#aldona wos

[dr-archeville]

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—Jeffrey C. Billman, INDY editor. Follow me on Twitter @jeffreybillman.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY [2020-05-08]

Above the Fold

→   NO (DEPARTMENT OF) JUSTICE, NO PEACE.

There are many things at stake in the November election — at least one, probably two Supreme Court seats, and all that goes with them, for starters.  But this is no less important.  The longer the Trump administration stays entrenched, the more it will erode the rule of law in its pursuit of power.  So let’s begin this morning with the Department of Justice’s decision to drop charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in December 2017 about his assurances to the Russian ambassador that then-President-elect Trump would end the Obama administration’s sanctions and during the investigation into the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russia.  (In his plea deal, Flynn also copped to illegally lobbying for Turkey.)

However, Flynn agreed to cooperate with Robert Mueller’s investigation, but he stonewalled on Russian contacts during the campaign.  Mueller’s report says that lies and obfuscations by Flynn and other Trump associates “materially impaired the investigation of Russian election interference.”  In fact, one of Trump’s lawyers left Flynn a voicemail in 2017 saying the president would support him if he didn’t snitch.

As soon as new attorney general/Trump lackey Bill Barr wraps up Robert Mueller’s investigation, Flynn suddenly flips.  Despite his guilty plea, he now says he’s not guilty; in fact, it was all a setup — a conspiracy between “prosecutors, federal investigators, and even his initial attorneys.  His new defense team also alleged he was insufficiently represented by one of Washington’s most prominent law firms, Covington & Burling, when he entered his guilty plea.”

Trump’s DOJ took this seriously.  In January, Barr appointed a U.S. attorney to “review” the case.  Last week, the right-wing media melted down when FBI notes turned up indicating that the FBI went into its interview with Flynn preparing for him to lie — a normal tactic when the feds are already aware that you broke the law before they talk to you: “What they did to Gen. Flynn, and by the way, to Roger Stone and to others, was a disaster and a disgrace, and it should never be allowed to happen in this country again,” Trump said, previewing where this was headed.

Taking cues from the boss, Barr came through, filing a motion for dismissal that says the government can’t prove that Flynn lied about the thing he already admitted in court to lying about.  (Actual courtroom exchange: Judge Sullivan asks Flynn if he wants to proceed.  Flynn: “I want to proceed.  Sullivan: “Because you’re guilty?”  Flynn: “Yes, your honor.”)  Even if it could prove that Flynn had lied — perhaps by, say, reading a court transcript out loud — it didn’t matter because the thing he lied about wasn’t relevant to an ongoing investigation.  For good measure, the filing blamed the FBI officials who handled the case, and Trump’s personal attorney told The Washington Post that Robert Mueller should be ashamed of himself.

“Shortly before the Justice Department abandoned Flynn’s prosecution, the line prosecutor on the case, Brandon Van Grack, formally withdrew …. [Timothy] Shea, who was tapped by Barr to lead the U.S. attorney’s office, was the only lawyer to sign the filing; no career attorneys affixed their names to it.”

“Another pillar in the foundation of the Department of Justice and the rule of law has fallen,” said one federal prosecutor …. “The justification for this move is not credible, and it may be used by criminals in the future to escape legitimate prosecution.”

“Gregory A. Brower, a former U.S. attorney and former senior FBI official, said the move shows Barr is intent on overturning much of the work done by former FBI director James B. Comey, a longtime target of the president’s wrath.   Flynn’s defense team ‘came up with this idea that, it doesn’t really matter what happened,’ said Brower.  ‘The truth here is — and this is from the defendant himself — that he did in fact lie to the FBI about a very serious matter.’”

David Kurtz: “A pardon?  Also corrupt and deeply problematic, but expected in this strange new post-legal America.  But a wholesale capitulation by the Justice Department that throws the FBI under the bus and embraces the most inane conspiracy theories about federal law enforcement?”

In December 2017, President Trump said he fired Flynn for lying to Vice President Mike Pence and the feds.

“I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI.  He has pled guilty to those lies.  It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful.  There was nothing to hide!”

Yesterday he struck a somewhat different tone: "He was an innocent man.  He is a great gentleman.  He was targeted by the Obama administration and he was targeted in order to try and take down a president.  And what they've done is a disgrace and I hope a big price is going to be paid.  A big price should be paid.  There's never been anything like this in the history of our country.  What they did, what the Obama administration did, is unprecedented.  It's never happened.  Never happened.  A thing like this has never happened.  And I hope a lot of people are going to pay a big price because they're dishonest, crooked people.  They're scum and I say it a lot, they're scum, they're human scum.  This should never have happened in this country.”

Wait, there’s more: "A duly elected president and they went after him by going after fine people and those fine people said, 'No, I'm not going to lie, I can’t lie.’  He's not the only one.  There are many of them.  They could have said something like, 'Oh, make up a lie, Trump loves somebody or something or some country.’  And they said, ‘Oh, you wouldn’t have any problem.  That’s what they were trying to do, and it's a disgrace.  The Obama administration Justice Department was a disgrace and they got caught.  They got caught.  Very dishonest people.  But much more than dis— it’s treason, it’s treason.”

“Treason.”

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT: It’s obvious, right?  Flynn didn’t flip, so Barr got him off without Trump having to pardon him, all while throwing the finger to Trump’s enemies in the FBI — Peter Stzrok and Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe and James Comey and Robert Mueller.  But it’s more than that.  It’s Barr and Trump asserting that Trump is above the law — that if they don’t like where the law leads or who enforces it, they don’t have to abide by it.

Remember when Barr interfered in Roger Stone’s sentencing and everyone got really freaked out for a few days but then it blew over?  That was a test run.

If you think this is going to get better with Trump in power for four more years, I hope your naivete is blissful.

ABOVE THE LAW, PART 2: The administration asked the Supreme Court to block a lower-court ruling requiring the Department of Justice to give Congress documents from the Mueller investigation that the DOJ has so far withheld because, gee whiz, I just can’t imagine why. 

“Although Trump was acquitted by the Senate in February, House Democrats have told the D.C. Circuit that their investigation into possible misconduct by the president is ongoing, and that the grand jury material will inform its determination of whether Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation and whether to recommend new articles of impeachment against the president.”

“Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court on Thursday that if it does not put the order on hold, the government will have to disclose those materials Monday, ‘which would irrevocably lift their secrecy and possibly frustrate the government’s ability to seek further review.’”

AS THEY SAY: If you’re not pissed off, you’re not paying attention.  And if you don’t pay attention, what remains of this American experiment could be gone without you even noticing.  As I’ve written before, the guardrails of democracy are soft.

State & Local

→   TRUMP NAMES ALDONA WOS’S HUSBAND POSTMASTER GENERAL.

Since I’m all hopped up about Trump cronyism, let’s turn our attention to Louis DeJoy, a MAGA moneybag who is currently fundraising for the maybe-going-to-happen Republican National Convention in Charlotte.  He also happens to be the husband of Aldona Wos, the former ambassador to Estonia who was an abject failure as North Carolina’s secretary of health and human services under Governor McCrory, but that’s not really relevant.  On Wednesday, President Trump named DeJoy the new postmaster general, putting an ally in charge of the very same U.S. Postal Service that Trump is very much trying to extort into screwing over Amazon because he is mad at The Washington Post.

“The action will install a stalwart Trump ally to lead the Postal Service, which he has railed against for years, and probably move him closer than ever before to forcing the service to renegotiate its terms with companies and its own union workforce.  Trump’s Treasury Department and the Postal Service are in the midst of a negotiation over a $10 billion line of credit approved as part of coronavirus legislation in March.”

“After criticizing the agency for years, Trump has been consolidating his influence lately.  Three Republicans and one Democrat sit on the board of governors after the vice chairman, David Williams, a Democrat, resigned last week.  The departure came after Williams told confidants he was upset that the Treasury Department was meddling in what has long been an apolitical agency and felt that his fellow board members had capitulated to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s conditions for the $10 billion line of credit.”

“Democrats have urged the Postal Service to hold firm with Treasury over the terms of the loan, betting they could win more money for the agency in another round of legislation and threatening the Trump administration with taking the risk of disrupting mail service.  But in recent days, the Postal Service’s board has appeared open to some of the Trump administration’s terms.”

→   TILLIS SAYS TRUMP IS DOING GREAT ON COVID-19.

Within a few days, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus will eclipse 80,000 — a number that will be well into the six figures by month’s end, perhaps rising by 2,000 a day if government projections are correct.  More than 33 million Americans have lost their jobs, the unemployment rate is expected to remain in double digits through the end of the year, GDP is contracting faster than it has since the Great Depression, the deficit is higher than it’s been since World War II, and the president whose months of inaction created this debacle is pretending that if he wishes hard enough, the whole thing will blow over.

Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, thinks Donald Trump is doing great.  He’s actually betting his political career on people believing that.  Why?  Because Tillis — who briefly defied the president over the border wall before discovering he had no spine after all — is terrified of being on the wrong end of a Twitter tantrum.

