they were looking at the intelligence, what the intelligence said was exactly the opposite of what they told us the public during the election. what the intelligence said was that russia was attacking the 2020 election again to help trump again, and china wasn't. that's what the intelligence said, but all of those trump officials told the american public exactly the opposite. which is not only lying to the american public, it also has a nice added benefit of covering up for what russia was at that moment doing, targeting us. and what do we do with that? i mean this is more than the usual mess. this stuff can't just drift off into the ether, right like oh, yeah, that was a bad time. hope that doesn't happen again. in some ways it's clear that it's not going to drift off into the ether. russia, federal express, is very, very upset that they have been identified in the united states as having attacked our election again. it was much nicer when the other guy used to cover up for them. now president biden is not covering up for them. after president biden's interview with abc news this week in which he criticized russia directly and said russia and putin will play for interfering with our election again in 2020, russia got very upset with that. they recalled their ambassador to the u.s. this week, they said for consultations in moscow. the biden administration this past week also laid down new sanctions against russia aimed