Louis DeJoy faced more than a dozen conflicts of interest when he began serving as Postmaster General because of his family's investments in a number of companies closely tied to the U.S. Postal Service, according to new documents that show he was initially allowed to merely recuse himself from matters involving those companies rather than divesting from them.
The documents were obtained by the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) through a Freedom of Information Act request that was ultimately fulfilled by court order.
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DeJoy, a Trump donor who took over the Postal Service in May 2020, began the formal recusal process for 12 of the companies and his business XPO Logistics in July and JPMorgan Chase in August. Amid ethical concerns and criticism, DeJoy fully divesting himself of them under public pressure only in August 2020 — months after he took the top job.
“There was a period of time where the head of the Postal Service was making decisions when there could have been a conflict, and he could have been thinking about his own financial interest, rather than the interest of the Postal Service and the country,” said Noah Bookbinder, the president of CREW. “That’s significant.”
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The U.S. Postal Service maintains he acted in compliance with ethics regulations.
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