“Nearly all GOP senators running for reelection have decided there’s little utility in breaking with the president, particularly after seeing some fellow Republicans collapse at the ballot box with such a strategy.”

Besides, there’s always wishful thinking: “Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), whose race could easily decide the Senate, said Americans won’t necessarily be voting with today’s drumbeat of 2,000 deaths a day and endless quarantines in mind.  He predicted by August everything will look different.  ‘We’ll be doing millions and millions of tests, we’ll do the antibody tests, we’ll have good reports, I think, on the beginnings of economic progress,’ Tillis said.  ‘And I think all those things will benefit the president and they’ll benefit me.’”

→   NORTH CAROLINA LOSES 85,000 MORE JOBS.

Nearly 85,000 people filed new jobless claims in North Carolina last week, according to a weekly report from the U.S. Department of Labor — a slight improvement over last week, when 99,000 North Carolinians filed initial jobless claims.

The state Division of Employment Security reports that 1,049,755 North Carolinians filed for unemployment between March 15 and May 5.

As of March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated North Carolina’s entire workforce to be 4.97 million people.  That means that in less than two months, more than 21 percent of all of the state’s workers have filed for unemployment.

Nationwide, nearly 3.2 million Americans filed for unemployment last week, bringing the total number who’ve lost their jobs since the pandemic began to more than 33 million.  This morning, the Labor Department will release April’s unemployment numbers; economists expect the jobless rate to be a jaw-dropping 16 percent — higher than it ever was during the Great Recession.  But even that is a lowball.  The unemployment rate is based on surveys taken during the first two weeks of the month.  Things got progressively worse.  The real rate is likely around 20 percent and climbing.

Worth remembering: Six weeks ago, Trump promised it wouldn’t get this bad.

RELATED: DHHS reported on Thursday that North Carolina has seen nearly 13,400 confirmed coronavirus cases and 507 deaths.  Only one county — Avery, population roughly the size of my subdivision — hasn’t been touched.

→   BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT: JEDDAH’S TEA.

Hey, y’all, we haven’t done one of these in a minute, but let me tell you about a downtown Durham spot that I love and that could use your help right now.  Morgan Siegel founded Jeddah's Tea in 2018 after moving to the Triangle from Oakland.  You can read the whole origin story in this INDY profile, but the short version is that she fell in love with Durham and set up a brick-and-mortar on Market Street.  Obviously, the lack of people downtown has taken a bite out of business.  I’m told they need about 40 orders to get by, and they’re currently getting half that.

So here’s the deal: They’ve been very good to us and to this community, and it would mean the world to me if you could help them get through this thing.  And it’s not like it’s charity.  Their products are amazing, and I’m not even a tea guy.  They’re taking online orders with curbside pickup; they also have shipping and delivery options, and you can get their stuff at the Durham Co-op.

If you want to know more about their offerings, join Morgan on her weekly IGTV series called “Tea Time with Morgan” at 8 p.m. on Wednesdays.  There, she discusses her company’s products and educates the community about the geographies from which they hail, as well as their social and cultural influences.

→   THE NC NATIVE WHO MIGHT SAVE US FROM THE CORONAVIRUS.

The Washington Post has a very cool profile of Kizzmekia Corbett, a 34-year-old African American who hails from Hurdle Mills, an unincorporated community southwest of Roxboro, and is now at the National Institutes for Health heading the government’s search for a coronavirus vaccine.  Also, she’s a badass who gets under Tucker Carlson’s skin, which is an added bonus.

“Corbett, 34, is a long way from the tobacco and soybean farms that surround her old elementary school.  The advanced reading and math classes at Oak Lane prepared her to become a high school math whiz.  She was recommended for Project SEED, a program for gifted minorities that allowed her to study chemistry in labs at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a 10th-grader.  She accepted a scholarship for minority science students that paid her way through the University of Maryland Baltimore County and introduced her to NIH.”

“But her high perch comes with more visibility and added scrutiny.  On Feb. 27, Corbett posted a tweet that lamented the lack of diversity on President Trump’s coronavirus task force: ‘The task force is largely people (white men) he appointed to their positions as director of blah blah institute.  They are indebted to serve him NOT the people.’”

“And, as public health officials were reporting startling data that showed that the virus was disproportionately killing African Americans, Corbett vented on Twitter.  ‘I tweet for the people who will die when doctors has to choose who gets the last ventilator and ultimately … who lives,’ she wrote March 29.  When someone responded that the virus ‘is a way to get rid of us,’ Corbett replied: ‘Some have gone as far to call it genocide.  I plead the fifth.’”  That triggered a response from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who read several of Corbett’s tweets aloud on his show and questioned her ‘commitment to scientific inquiry and rational thought.’  He accused Corbett of ‘spouting lunatic conspiracy theories.’”

Quick pause to LOL at Tucker Carlson accusing someone else of “spouting lunatic conspiracy theories.”  Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

“Since the controversy, Corbett has scaled back her use of social media. … In an administration in which the president has had a tenuous relationship with his own scientists and experts, Corbett’s diminished visibility raised eyebrows.   Her defenders say she was ridiculed for speaking the truth.”

“Corbett’s team completed the first clinical trial for the development of a vaccine in early March.  Working at a furious pace at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, the team hopes to have a vaccine by the middle of next year.”

→   TELL CONGRESS TO SUPPORT THE NATIONAL INDEPENDENT VENUE ASSOCIATION.

Like bars and restaurants and, ahem, local weekly newspapers, independent music venues have been hit especially hard by the pandemic.  Their entire business model relies on bringing together large groups of people, which means they’ll likely be among the last businesses to reopen.  The National Independent Venue Association — which includes members like Cat’s Cradle, Lincoln Theatre, and other Triangle venues — is lobbying for federal funding to keep locally owned venues alive.

Brian Howe: “NIVA is making it easy for you to help its efforts in Washington with a form letter you can fill out and send to your senators and representatives in a matter of seconds.  Asking them to sign on to letters of support for independent-venue relief in the House and the Senate, the letter states the stakes in stark terms: ‘If concerts don’t resume in 2020, 90% of independent venues across America will most likely not open again.’”

SORTA RELATED: Yesterday, we had an item mentioning that Carolina Theatre was selling concessions on Fridays.  We should have mentioned that the Rialto in Raleigh has been selling popcorn to go on Friday afternoons since it closed in mid-March.  Email your order to Farrell@therialto.com by noon on Friday, and they’ll have fresh popcorn ready for collection between 4:00 and 8:00 that day.  (Please let them know what size you’d like and what time you’d like to collect it.)

→  WEATHER:  🌧🌧🌧 (high of 68)

Nation & World

→   TRUMP ALLIES FUELING SKEPTICISM OF COVID-19 DEATH COUNTS.

According to the public tallies, COVID-19 has killed well over 70,000 Americans and is adding about 2,000 a day to its toll.  According to most public health experts, the real number is probably much, much higher, because we’re not actually good at counting this stuff.  According to the latest MAGA nonsense propagated by people who probably failed middle school biology, the number is too high, because it’s a conspiracy, man.

“An increasing number of conservatives are convinced the medical community and the media are inflating the coronavirus death toll for political purposes, despite nearly all evidence indicating that, if anything, the figure is an undercount.”

“The conspiracy theory started with those who argued the figure was being manipulated, before morphing into a more generalized suspicion about coronavirus modeling among Republicans.  Fox News has begun to feature a constant drumbeat of doubt about the reliability of any model, and President Donald Trump on Sunday called the models ‘wrong from day one’ and ‘out of whack,’ but insisted on Tuesday he believed the government’s death toll.”

This wouldn’t be worth commenting on if it weren’t quite possibly about to become a White House talking point.

RELATED: One of Trump’s personal valets has tested positive for COVID-19.  The White House reported that both Trump and Mike Pence have tested negative, and they’ll be getting tested every day from now on.

→   TRUMP ADMINISTRATION BURIES CDC REOPENING GUIDELINES.

The modern addendum to John Adams’s famous “Facts are stubborn things,” is, of course, Ronald Reagan’s “Facts are stupid things” — which, though a slip of the tongue, foretold the anti-expertise direction his party would take over the next 40 years.  And so, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention handed Trump’s White House the 17-page “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” which provided specific recommendations for business owners, faith leaders, educators, and so on, the administration put it on the shelf and told agency scientists it would “never see the light of day.”

The guide would have been released Friday, but the administration thought a national document would undermine the state-led (read: Trump gets to wash his hands of everything) approach to decision-making during the pandemic.

“The report suggested restaurants and bars should install sneeze guards at cash registers and avoid having buffets, salad bars and drink stations. … But the shelved report also said that as restaurants start seating diners again, they should space tables at least 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart and try to use phone app technology to alert a patron when their table is ready to avoid touching and use of buzzers.”

