Did dozens of Pennsylvania election workers say that then-Gov. Tom Wolf and then-Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar ordered them to destroy Trump ballots in the 2020 presidential election? No, that's not true: This false news story originated from a Facebook page that lists its category as "comedian" but has spread to other social media platforms without the comedy disclaimer. Lead Stories found no matching reports from established news outlets.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @larry_mcwethy account on X on Oct. 27, 2026. It read:
This is proof that Biden didn't win the presidency.
PENNSYLVANIA
- October 26, 2026
In a stunning development that could upend everything Americans thought they knew about the 2020 presidential election, dozens of Pennsylvania election workers have come forward claiming they were personally ordered by then-Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to trash more than one hundred thousand legitimate ballots cast for President Donald Trump. According to these whistleblowers, the discarded votes were systematically replaced with over one hundred thousand fraudulent ballots for Joe Biden, many cast in the names of dead voters and illegal aliens and delivered to precincts in the dead of night. The scheme was most aggressive in Philadelphia, where the workers say the fraud was so extensive it alone flipped the outcome of the entire commonwealth.The former election officials describe a coordinated operation in which they were instructed to ignore chain of custody rules, suppress Trump votes that arrived legally, and process stacks of suspect Biden ballots that appeared after polls closed. They assert the orders came directly from the highest levels of the Wolf administration and the Department of State, leaving them no choice but to comply or face professional and personal retaliation. Multiple workers independently recounted the same instructions: remove Trump ballots from the count and insert pre-filled or improperly cast Biden ballots, producing a result they now call "outcome determinative." They insist President Trump actually won Pennsylvania and that the commonwealth was stolen from him through deliberate manipulation of the tally.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of publication:
(Image source: post by @larry_mcwethy on X.)
Lead Stories traced the claim to an earlier post on Facebook.
Original post
This claim originated in a post (archived here) on the Jonathan Gregory account on Facebook on Oct. 26, 2026. Lead Stories found the original via Google Advanced Search (archived here) using the following line from the claim as a search string: "In a stunning development that could upend everything Americans thought they knew about the 2020 presidential election, dozens of Pennsylvania election workers have come forward claiming they were personally ordered by then-Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar to trash more than one hundred thousand legitimate ballots cast for President Donald Trump."
The Facebook post reads the same as the claim on X but instead opens with a headline and a byline with the name Jonathan Gregory:
BREAKING: Dozens of Pennsylvania Election Workers Allege Wolf & Boockvar Ordered Them to Destroy 100,000+ Trump Ballots and Count Fraudulent Biden Votes From Dead People and Illegals--Especially in Philadelphia!
By Jonathan Gregory
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of publication:
(Image source: post by Jonathan Gregory on Facebook.)
Lead Stories has previously debunked several fabricated news stories that originated from the Jonathan Gregory page (archived here).
(Image source: Jonathan Gregory page on Facebook.)
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports about the claim from established news outlets using the search terms: "Pennsylvania," "election workers," "Wolf," "Boockvar," "destroy," and "Trump ballots."
