Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

How did Louis DeJoy, the first Postmaster General to have never worked in the Postal Service to ever serve in the job, get that plum position? Could it have been, oh, I don't know, buying his way in? DeJoy donated more than $600,000 to the Trump campaign and to the Republican National Committee from the time the job opened up and getting the nod. Lisa Graves, executive director of True North Research, which investigates the influence of money on public policy, testified to Congress Monday detailing the depth of DeJoy's spending with the GOP.

In just this 2020 cycle, he's given more than $1.5 million to Republicans, most to Trump's reelection and to Republican Senate races. He invested almost $80,000 in Republican Senate races since December, when the Postmaster job opened up. "This level of partisanship," Graves said in written testimony, "undermines public trust in the Postal Service as an institution." Why yes, yes it does. It also resurfaces all the questions that emerged about just why Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took a detour from his day job to get DeJoy this job. Whatever motivated him, it clearly wasn't DeJoy's qualifications.

Ahead of Monday's hearing, Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly, chairman of the oversight subcommittee, stated the obvious. "We have a crony at the helm of our nation's Postal Service, a man rife with conflicts of interest and potential violations of law." The potential violations of the law are the alleged campaign finance violations in which he used a straw donor scheme to raise over $1 million for Republicans from 2000 to 2014 from his former employees. Allegedly. He faces potential criminal liability for that in the state of North Carolina, which does not have a statute of limitations on felonies and where his company was headquartered.

He also potentially faces charges of lying to Congress about potential donations to the Trump campaign, a possibility that much stronger with these revelations. DeJoy has been subpoenaed for all of his communications with the Trump campaign or administration since being confirmed in the job. Connolly was trying to get at DeJoy's communication with the Trump campaign and administration to determine whether he might be using his position to sabotage mail-in voting and help Trump.

That inquiry needs to be broadened, and Mnuchin needs to be brought in to determine exactly how DeJoy got this job and whether bribery had anything to do with it.