USPS has paid Trump’s postmaster general $286 million since 2013: report

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a long-time ally of President Donald Trump, has drawn widespread criticism for slowing down mail delivery in the United States and undermining the U.S. Postal Service — and far-right Trump supporters have made no secret of their desire to see mail delivery totally privatized. DeJoy’s background has been not in government, but in the private sector — including the company XPO Logistics, where he was an executive. And journalists Luke Broadwater and Catie Edmondson, in the New York Times, explain how deeply involved with that company DeJoy continues to be.

According to Broadwater and Edmondson, the U.S. Postal Service has “paid about $286 million over the past seven years to XPO Logistics” — and DeJoy “still holds at least a $30 million stake in the company, which has ramped up its business with the Postal Service since he took the helm at the agency.”

The Times reporters explain, “The figures, obtained by The New York Times from a public records request, shed new light on the extent to which the company where Mr. DeJoy was a top executive — and in which he still has a substantial amount of money invested — is intertwined with the agency he now runs, fueling questions about a potential conflict of interest.”

Broadwater and Edmondson add that the U.S. Postal Service has, through its many contracts with XPO and subsidiaries, “paid the firm $33.7 million to $45.2 million annually since 2014 for services that include managing transportation and providing support during peak times.” The documents the Times has obtained, they note, also show a surge in revenue for XPO from the Postal Service since Mr. DeJoy took over on June 15. The Postal Service paid XPO Logistics and its subsidiaries about $14 million over the past ten weeks, compared with $3.4 million during the same time frame in 2019 and $4.7 million in 2018.”

However, David Partenheimer, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, told the Times that DeJoy had no direct involvement in contracting decisions at the agency and that he is “prohibited by the government ethics rules from any involvement with XPO’s USPS contracts.”

Broadwater and Edmondson note, “Mr. DeJoy has been a particular target of congressional Democrats, who have been alarmed by President Trump’s baseless claims that voting by mail is fraudulent. They have blamed Mr. DeJoy, a Republican megadonor and an ally of Mr. Trump’s, for making cost-cutting changes at the agency that have coincided with a slowdown in mail deliveries.”