“The White House’s own “Opening Up America Again” guidelines released last month were more vague than the CDC’s unpublished report.  They instructed state and local governments to reopen in accordance with federal and local ‘regulations and guidance’ and to monitor employees for symptoms of COVID-19.”

RELATED: House Democrats want members of Trump’s coronavirus task force to testify in hearings examining how everything went sideways.  Trump has flatly refused, calling it a “set-up” by “Trump haters”; Congress, it seems, is no longer a co-equal branch because they hurt his feelings.

→   THE SBA SLASHES ITS DISASTER LOAN CAP.

I’ve mentioned before the Treasury Department’s difficulties rolling out the Paycheck Protection Program.  But the massive demand for government help has also resulted in huge shortfalls for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which is supposed to provide quick-turnaround loans to business suffering during the pandemic.  Now, however, it’s being closed off to almost every business in the country.

The program received more than $50 billion in new funding from Congress’s early coronavirus relief bills.  Initially, business owners were told they could borrow up to $2 million.

The applications poured in.   To deal with the demand, the Small Business Association lowered the loan cap to $150,000 — but didn’t let potential borrowers know.

The program has also stopped taking new applications from new borrowers outside of the agricultural sector.

ONE FOR THE AGES: The first secretary of the U.S. Treasury was, of course, shot and killed by the third vice president of the United States.  Yesterday, the 77th secretary of the Treasury was publicly maimed on Twitter by an aging god of hair metal.  Seriously, WTF is this?

So we can all forgive Axl Rose for Chinese Democracy now, yeah?  Axl got into an out-of-nowhere Twitter beef with Steve Mnuchin, who didn’t help his cause by being unable to tell the difference between the Liberian and American flags.  And to answer Mnuchin’s question, as awful as GNR has been since Use Your Illusion II, at least Axl didn’t get rich kicking people out of their houses.

Also, God bless the person who quickly edited Mnuchin’s Wikipedia page.

→   SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS BRIDGEGATE CONVICTIONS.

In 2013, staff members of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie — then considered a “rising star” of a Republican Party that soon prostrated itself before Donald Trump — closed lanes on bridge to create traffic jams and headaches for a mayor who’d snubbed him in his gubernatorial campaign.  Bridgegate was, of course, an abuse of power.  But according to the U.S. Supreme Court — a unanimous decision, no less — it was not a crime.

The Court’s opinion, written by Elena Kagan: “For no reason other than political payback, [staffers] Baroni and Kelly used deception to reduce Fort Lee’s access lanes to the George Washington Bridge — and thereby jeopardized the safety of the town’s residents.”

“But not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime.  Because the scheme here did not aim to obtain money or property, Baroni and Kelly could not have violated the federal-program fraud or wire fraud laws.”

Christie claimed that these not-illegal corrupt acts amounted to “total exoneration” in a tweet.  Trump, who generally has no idea what the hell he’s talking about at any given moment, tweeted that the saga was an example of Democrats “getting caught doing very evil things” and “grave misconduct by the Obama Justice Department.”

→   LET’S FONDLY RECALL THE TIME TRUMP’S NEW PRESS SECRETARY CALLED HIM RACIST.

Before Kayleigh McEnany was named Trump’s newest press secretary, she was just your average Harvard law student and who would appear on Fox News and CNN to call Donald Trump “racist,” say he was a RINO, and argue that his use of the Republican label was “unfortunate” and “inauthentic.”

That was in 2015, when Trump was still a long-shot in a crowded field.  McEnany called him a bunch of fun things, including “Republican in name only,” a “sideshow,” and someone who “doesn’t deserve to be there” among the frontrunners.

“I don't want to claim this guy,” she told CNN in June 2015.  “This is not a true Republican candidate.  And the fact that he's being portrayed as such a media is troublesome and not accurate.”

SPEAKING OF RACISTS: Remember those two white guys in Georgia who chased and then shot and killed a black jogger back in February but were never charged?  They’ve been charged!  And it only took a public outcry.

Primer is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club.  Join today and support independent local journalism. If you’d like to advertise your business to Primer’s 30,000 subscribers, please contact me at jbillman@indyweek.com or John Hurld at jhurld@indyweek.com. If you have suggestions for improving this newsletter, please contact me at jbillman@indyweek.com.

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[news4me]

President Donald Trump Picks Physician Dr Aldona Wos for Next Ambassador to Canada

President Donald Trump Picks Physician Dr Aldona Wos for Next Ambassador to Canada

[ad_1]

File photo of Dr Aldona Wos (Twitter)

Dr. Aldona Wos was previously served as ambassador to Estonia under former President George W. Bush and as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

AFP

Last Updated: February 12, 2020, 3:23 PM IST

Washington: President Donald Trump has tapped a retired…

[phroyd]

Louis DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising, which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates — money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say.

Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s aides or by the chief executive himself to write checks and attend fundraisers at his 15,000-square-foot gated mansion beside a Greensboro, N.C., country club. There, events for Republicans running for the White House and Congress routinely fetched $100,000 or more apiece.

Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful.

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations — and that covered the tax and everything else.”

Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.

“He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’ ” said the former employee, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution from DeJoy.

In response to a series of detailed questions from The Washington Post, Monty Hagler, a spokesman for DeJoy, said the former New Breed chief executive was not aware that any employees had felt pressured to make donations.

After repeatedly being asked, Hagler did not directly address the assertions that DeJoy reimbursed workers for making contributions, pointing to a statement in which he said DeJoy “believes that he has always followed campaign fundraising laws and regulations.”

Hagler said DeJoy “sought and received legal advice” from a former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission “to ensure that he, New Breed Logistics and any person affiliated with New Breed fully complied with any and all laws. Mr. DeJoy believes that all campaign fundraising laws and regulations should be complied with in all respects.”

He added that DeJoy “encouraged employees and family members to be active in their communities, schools, churches, civic groups, sporting events and the politics that governs our nation.”

“Mr. DeJoy was never notified by the New Breed employees referenced by the Washington Post of any pressure they might have felt to make a political contribution, and he regrets if any employee felt uncomfortable for any reason,” he added.

A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.

Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.

Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

The former employees who spoke to The Post all described donations they gave between 2003 and 2014, the year New Breed was acquired by a Connecticut-based company called XPO Logistics. DeJoy remained at XPO briefly in a leadership role, then retired at the end of 2015. By a year after the sale, several New Breed employees who had stayed on with XPO were giving significantly smaller political contributions and many stopped making them altogether, campaign finance records show.

In a statement, XPO spokesman Joe Checkler said the company “stays out of politics but our employees have the same individual right as anyone else to support candidates of their choosing in their free time. When they do so, we expect them to adhere strictly to the rules.”

The accounts of DeJoy’s former employees, which have not been previously reported, come as his brief tenure so far at the helm of the U.S. Postal Service has been marked by tumult. After his appointment in May, he swiftly instituted changes he said were aimed at cutting costs, leading to a reduction of overtime and limits on mail trips that postal carriers said created backlogs across the country.

Democrats have accused DeJoy, who has personally given more than $1.1 million to Trump Victory, the joint fundraising vehicle of the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of seeking to hobble the Postal Service because of the president’s antipathy to voting by mail. As states have expanded access to mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has repeatedly attacked the practice and claimed without evidence that it will lead to rampant fraud.

The Postal Service chief emphasized to House lawmakers last month that the agency will prioritize election mail. Responding to questions about his fundraising, DeJoy scoffed. “Yes, I am a Republican. . . . I give a lot of money to Republicans.” But he pushed back fiercely on accusations that he was seeking to undermine the November vote. “I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy said. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”

During his testimony, DeJoy was asked by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) if he had repaid executives for making donations to the Trump campaign.

“That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it. . . . The answer is no,” DeJoy responded angrily.

DeJoy had retired from XPO management by 2016. He hosted Trump at his Greensboro estate, known locally as The Castle, for a birthday party and fundraiser in June 2016.

Earlier this year, DeJoy was leading fundraising for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte when he was selected by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors in May.

DeJoy was not originally on a list of prospective candidates for the job, Robert M. Duncan, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors, told House lawmakers in testimony last month. Duncan, a longtime GOP fundraiser, said he submitted DeJoy’s name as a candidate after his “interest, or availability, became known to me.”

A pattern of requests

Multiple New Breed employees said DeJoy’s ascent in Republican politics was powered in part by his ability to multiply his fundraising through his company, describing him as a chief executive who was single-minded in his focus on increasing his influence in the GOP.

In his office, DeJoy prominently displayed pictures of himself with former president George W. Bush; Sen. John McCain, who died in 2018; former New Jersey governor Chris Christie; former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and others, according to former employees.

Several employees said DeJoy reveled in the access his fundraising afforded him.

At a local PGA tournament sponsored by New Breed, he played alongside top North Carolina Republicans such as then-Gov. Pat McCrory and Sen. Richard Burr, according to schedules posted online. “He always had to be the guy in the golf cart with the politicians,” said one person who worked with him who attended the tournaments.

