Employees Say DeJoy Pressured Them to Make GOP Contributions

Pool/Abaca via ZUMA

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.I predict that before long our postmaster general is going to rue the day he met Donald Trump:

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.

Pressuring employees to make donations and then reimbursing them is very, very illegal. Karen Tumulty, who has a long memory, reminds us of the many people who have gone to jail for doing this.
DeJoy denies all this, of course, but unlike so many stories of this nature this one has folks making allegations on the record. It’s going to play out a little differently than stories that depend solely on anonymous sources.