Sometime in early February, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin asks two Republican members of the USPS board of governors to a meeting. He wants them to find someone for the open postmaster general job who will support Donald Trump’s agenda for the agency.
A few weeks later, Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of the board of governors, presented Mnuchin with Louis DeJoy — a Trump and RNC donor who illegally convinced employees at his logistics company to donate to Republican campaigns. DeJoy hosted a fundraiser for Trump in 2017.
Since 1970, the Postal Service had been an independent agency, walled off from political influence. The postmaster general is not appointed by the president and is not a cabinet member. Instead, the postal chief is picked by a board of governors, with seats reserved for members of both parties, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate for seven-year terms.
Now, not only was the Trump administration, through Mr. Mnuchin, involving itself in the process for selecting the next postmaster general, but the two Democratic governors who were then serving on the board were not invited to the Treasury meeting. Since the meeting did not include a quorum of board members, it was not subject to sunshine laws that apply to official board meetings and there is no formal Postal Service record or minutes of what was discussed.
The New York Times
Louis DeJoy is selected three months later to take over the United States Postal Service on June 15, and USPS is immediately damaged.
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