As DeJoy’s profile as a Republican bundler grew, his wife, Aldona Wos, won presidential and gubernatorial appointments — first as an ambassador to Estonia in 2004, then as head of North Carolina’s health and human services agency in 2013. Trump appointed her in May 2017 to serve on the president’s commission on White House fellowships, and earlier this year, he nominated her to be ambassador to Canada.

DeJoy and trusted aides at the company made clear that he wanted employees to support his endeavors — through emails inviting employees to fundraisers, follow-up calls and visits to staffers’ desks, many said.

“He would put pressure on the executives over each of the areas to go to their employees and give contributions,” one former employee said.

While some employees told The Post that they were happy to make the donations, others said they felt little choice, saying DeJoy had a heavy-handed demeanor and a reputation for angering easily.

Plant managers at New Breed said they received strongly worded admonitions from superiors that they should give money when DeJoy was holding fundraisers. A program manager said that when he was handed his first company bonus, a New Breed vice president told him he should buy a ticket to DeJoy’s next fundraiser.

Several employees said New Breed often distributed large bonuses of five figures or higher. Bonuses did not usually correlate with the exact amount of political contributions, but were large enough to account for both performance payments and donations, according to the two people with knowledge of company finances.

Five former employees said DeJoy’s executive assistant, Heather Clarke, personally called senior staffers, checking on whether executives were coming to fundraisers and collecting checks for candidates.

Clarke, who now works alongside DeJoy at the Postal Service as his chief of staff, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Phone messages left with Clarke’s husband were returned Friday by Hagler, who said she would have no comment.

Clarke was among several nonexecutive employees who gave substantial political donations, public records show: She alone contributed $47,000 from 2002 to 2014. Clarke has continued to donate since then, but at about half the annual rate as when she worked at New Breed.

Another longtime senior official in DeJoy’s company, Joe Hauck, also routinely contacted company employees urging them to contribute, former workers said.

In an interview, Hauck denied that the company reimbursed New Breed employees for political contributions. He said he never received any bonuses for that purpose, nor was he offered any. “That’s illegal — you can’t do that,” said Hauck, who was vice president for sales, marketing and communications when the company was sold.

Hauck did acknowledge approaching employees and asking them to contribute, but disputed that he pressured anyone.

“I created a list of people that had indicated that they were interested. And whenever there was an event coming up, I would let them know about the event and they would either say, ‘Yeah, I want to participate’ or ‘No, I don’t,’ ” he said.

Hauck said he sometimes did collect checks for candidates in the office, but only because some employees “happened to have their checkbooks on them.”

Another manager also said he was not aware of employees being reimbursed, but acknowledged that workers were asked to make donations.

William Church, a former New Breed vice president, said he handed out many bonuses to his employees in the company’s aerospace division and never had knowledge of such payments being connected to political contributions. He said bonus targets in his division were rigid and well-established.

Church, who donated over $21,000 to Republican candidates while at New Breed and said he received substantial bonuses, said he never felt pressured to make the contributions and was never reimbursed for them. “Ask my wife, boy, she would have loved that,” Church said.

Asked whether he believed employees could have felt pressure to attend fundraisers, Church responded: “Now, what’s in somebody’s heart when they’re doing it, when the CEO invites you to one of these things and they think, ‘Oh, I should do that?’ — I don’t know.”

Steve Moore, who took a job as plant manager of a New Breed facility in Bolingbrook, Ill., in 2007, said he felt pressured to contribute just a few months into his job. DeJoy sent managers an email announcing a fundraising event at his house for former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, then a candidate for president.

Moore said his manager, Philip Meyer, soon followed up, telling him that making a contribution was “highly recommended,” even if he would not attend.

“I took that to mean my job is on the line here, or things won’t go smooth for me here at New Breed if I didn’t contribute,” Moore said in an interview. He donated $250. “I didn’t really agree with what was going on,” he said. Moore said he was terminated in 2008 after a dispute with his supervisors.

In a text message, Meyer declined to comment.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of donations from New Breed employees has been GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose campaign committees collected nearly $300,000 from people at the company in 2014, campaign finance records show.

When asked for comment on the accounts of employees who said they were pressured to donate to DeJoy’s favored candidates, Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Tillis’s campaign, said in an email: “Neither Senator Tillis nor our campaign had knowledge of these findings.”

'You feel the pressure'

DeJoy did not always seem destined for a life as an influential GOP power broker. As a young man in New York working at his father’s trucking business, DeJoy donated to Democrats, including the party’s 1988 presidential nominee, Michael Dukakis, according to federal campaign finance filings.

After his marriage to Wos, a physician born in Poland who emigrated to New York as a child, DeJoy followed her into conservative politics.

Under DeJoy, New Breed expanded from trucking to logistics, managing delivery and returns of the first iPhones sold by Verizon, airplane parts for Boeing and Disney merchandise, including shipments of MagicBands, employees said.

By the late 1990s, as the family business flourished, thanks in part to contracts with the U.S. Postal Service, DeJoy moved New Breed to North Carolina — and closer to the work it was doing repositioning mail crates, folding mail bags, and other logistical work that the government had begun to outsource.

The move provided new political opportunities for the couple. Wos embraced North Carolina Republican politics and, by the early 2000s, was stepping into national campaigns. She helped lead fundraising efforts in the state for Elizabeth Dole’s 2002 Senate run, and then for Bush’s reelection campaign, according to campaign statements and news articles from the time.

DeJoy began to marshal his resources to support GOP candidates, as well. On one day in February 2002, DeJoy donated $50,000 to a Republican Party fund supporting Bush’s campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. Another $10,000 came from DeJoy’s brother, Michael, who worked then for New Breed in New York. Another 10 New Breed employees also chipped in $1,000 each that day to Bush, and another $900 or $1,000 each to Dole, campaign finance data show.

In response to a request to Wos for comment, Hagler said, “Dr. Wos had her own career, and she was not involved with New Breed Logistics.”

Young, the retired director of human resources, said it was during the 2004 Bush reelection campaign that he saw DeJoy begin to “take advantage” of his power as CEO to move money for politics.

“No one was ever forced to or lost a job because they didn’t, but if people contributed, their raises and their bonuses were bumped up to accommodate that,” said Young, who gave more than $19,000 in donations while he worked at New Breed.

Ted Le Jeune, a New Breed project manager in North Carolina, said he made a $500 contribution to the Bush campaign in November 2003 after DeJoy took him aside for a discussion in a conference room about donating.

“I was of the same political orientation, so it was not coerced in any way and there was no quid pro quo,” Le Jeune said in an interview. Le Jeune said he has not donated to any political campaign since then.

In 2002, DeJoy and New Breed employees contributed more than $87,000 to support Dole, and before the 2004 presidential election, more than $121,000 to Bush.

Wos was named a Bush “Ranger,” an honorary term for those who delivered at least $200,000 for the Texan’s reelection bid. In a recess appointment before the election, Bush appointed her ambassador to Estonia, a post she held for two years.

Freddy Ford, a spokesman for Bush, declined to comment. Wos did not respond to a request for comment about her appointment.

By 2007, DeJoy was carving his own path politically. With Giuliani leading in early polls for the Republican nomination for president, DeJoy signed on as co-chair of the former mayor’s North Carolina finance committee.

New Breed employees quickly followed.

DeJoy kicked off his fundraising effort by inviting a group of senior New Breed executives who had previously donated to Republicans while at the company to contribute, according to one of those who wrote a check. Campaign finance records show that New Breed employees gave Giuliani’s campaign more than $27,000 in one day.

Giuliani did not respond to a request for comment.

Less than a month later, when Giuliani made a swing through North Carolina, DeJoy invited a broader group of New Breed employees to contribute and take part in a fundraiser, according to people familiar with his outreach. The second effort netted about $40,000 from employees, campaign finance records show.

Moore, the plant director in Illinois, said he received the email inviting employees to give — and he donated reluctantly.

Another middle manager at another New Breed facility said he received the solicitation, too, as well as encouragement in person from Meyer during a plant visit.

“He would come to me and say, ‘Louis is having this thing, and he really wants all the managers there, and you need to contribute,’ ” said the former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he fears DeJoy could sue him.

The former employee said he recalled Meyer saying that not contributing was “not going to have any bearing on your job.”

But he worried that the reverse was true, he said. “You feel the pressure. They tell you it’s not there, and then they put it on you,” he said.

In the North Carolina headquarters, Joel Shepard, who had joined New Breed as director of transportation after stints at Ryder and UPS, said he got a call from Clarke, DeJoy’s executive assistant, making sure Shepard knew that he, too, was invited.

Shepard had never donated to a political candidate before, and he wrote a check for $1,000. He said he did not feel pressured, however. He said he admired Giuliani and “wanted to do it.”

