House Just Called for the Postmaster General to Testify at an “Urgent Hearing” Later This Month

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For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones’ newsletters.On Sunday, the House Oversight Committee urged Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to move up his scheduled testimony before the committee to August 24, nearly a month before planned, citing the “starling new revelations” about the “scope and gravity of operational changes you are implementing at hundreds of postal facilities.”
“Your testimony is particularly urgent,” writes the committee’s chair, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), “given the troubling influx of reports of widespread delays at postal facilities across the country—as well as President Trump’s explicit admission last week that he has been blocking critical coronavirus funding for the Postal Service in order to impair mail-in voting efforts for the upcoming elections in November.”

JUST IN: House Oversight Committee calls postmaster general DEJOY to testify on Aug. 24, nearly a month earlier than scheduled. pic.twitter.com/4Zt7l8pEb9
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 16, 2020

The committee’s request comes less than 24 hours after President Trump praised DeJoy, saying he is a “very smart man” and that DeJoy “wants to make the Post Office great again.” On Saturday in Bedminster, New Jersey, the president also blamed Democrats for the lack of secured funding for the Postal Service, contrasting with his admission Thursday that if he refuses to make a deal with Democrats for funding, ballots would fail to be counted in November.
“If you’re going to do these millions of ballots out of nowhere,” he said Saturday, “[DeJoy is] going to obviously need funding but the Democrats are not willing to provide funding for other things and therefore they are not going to get the funding for that.”