Postmaster General Louis Dejoy speaks during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on proposed legislation in Washington, DC, Feb. 24.
Photo:
Graeme Jennings / Zuma Press
Stop us when you hear this. A leak to the Washington Post says the FBI is investigating a prominent GOP political figure who happens to be a target of the Democrats in Congress. Hmmm.
Skepticism is appropriate about Thursday’s Post report that unidentified sources say the FBI is investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on allegations that he violated campaign finance laws in the conduct of his previous business. The story revealed that the FBI interviewed former DeJoy employees and cited information from Mr. DeJoy.
The FBI news follows a September Post story alleging that a handful of people who worked for Mr. DeJoy’s former company, New Breed Logistics, said he had pressured them to make political contributions to GOP- Candidates to perform. They were reportedly later returned with larger bonuses. If that’s true, then it’s a straw donation program that is illegal under federal law.
Mr. DeJoy has denied the allegations and the Post story is thin. Wake County, North Carolina, District Attorney Lorrin Freeman, a Democrat, conducted a review of state campaign funding reports and told the Post that she “did not provide sufficient evidence of a pattern of inappropriate submissions to initiate a state criminal investigation.”
Mr. DeJoy also underwent a financial review by the Postal Service General Inspector which found that he had met “ethical requirements for disclosure, refusal and alienation” when he took up his post.
Post history focuses on 2000 through 2014, the year New Breed was acquired by
where Mr DeJoy worked until his retirement in 2015. The federal statute of limitations for violations of straw donors is five years. Why is the FBI digging into a case it probably can’t prosecute?
The answer could be politics. Democrats have attacked Mr DeJoy since his May 2020 appointment as Trump’s “megadonor” and political hacker. But he was chosen by the US Postal Service’s bipartisan board of governors – Chairman Ron Bloom is a Democrat – for his experience in logistics and management. The Democrats charged last year that Mr DeJoy tried to sabotage the presidential election by cutting resources for mail-in voting. There was nothing to it.
Democrats don’t like Mr DeJoy’s attempts to curb the postal service’s years of red ink by cutting extra trips and reducing man-hours and overtime – all anathema to the union workforce. But the Democrats cannot stop many DeJoy reforms without passing laws.
A leftist advocacy group, the Campaign Legal Center, has lodged a complaint with the Federal Electoral Commission about the issue of campaign funding. House chairman Carolyn Maloney said last year that she is investigating the Post’s allegations and the Democrats had already requested that the FBI investigate Mr. DeJoy over the election allegations. Now what do you know, a confidential FBI investigation has leaked.
The FBI and Justice Department better have hard criminal evidence, or heads rolling, rather than Mr. DeJoy’s. The office’s reputation has still not recovered from its lies before the Federal Supervision Court to obtain arrest warrants to spy on Trump campaign officials. The judiciary and the FBI defiled themselves in the Michael Flynn case. Attorney General Merrick Garland needs to get a grip on his bureaucracy.
Main Street: Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s ridiculous tirade targets former Attorney General William Barr, underscoring Liberals’ great frustration that the special adviser failed to overthrow President Trump. Pictures: Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly
Copyright © 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Published in the print edition on June 5, 2021.