Shepard said he still recalls the donation because he mistakenly wrote the check from an account that was low on funds and it bounced. Clarke, DeJoy’s executive assistant, “came to me and said, ‘Joel, your check bounced.’ I had to write her another one,” he recalled.

In all, dozens of New Breed employees contributed more than $85,000 to Giuliani’s campaign during the primary, including a $16,000 in excess contributions that the campaign returned after Giuliani dropped his bid because multiple employees gave identical contributions that were twice the legal limit.

The only other GOP presidential contender to receive donations from New Breed employees during that year’s primary was Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, campaign finance records show. Together, two employees gave him about $550.

Expanding influence

After Giuliani’s campaign faltered, DeJoy pivoted and put his energy into backing the 2008 McCain-Palin ticket, organizing and hosting multiple fundraisers over the next year. Again, New Breed employees followed. Along with DeJoy, they contributed more than $180,000, FEC records show.

Four years later, an additional $193,000 flowed from DeJoy and other New Breed employees to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, now a U.S. senator from Utah.

Before the 2012 election, more than $170,000 in contributions from DeJoy and New Breed employees would also go to help lift McCrory to the North Carolina governor’s mansion, state campaign finance records show.

The following month, McCrory named Wos, DeJoy’s wife and a retired physician, as his choice for state health secretary.

In an interview, McCrory said Wos’s appointment had no connection to campaign contributions he received. “She was the most qualified person and I had to beg her to take the job,” he said.

Told of The Post’s findings, McCrory said: “I’m not aware of any of these claims.”

During her tenure, Wos drew scrutiny from Democrats after awarding a $310,000 state contract to Hauck, the New Breed employee who colleagues said had urged them to support DeJoy’s fundraising efforts.

At the time, Wos defended her pick, saying Hauck worked on a major restructuring of the department’s bureaucracy.

Hauck said he took a pay cut by going on leave from New Breed to work for Wos for 11 months. “I looked at it as serving,” he said in an interview.

By 2013, Warburg Pincus, a New York-based private-equity firm that had acquired a controlling stake in New Breed eight years earlier, had begun agitating for the company to go public or find another way to return value to its investors, according to three former New Breed employees with knowledge of the company’s finances. News articles in subsequent months quoted people familiar with the company saying Warburg was exploring a sale.

DeJoy tested the market for an initial public offering, filing a confidential draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to correspondence detailing concerns about the offering flagged by the SEC, which remain archived on the agency’s website.

As the agency began scrutinizing the company’s finances, the SEC appeared to question a lack of information about New Breed executive bonuses and how the company decided they had met their goals for the payments in the previous year. “Please disclose the target and how the target was met or not met or advise,” the SEC’s accounting branch chief wrote in a June 2013 letter to DeJoy. It is unclear whether or how the company responded.

Ultimately, New Breed did not go public. Instead, Warburg Pincus sold it to XPO Logistics the following year for $615 million, according to company announcements and SEC records.

A spokeswoman for Warburg Pincus declined to comment.

The month the deal closed, New Breed employees made a slew of political donations in a two-day period — more than $407,000. Almost three-quarters of that went to support Tillis’s Senate bid.

Clarke, Hauck and DeJoy were among 10 New Breed employees who led the giving. On Sept. 29, each gave identical donations of $12,600 to the Thom Tillis Victory Committee, campaign finance data shows. The next day, the same 10 employees each gave $10,000 to the North Carolina Republican Party.

Since then, five of those individuals have significantly cut back their political contributions, and one has not given again at all, FEC filings show.

Young, who retired that fall, said he sent a note to DeJoy this summer congratulating him upon being named postmaster general. DeJoy may have the skills needed to improve the agency, Young said. But the fundraising that permeated New Breed will remain a mark on his legacy there, he said, adding: “He had an agenda, and would take advantage of people.”

DeJoy never replied to his note, Young said. One of the last things he heard from anyone at New Breed came about a year after he left. Hauck, who by then was working with DeJoy at XPO, called and asked Young to donate to Tillis and other Republicans. “I said, ‘No, thank you.’ ”

Jacob Bogage, Alice Crites, Dan Zak and Michelle Ye Hee Lee contributed to this report. Ken Otterbourg reported from Greensboro, N.C.

Phroyd

[willpollock]

Colorado lawsuit accuses Louis DeJoy & USPS of fraud

Colorado lawsuit accuses Louis DeJoy & USPS of fraud

https://twitter.com/kevincollier/status/1304875534111903750?s=20

Jena Griswold is my spirit animal.

If I gathered non-MAGA Secretaries of State in a room I’d ask “why can’t you all be as badass as Secretary Griswold?” (To be fair, some of them are.)

https://twitter.com/JenaGriswold/status/1304828890364276736?s=20

Sec. Griswold *opened a can* on Twitter and served notice to would-be lawbreakers…

[politicsnc]

Trump won't cancel the election but he will try to suppress the vote

Trump won’t cancel the election but he will try to suppress the vote

No, President Trump is not going to move or cancel the election. Congress is not going to allow that. Even Republicans will oppose it. Still, the sentiment is widely accepted by the GOP: rig elections to benefit Republicans.

We’ve been front and center in the attempt to alter election rules to benefit Republicans. The GOP gerrymandering rendered veto-proof majorities in the state legislature…

[socialine]

The Election Could Be In Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Hands. To Understand How He Got There, Look To His Wife.

The Election Could Be In Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Hands. To Understand How He Got There, Look To His Wife.

Pool New / Reuters, Cq-roll Call / Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Sipa U

Left: Postmaster General Louis DeJoy; Right: Aldona Z. Wos, nominee to be ambassador to Canada

Pool New / Reuters, Cq-roll Call / Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Sipa U

Left: Postmaster General…

[coinnewsfx]

Louis DeJoy's journey from the big Trump fundraiser to the USPS boss 2020 Louis DeJoy, Trump's controversial new US Postmaster General, and his wife, Aldona Wos, Trump's candidate for Ambassador to Canada, have raised millions for Republican politicians and political candidates in his home state of North Carolina.

[2plan22]

RT @tribelaw: Trump’s Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, nominated to become our ambassador to Canada, own between $30 million and $75 million of assets in competitors to the US Postal Service. No problem there, right? 2PLAN22 http://twitter.com/2PLAN22/status/1292232408327225344

Trump’s Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, nominated to become our ambassador to Canada, own between $30 million and $75 million of assets in competitors to the US Postal Service. No problem there, right?

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) August 8, 2020

[omfgtrump]

The Tale of Two Viruses: Part 23

Let’s please pause for a moment of silence to mourn the death of businessman and former presidential candidate Herman Cain, who refused to wear mask and contracted Coronavirus at The Don’s Oklahoma shindig. I guess we can call that MADA: Making America Dead Again. (If I were an advisor to Biden’s campaign this might be a good concept for an advertising campaign, and a real zinger in a debate.)

The Don is a master of smoke and mirrors. It is his modus operandi; it is his way of denying reality and transforming it into his storyline. He lives by the credo that if you say something enough, no matter how false or distorted it is, people will believe you, or at least begin to doubt the truth.

His most recent trope is that he doesn’t believe the intelligence that Russia was involved in paying the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers. It’s just another “Russia hoax.” Translated: Just so boring. You know there are a lot of countries in the world. Just don’t get this crazy focus on Russia. I mean there are like a zillion countries, a zillion, many, many, many. Just proves the Dems are stupid as they only know about Russia.

But the smoke-and-mirrors man is experiencing more moments where reality is being reflected back to him seeping in, making him uneasy.

Yes, he is still saying things like “large portions of our country are corona-free.”

Yes, he is still spouting crazy shit. He retweeted a video that included doctors falsely claiming that hydroxychloroquine was a “cure” for the virus and that masks were unnecessary. When asked about that he responded: “They’re very respected doctors. There was a woman who was spectacular in her statements about it, and she’s had tremendous success with it.’’

When confronted with the fact that the physician who spoke of a cure, Dr. Stella Immanuel of Houston, also made videos saying that “doctors make medicine using DNA from aliens,” The Don responded “I know nothing about her.”

As he was huffing and puffing off the stage, it is rumored he mumbled to an aide: “The fake news is so alien unfriendly. I love aliens. What’s so bad about aliens? Aliens may have a cure for this idiotic pandemic. Call Homeland Security and tell them to go to that “secret place” where we have all the aliens imprisoned and get them working on a cure.

And then in a pathetic moment, with thousands still dying, The Don made it about himself, whining about his sagging approval ratings. Being a flaming narcissist, he couldn’t comprehend why Fauci’s ratings were high and his weren’t (as Fauci only exists as an extension of him!)

“He’s got this high approval rating, so why don’t I have a high approval rating with respect — and the administration — with respect to the virus?” Mr. Trump asked. “So it sort of is curious.”

Curious? Um, let’s just say that he is trying to tell the truth and save lives and you are attacking him, spreading false information and killing people. Better to not be curious as I don’t think you want to hear that.

