The ridiculous corruption and blatant efforts to suppress the vote involved in Donald Trump’s sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service just keep getting worse, and the story keeps growing. Last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and other Democrats asked the USPS inspector general to investigate the operational changes Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has made that are slowing down the mail as well as DeJoy’s potential financial conflicts of interest. Questions about those conflicts of interest grew Thursday with the revelation that when DeJoy sold his Amazon stock, he bought stock options in the company.
“Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's investments in @USPS competitors were already deeply problematic. But his purchase of @Amazon stock options after his appointment is inexcusable,” Warren tweeted. “The @OIGUSPS must investigate this corruption.”
Those Amazon stock options are in addition to DeJoy’s $30 million in holdings in XPO Logistics, his former firm, which is a USPS contractor.
At the same time, congressional Democrats are pressuring the Postal Service over its move to effectively raise prices on absentee ballots, which have historically been shipped at first-class speeds for third-class prices. Now, under DeJoy, and with mail slowdowns already hitting across the country, state elections officials have been warned to pay the first-class postage if they want ballots to arrive in a timely fashion.
“At a time when people will have to vote by mail in record numbers because they can’t or won’t go vote in person, the postmaster general is saying we should triple the rate of cost to vote by mail?” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. “What a despicable derogation of democracy.”
Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, echoed Schumer. “This year, where voting by mail is going to be crucial, it is alarming to make these cuts and suggest to state and local governments that they pay for expedited service when our democracy is relying on this,” she said. “It’s hard not to see this as a political move by the Trump administration.”
Especially when Trump is saying straight out that it’s his goal to prevent mail-in voting by undermining the Postal Service.
