{"id":176095,"date":"2020-09-06T18:45:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T23:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/09\/06\/this-is-not-a-surprise\/"},"modified":"2020-09-06T18:45:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-06T23:45:00","slug":"this-is-not-a-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/09\/06\/this-is-not-a-surprise\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Not a Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy pressured his employees to make campaign donations to Republicans, and then used bonuses to reimburse them<\/a>, which is a criminal violation of campaign finance law. (Just ask Dinesh D’Souza)<\/p>\n

If Trump loses in November, I expect a flurry of pardons in January:<\/p>\n

Louis DeJoy\u2019s 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 \u2014 money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say.<\/span>

<\/span>Five people who worked for DeJoy\u2019s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy\u2019s 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.<\/span>

<\/span>Two other employees familiar with New Breed\u2019s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cLouis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,\u201d said David Young, DeJoy\u2019s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. \u201cWhen we got our bonuses, let\u2019s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations \u2014 and that covered the tax and everything else.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Hagler said DeJoy \u201csought and received legal advice\u201d from a former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission \u201cto ensure that he, New Breed Logistics and any person affiliated with New Breed fully complied with any and all laws. Mr. DeJoy believes that all campaign fundraising laws and regulations should be complied with in all respects.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws<\/a>. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.<\/span>

<\/span>Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is clearly criminal.<\/p>\n

The only question is whether or not the next Democratic administration has the balls to enforce the laws.<\/p>\n

American oligarchs thrive on impunity, and the impunity has to end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy pressured his employees to make campaign donations to Republicans, and then used bonuses to reimburse them, which is a criminal violation of campaign finance law. (Just ask Dinesh D’Souza) If Trump loses in November, I expect a flurry of pardons in January: Louis DeJoy\u2019s prolific campaign fundraising, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[513,470,368,435,364,374,454],"class_list":["post-176095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-campaign-finance","tag-communications","tag-corruption","tag-crimes","tag-evil","tag-politics","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176095"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}