In the face of all this denial and fantasy, what evidence is there that the smoke and mirror man is experiencing moments where reality is being reflected back to him and seeping?

It is reflected in a desperate strategy to invalidate the election. On some level, he has the sinking feeling that he is doomed. His only way out is to create chaos and invalidate the results.

“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” he wrote on Twitter. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote??”

The Don warned that allowing people to vote by mail will result in a “CORRUPT ELECTION” that will “LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY” and become the “SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES

Let’s take that tweet one all cap phrases at a time.

“CORRUPT ELECTION?” Remember Russian interference in 2016. It is happening again with The Don’s blessing. How about voter suppression? Fewer voting booths for marginalized communities. Fewer days of early voting. Erroneous removal of black and brown people from election rolls, to mention a few.

“LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY.” Well, Don, whatever was great about the Republican party before you took over, is now gone. You have remade it in your image. It was an ugly site before, but now it is utterly unviewable and dangerous.

“SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES.” How about we do a little exercise. How about we all stop for a minute and list the scandals we can remember that have occurred during this administration, then multiply it be 10 and maybe we can say we had a good start.

The Don also remarked that children would steal ballots out of mailboxes. A summer job for Barron? Think of all those young black and brown kids running around the suburbs diving it to mailboxes stealing ballots. Protect the suburbs, protect the suburbs!

The diabolical Don, a man who will stop at nothing to win, has another trick up his sleeve. Let’s call it plan B. If he can’t stop the election or stop the mail-in voting process, he can slow the delivery of mail, so ballots won’t arrive on time to be counted.

Now that one is probably few dreamed up. And how will he do this? He appointed Louis DeJoy as Post Master General. And who is this man? DeJoy is an avid supporter of The Don and this year he has already donated about $360,000 to Trump Victory, a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s re-election bid, and thousands to the Republican National Committee, according to federal filings. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, estimated that Mr. DeJoy had donated more than $2.5 million to Republican state parties, committees and candidates since 2016. And to sweeten the pot, earlier this year, Mr. DeJoy’s wife, Aldona Wos, was tapped by Mr. Trump to be the United States ambassador to Canada.

People get ready, as we ain’t seen nothin yet!

Let’s pause for another moment of silence to honor a true American hero, Congressman John Lewis, who died last week. Lewis was a giant of a man who was central to the civil rights movement and fought for racial equity and voting rights his entire life. The anti-Don. A man of grace and deep moral commitment to fighting for the dignity of all people. A man who everyday engaged in “good trouble,” to nudge America forward to confront its sins. In an article published after his death he said:

“Democracy is not a state. “It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.”

Amen!

from WordPress https://ift.tt/3fpVFRy via IFTTT

[dr-archeville]

REMINDER: Early voting starts today!  Find EV locations here.  Read the INDY’s endorsements here.  Print out your voting guide here.  And now you’re good to go. PRIMER is made possible by the INDY Press Club.  Your contributions help us keep local independent journalism viable in the Triangle.  If you like this newsletter, share it with a friend.  If you have suggestions for making it better, let me know.  Special thanks to our intern Will Atkinson for helping me put this together — and for writing an item on an Instagram influencer, which is not within my normal ambit. —Jeffrey C. Billman, INDY editor. Follow me on Twitter @jeffreybillman. 

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY[2020-02-13]

Above the Fold

→   SILENT SAM SETTLEMENT VACATED.

Yesterday, Orange County Superior Court Judge Allen vacated a settlement — which he’d approved in November — between the UNC System and the North Carolina division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for the disposition of the felled Silent Sam, which, of course, included a sweet, sweet $2.5 million payout.  Let’s briefly recap this insanity.

THE ISSUE: To bring a lawsuit, you have to have standing.  In other words, you have to be able to claim that you were damaged by another party’s action.  The SCV, which did not own or have a claim to Silent Sam, knew that it did not have standing to sue.  The BOG knew that, too. But the BOG negotiated anyway.

THE SCHEME: To settle a lawsuit with the SCV — and pay the SCV to take Silent Sam off its hands, which was the real goal here — the BOG needed the SCV to sue.  The SCV needed standing. So the BOG gave the SCV $74,999 — one dollar less than the amount that would require approval from the attorney general’s office — to purchase the “rights” to Sam from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which gave it to UNC in 1913.  The SCV sued the day before Thanksgiving. Eleven minutes later, UNC filed the settlement.

THE PROBLEM: A gift, as it turns out, is a gift.  The statue belonged to UNC; the UDC didn’t have “rights” to assign to anyone. UNC apparently assumed that because it was the defendant, no one could object.  Once a group of students and alumni was allowed to intervene, however, the thing went belly-up.

THE SPIN: “While this was not the result we had hoped for, we respect the Court’s ruling in this case,” said BOG attorney Ripley Rand, who has been paid thousands and thousands of tax dollars to defend this arrangement.  “Judge Baddour gave us a fair hearing, and he afforded all parties the necessary time and consideration to be heard.”

THE QUESTIONS: 1) The SCV said in court yesterday that it had already spent $52,000.  Is the state getting that money back — or the $74,999 that went to the UDC?  2) How is it possible that no heads have rolled over this idiocy?

REQUIEM FOR A SHAM: Take a trip down Memory Shame and relive all of your favorite #SilentSham moments.  

State & Local

→   DUKE AND UNC WOULD BE PUMMELED BY TRUMP’S BUDGET.

Among the many, many things President Trump’s budget proposal slashes and burn make room for necessities like the Space Force and tax cuts for billionaires is the National Institutes for Health, which Trump wants to hack by 7 percent, or $3 billion.  The NIH pumps a lot of money into Triangle universities.

FROM THE TBJ: “In fiscal year 2019, the NIH reports giving North Carolina more than $1.58 billion through some 2,557 individual awards.  The majority of those awards went to the Triangle and its medical research universities.  Duke University was the largest recipient according to the NIH database, bringing in 905 awards totaling more than $571 million.  Close behind, UNC-Chapel Hill secured 939 awards totaling more than $509 million.”

WHERE IT WOULD HIT: “A particular concern for Triangle universities could be that the biggest cuts proposed for NIH would impact the National Cancer Institute.  The White House's budget cuts its funding by $559 million, or 9 percent.   That funding is integral to cancer research that dominates both UNC and Duke.”

ONCE AGAIN: So long as Democrats control the House, Trump’s budget is a dead letter.  

→   BLOOMBERG IS COMING TO RALEIGH TODAY.

Former Republican NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who’s decided to burn hundreds of millions of dollars to win the Democratic presidential primary, will kick off early voting in North Carolina with events across the state, including at Raleigh Union Station at 12:30 p.m.  If he takes questions, maybe we’ll get to ask him about stop-and-frisk and how he thought all young black men looked alike.  Or we could ask him the AP’s new story in which Bloomberg blamed the end of redlining — the very racist practice of blocking black folks from getting mortgages in “white” neighborhoods — for the 2008 housing crash.  Maybe I should have taken them up on their offer of “great opportunity to create original content for your readers” after all.

Also, Bernie is coming on Friday, which inspired a lot more interest among my staff.  I’ll try not to hold it against the campaign that they referred to the Durham Convention Center as “Raleigh-Durham.”

RELATED: A new poll from High Point has Bernie Sanders up over Joe Biden 25–19 in North Carolina.  This is, I think, the first survey that’s shown Bernie ahead in the state, though it definitely tracks with what we’re seeing nationally.  (Biden is still ahead among the poll’s likely voters.)  Bloomberg and Elizabeth Warren place third and fourth.  Trump is at 42–50 approve/disapprove among all respondents.  Roy Cooper is at 40–33.  Thom Tillis, bless his heart, is at 31 percent approval.

→  FORMER NC DHHS SECRETARY ALDONA WOS GETS A COOL NEW JOB.

Y’all remember how bad Aldona Wos was at being North Carolina’s secretary of health and human services?

A REFRESHER: “Her [18-month] term was marked by threats from the federal government to sanction the state for food-stamp failures, a temporary shutdown of food benefits to low-income women and infants, and questions about no-bid contracts and the hiring of an executive from her husband’s firm to a high-paying, contract position as her assistant.”

ON THE OTHER HAND: “In the 2018 election cycle, Wos gave more than $760,000 to Republican candidates and causes, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. … Wos is married to Republican fundraiser and donor Louis DeJoy, who is leading the fundraising effort for the Republican National Convention in Charlotte this summer.”

AND SO: “President Donald Trump has nominated the former head of North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services to be the country’s new ambassador to Canada.”

→  WEATHER:  🌧🌧🌧☁️☁️☁️☁️ (This is getting old.)

Nation & World

→  TRUMP’S VENDETTA.

This lede, from The Washington Post, is something else: “President Trump is testing the rule of law one week after his acquittal in his Senate impeachment trial, seeking to bend the executive branch into an instrument for his personal and political vendetta against perceived enemies.  And Trump — simmering with rage, fixated on exacting revenge against those he feels betrayed him and insulated by a compliant Republican Party — is increasingly comfortable doing so to the point of feeling untouchable, according to the president’s advisers and allies.  In the span of 48 hours this week, the president has sought to protect his friends and punish his foes, even at the risk of compromising the Justice Department’s independence and integrity — a stance that his defenders see as entirely justified.”

Consider the few days:

DOJ officials overruled career prosecutors to help a Trump ally who obstructed Congress and threatened a witness during Robert Mueller’s probe of the Trump campaign.

Trump went on a Twitter tirade attacking the judge handling Roger Stone’s case.

Trump suggested the military should punish Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, whom Trump fired from the National Security Council after Vindman testified in the House impeachment inquiry.

Trump’s Justice Department is openly working with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, in his ongoing efforts to dig up dirt on his political rivals in Ukraine.  Giuliani is reportedly under federal investigation for possible campaign finance and lobbying violations.

Trump’s FBI has decided to lump in pro-choice activists with “domestic terrorists,” even though there’s never been a case of domestic terrorism linked to pro-choice activism.

Something to watch: Attorney General Bill Barr will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the Stone sentencing — but not until March 31.  Interestingly, that’s right after John Bolton’s book is supposed to come out.

→  U.S. HOUSEHOLD DEBT AT AN ALL-TIME HIGH.

So the economy is good, right?  Longest expansion in history.  Low unemployment.  Good job numbers.  The Fed chair told the Senate yesterday that, while he expected some “drag” due to coronavirus, “There’s no reason why the current situation of low unemployment, rising wages, high job creation — there’s no reason why it can’t go on.”  But the New York Federal Reserve also reported that U.S. household debt is now at $14 trillion, the highest it’s ever been.  That’s not necessarily bad: Consumers are spending and putting things on credit cards.  Interest rates are low, so people are taking out mortgages.  However, student-loan debt is also rising, as is credit-card delinquency, meaning people who are three months behind on their bills.

BEST ECONOMY EVER! “In public, President Donald Trump likes to boast about — and usually inflate — the performance of the American economy on his watch … which makes it odd that on Monday the very same Trump White House said it intends to slash a scheduled pay raise for civilian federal employees.  …Even more absurdly, Trump is justifying ordering the cut on the grounds that the country is in the midst of a ‘national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare.’”

→  HOUSE TO DEBATE EXTENDING THE ERA DEADLINE.

Good news/bad news for fans of the Equal Rights Amendment.

GOOD NEWS: After Virginia became te 38th state to pass the ERA — 38 being the magic number to enshrine it in the Constitution — the House will take up a resolution today to abolish a long-passed deadline on getting the ERA past the finish line.  (The GOP Senate seems unlikely to go along.)

BAD NEWS: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, of all people, is here to kill your buzz: “At an event at Georgetown University’s law school, moderator and federal appellate judge Margaret McKeown asked Ginsburg about an ongoing effort to revive the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).  … Ginsburg’s comments on Monday suggest that she believes this 1982 deadline should be considered binding.  ‘I would like to see a new beginning’ for ERA ratification, the justice told McKeown.  ‘There’s too much controversy about latecomers,’ Ginsburg added.  ‘Plus, a number of states have withdrawn their ratification.  So if you count a latecomer on the plus side, how can you disregard states that said we’ve changed our minds?’”

→  POPE FRANCIS REJECTS MARRIED PRIESTS.

The Pope has backed off a plan to carve out an exception to the clerical celibacy rule for priests in the Amazon region, where apparently nobody wants to enter the priesthood.  Francis, it seems, is worried about driving away traditionalists and splitting the church.

Arts & Culture

→  DOES DOWNTOWN RALEIGH HAVE TOO MANY COCKTAIL BARS?

Two more are opening, which the N&O tells us will “elevate the craft cocktail scene,” because the N&O has apparently missed Watts & Ward, C. Grace, Foundation, Fox Liquor Bar, Whiskey Kitchen, Haymaker, Draught & Dram, The Green Light — what am I forgetting? — which seems like quite a bit of elevation already.  The Merchant, on South Salisbury, comes from the folks behind The Green Light; and Killjoy, near Glenwood, is the brainchild of two solid bar managers.  They’ll both be great, no doubt.  I just wonder when it’ll be too much.  (We wrote about this when Kingfisher was about to open in Durham last year, by the way.  Kingfisher seems to be doing fine, so what do I know?)  

→  ROLLING STONE LOVES OUR MUSIC SCENE.

We might quibble with the idea that American Aquarium is a folk band, but other than that, Rolling Stone has a pretty decent rundown of how the Triangle’s music scene has evolved into one of the best in the country.

→  YOUNG BULL PREMIERS “CITY GIRL” ON BET JAMS.

The Durham R&B band Young Bull, which makes an appearance in that RS piece, just dropped the video for its new single “City Girl” on BET Jams last week.  Check it out here.

→  HILLSBOROUGH GETS NOMAD, A NEW GLOBAL FUSION SPOT.

Nomad, a new globally minded restaurant offering “traditional ethnic dishes with a unique spin,” is set to open in Hillsborough in early March.  It will be housed in Hillsborough’s century-old Osbunn Theatre, preserving the building’s historic details.

Odds & Ends

→  GOOD NEWS, WINE MOMS.   Your next bottle of chardonnay could be cheaper than you think.  The state ABC says California growers left around 100,000 tons of grapes on the vine last year, and the excess supply means lower prices.  Cheers!

→  CAROLINE CALLOWAY PIVOTS TO TWITTER.

Remember that week in 2019 when everyone on the internet was talking about disgraced Instagram influencer Caroline Calloway?  (No?  Short version: She put together a “Creativity Workshop” that turned into a mini-Fyre Festival and updated IG on the entire slow-motion trainwreck as it happened while whining about people hating on her.)  Well, now she’s found a new audience on Twitter.   Since the controversy last year, she’s fully leaned into her “scammer” persona, and the results are satisfyingly weird.

→  CAN SCHOOLS POLICE OFF-CAMPUS SPEECH?  

In January, four white high school kids in Michigan posted racist messages in a Snapchat discussion.  The incident made national headlines.  The school punished the kids.  Now the kids are suing in federal court, arguing that schools have no right to punish students for what they do outside of school.  

→  THE UK IS CREATING AN INTERNET CONTENT REGULATOR.  

And I’ll end with another free-speech wrinkle: Britain has created a new government office to, essentially, police internet content

THE NYT: “Britain on Wednesday introduced a plan that would give the government more latitude to regulate internet content, as part of an effort to force Facebook, YouTube and other internet giants to do more to police their platforms.  The government said the country’s media regulator, known as Ofcom, would take on new responsibilities monitoring internet content, and would have the power to issue penalties against companies that did not do enough to combat ‘harmful and illegal terrorist and child abuse content.’”

YEAH, BUT: “Left unanswered were many details, including what penalties the new regulator would have at its disposal or how it would keep tabs on the billions of pieces of user-generated content that are posted on the social media platforms.”

Primer is made possible by contributions to the INDY Press Club.  Join today and support independent local journalism.  If you’d like to advertise your business to Primer’s 25,000 subscribers, please contact me at jbillman@indyweek.com or John Hurld at jhurld@indyweek.com.  If you have suggestions for improving this newsletter, please contact me at jbillman@indyweek.com.

---

[tumbledsom]

President Donald Trump Picks Physician Dr Aldona Wos for Next Ambassador to Canada via Top World News- News18.com

[feelingbluepolitics]

Highly recommended.

"The House of Representatives has now called on DeJoy to testify about what it sees as a troubling pattern to suppress votes in November's general election, and has threatened him with arrest if he does not comply.

..."A number of of DeJoy's GOP beneficiaries are facing tight races this year: Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Sen. Martha McSally of Arizona and Michigan Republican candidate John James, who is running against Democratic Sen. Gary Peters. None of these Republicans have spoken publicly about DeJoy or his recent actions as postmaster general.

..."Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and his affiliated committees have taken a combined $48,500 from fellow state residents DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, former head of the North Carolina Health and Human Services Department. The couple have contributed to Tillis' election efforts since his 2014 campaign.

"DeJoy also gave to the John Bolton Super PAC, which has spent heavily for Tillis and, like Tillis, has ties to the shadowy data firm Cambridge Analytica, the subject of subpoenas during special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into 2016 election interference.

..."Tillis, one of the chief early architects behind North Carolina's controversial voter ID law — dubbed the 'monster' law by critics — played a central role in what a federal judge called the state's 'sordid history' of voter suppression when she struck down a North Carolina voter ID law late last year.

"The Tillis campaign did not respond to questions about the donations or the last time Tillis and DeJoy spoke.

"DeJoy also gave $5,000 to Graham's 2014 campaign, per FEC records. Graham, who as Salon recently reported has voted by mail on several occasions, has also made false claims that the practice is prone to fraud.

..."Graham sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is currently holding hearings to confirm DeJoy's wife, Aldona Wos, as ambassador to Canada.

..."DeJoy's donor questions extend well beyond the Senate, however.

"The Greensboro-based businessman once used a nearly untraceable North Carolina shell company, LMD Properties LLC, to give $50,000 to Karl Rove's American Crossroads super PAC in 2014."

He also exceeded the limit for donations to Josh Hawley, who sits on the committee confirming the all-trump postal service board which selected DeJoy.

Recently appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a top donor to Donald Trump and until earlier this year the head fundraiser for the Republican National Convention, has given tens of thousands of dollars to Republican Senators up for re-election this November, according to Federal Election Commission records reviewed by Salon.

FEC records also show that DeJoy regularly maxed out with tens of thousands of annual contributions to the official GOP committees dedicated to electing Republican lawmakers: the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

[malpopola]

Kion vi faru kiam vi enamiĝis kun tiparo (kiel “Tangerine” supre) kiu ne havas la Esperantajn literojn? Ĝi aspektus kiel la unua linio en la supra bildo. TERURE! Jen ses metodoj, skribi Esperanton sen Esperantaj literoj:

1. La lauh-Fundamenta kaj Zamenhof-proponita ho-sistemo, kie chiu Esperanta litero anstatauhighas per la senchapelita litero, sekvita de la litero Ho

2. La ne-Fundamenta sed renversebla xo-sistemo, kie cxiu E-litero  anstatauxigxas kiel en la ho-sistemo, sed post la sencxapelita litero vi metas Xon

Sekvas 4 sistemoj novaj, en kiuj la ne-Esperantaj literoj remapiĝas kune kun kelkaj Esperantaj. En ĉiuj kvar, Qo anstataŭigas Ĉon, Xo Ĵon, Yo Jon, kaj Ĥo tute malestiĝas ĉar ĝi estas maloftega. (Tiuj elektoj, cetere, similas al la oficiala Romanigo de la Ĉina.)

3. La simbola sistemo, kie qiuy literoy de la Esperanta alfabeto (krom Ĥo) anstatawijas per unu angla litero. Qar la angla Latina alfabeto havas 26 literoyn kay la Esperanta sen Ĥo 27, unu litero devas anstatawiji per simbolo, kay “fiŝaĵo” skribijas fi$axo

4. La germaneca sistemo, simila al la simbola, sed la literoy Vo-Fo-Ŝo ijas Wo-Vo-Fo kay Ŭo ijas U

5. La dulitera-szo sistemo, ankau simila al la simbola, sed “fiŝaĵo” ijas fiszaxo. Oni povas anstatawigi Ŭo per U aw Wo (ji ne estas tute renversebla, do ne tiom gravas)

6. La lausona sistemo, kie oni anstatawigas (au anstatauigas) la literon Ĝo per la du sonoy, el kiuy dji kumetidjas. La litero Ĵo ne anstatauidjas per Xo, kiel en la supray tri, sed per Jo. La literon Xo oni uzu por la sono Ŝo. Se eme, oni povas uzi TS por C kay TX por Ĉ (anstatau ol  C kay Q)

El qiuy qi, mi ege preferas la duliteran-szo sistemon. Kay la Ho kay la Xo sistemo suferas pro tio, ke ili plilongigas vortoyn kay aldonas la korespondan literon tro multe en Esperanta teksto. (Provu legi “fuŝĥoraĵo” en la Ho-sistemo! “fushhhorajho”...)

Oni devas alkutimiji al stranga skribmaniero de qiuy vortoy, kiuy entenas la modifitayn literoyn, sed mi kredas, ke oni faras tion rapide. Kay ekde kiam vi reedukijas, vi povos taypi la Esperantan sur qiu komputilo en la mondo!

Rimarko: 2. kaj 3. supre (la Xo-sistemo kay la simbola sistemo) estas renverseblay. Tio estas, kiam vi uzas ilin, komputilo automate povas reskribi ilin kun Esperantay literoy. Se vi yam uzis vortaro.net, ji ebligas skribadon de Esperantay literoy en la Xo-sistemo kay automate reskribas ilin korektite.

[deniscollins]

DeJoy Pressured Workers to Donate to G.O.P. Candidates, Former Employees Say

What would you do if the CEO strongly suggested that you write a check for either $2,600, the maximum allowable donation, or $1,000, and you would receive a bonus later in the year to cover this cost: (1) make the donation, (2) refuse, or (3) inform regulators? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major donor to President Trump and fund-raiser for the Republican Party, cultivated an environment at his former company that left employees feeling pressured to make donations to Republican candidates, and rewarded them with bonuses for doing so, according to former employees.

The arrangement was described by three former employees at New Breed Logistics, Mr. DeJoy’s former company, who said that workers would receive bonuses if they donated to candidates he supported, and that it was expected that managers would participate. A fourth employee confirmed that managers at the company were routinely solicited to make donations. The four former employees spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional retaliation.

The former employees did not say how explicit Mr. DeJoy was about linking the campaign contributions he was encouraging to the extra compensation, but three of them said it was widely believed that the bonuses were meant to reimburse the political donations, an allegation first reported by The Washington Post. Federal campaign finance law bars straw-donor schemes, in which an individual reimburses someone else to donate to a political campaign in order to skirt contribution limits. But it is legal to encourage employees to make donations, as Mr. DeJoy routinely did.

A review of campaign finance records shows that over a dozen management-level employees at New Breed would routinely donate to the same candidate on the same day, often writing checks for an identical amount of money. One day in October 2014, for example, 20 midlevel and senior officials at the company donated a total of $37,600 to the campaign of Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who was running to unseat a Democratic incumbent. Each official wrote a check for either $2,600, the maximum allowable donation, or $1,000.

Similar patterns of donations — including to the Republican National Committee and every Republican presidential nominee from President George W. Bush to Mitt Romney — stretch back to 2003, campaign finance records show. Mr. DeJoy’s wife, Dr. Aldona Wos, was the vice chairwoman of Mr. Bush’s North Carolina fund-raising team, and Mr. Bush later appointed her to serve as the ambassador to Estonia. Mr. DeJoy, a Republican megadonor, served as the chief executive of New Breed from 1983 to 2014, until the company was sold to XPO Logistics.

Monty Hagler, a spokesman for Mr. DeJoy, said in a lengthy statement provided to The New York Times that the former New Breed executive “consistently provided family members and employees with various volunteer opportunities to get involved in activities that a family member or employee might feel was important or enjoyable to that individual.”

Mr. DeJoy “was never notified” of any pressure they might have felt to make a political contribution, Mr. Hagler said, and “regrets if any employee felt uncomfortable for any reason.”

Mr. Hagler added that Mr. DeJoy had consulted with the former general counsel of the Federal Election Commission on election laws “to ensure that he, New Breed Logistics and any person affiliated with New Breed fully complied with any and all laws.”

At a hearing last month, Mr. DeJoy angrily denied a suggestion by Representative Jim Cooper, Democrat of Tennessee, that he had reimbursed his employees’ political donations.

“That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it,” Mr. DeJoy responded. “What are you accusing me of?”

It is unclear how the arrangement was communicated to employees or how extensive it was. One former New Breed employee said he donated to a Republican candidate and never received a bonus, prompting him to never again make another donation. Two other employees, Dave Bell, a current vice president at XPO Logistics who started as a vice president at New Breed in 2010, and Edi Dirkes, a human resources manager at the company from 2007 to 2010, said they had never heard of the arrangement.

“No one ever approached me” to make any political contributions, Mr. Bell said in a brief interview.

Still, the revelations are likely to fuel further scrutiny of Mr. DeJoy, who is under fire for his continuing financial ties to a company that does business with the Postal Service and his previous work fund-raising for Republicans.

“These are very serious allegations that must be investigated immediately, independent of Donald Trump’s Justice Department,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a statement. “The North Carolina attorney general, an elected official who is independent of Donald Trump, is the right person to start this investigation.”

Josh Stein, North Carolina’s attorney general, said in a statement that “it is against the law to directly or indirectly reimburse someone for a political contribution” and that “any credible allegations of such actions merit investigation by the appropriate state and federal authorities.”

Scrutiny of Mr. DeJoy began shortly after he took the helm of the Postal Service in June and began carrying out a series of cost-cutting steps that have led to slower and less reliable delivery as Mr. Trump has stepped up his attacks on voting by mail before the election in November.

Mr. Trump has assailed the money-losing Postal Service in recent months while falsely warning that voting by mail will lead to fraud and lost or stolen ballots. He has also cautioned that the practice could lead to long delays in determining a winner.

Mr. DeJoy has characterized those comments as “not helpful” and condemned the “false narrative” that he said was being promoted about both his intentions and the changes at the agency, which he has argued are necessary to shore up its financial health.

“I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” Mr. DeJoy told lawmakers last month, noting that he had committed to reversing many of the changes that have drawn the sharpest backlash.