12/15/2020 After being hit with a lawsuit in federal court, and after months of being pressed by Democratic lawmakers, the U.S. Postal Service finally released Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s calendar on Tuesday.
“Haul Louis DeJoy in front of a criminal grand jury for his postal sabotage and subversion of our elections,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr.
Nearly four months after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez first demanded that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy turn over his daily calendar, the U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday released documents rendered almost completely useless by heavy redactions concealing who DeJoy met with as he worked to implement his destructive overhaul of mail operations.
The Postal Service released DeJoy’s calendar in response to a public records lawsuit filed in September by watchdog group American Oversight, which was not at all amused by what it finally received from the agency.
“Shrouding his calendar in secrecy likely violates the letter of the law, and certainly violates its spirit,” Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, told HuffPost. “DeJoy works for the public, but you wouldn’t know it from his calendar. Even in the Trump era, this is an extraordinary level of obfuscation.”
In a series of tweets on Tuesday, American Oversight noted that the Postal Service “didn’t specify which specific exemptions they are claiming applied to the individual redactions,” as is generally required by law.
“DeJoy supervised the delivery of mail-in ballots and USPS is now delivering Covid-19 vaccines,” the group noted. “The public is entitled to see how he’s spending his time and who has been influencing his decisions, but USPS continues to obscure this information.”
The only details left visible after the redactions are the dates and times of DeJoy’s meetings between June 15—when the postmaster general formally took over the agency—and November 7 as well as a handful of words, such as “meeting” and “in office.”
“Yeaaaah that’s not gonna work,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to the redacted calendar. When the New York Democrat requested during an August 24 hearing that DeJoy submit his calendar to lawmakers, the postmaster general said he would need to check with counsel before doing so.
In a subpoena issued in September, the House Oversight Committee demanded that the Postal Service provide DeJoy’s “complete, unredacted calendar from June 15, 2020, to the present.”
DeJoy, a GOP megadonor who was appointed to lead the Postal Service in May, is one of a number of government officials who will likely remain in power long after Trump leaves office in January, given that the president does not have the authority to remove the postmaster general.
As such, Democrats in Congress are facing pressure to exercise their oversight powers and pursue impeachment of DeJoy, whose brief tenure at the Postal Service has been enveloped in scandal.
“DeJoy is a ‘civil officer’ and is clearly impeachable under Article 2, Section 4,” The Nation‘s John Nichols recently argued. “He stands accused of committing crimes and of lying to Congress. There is more than enough evidence that he has abused his position in order to benefit a political ally and benefactor, Donald Trump. In addition, there is daunting evidence that he has done harm to an agency that was outlined in Article 1, Section 8.”
With the presidential election over, the DeJoy-led USPS has wasted no time resuming work on sweeping operational changes that dramatically slowed mail delivery nationwide before they were briefly put on pause in August.
“Haul Louis DeJoy in front of a criminal grand jury for his postal sabotage and subversion of our elections,” Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.) demanded on Tuesday.
“Shrouding his calendar in secrecy likely violates the letter of the law, and certainly violates its spirit,” said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight. (Image: American Oversight)
American Oversight sued the United States Postal Service on Tuesday to compel the release of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s calendar. In August, USPS claimed that DeJoy’s calendar, which is kept on a government computer and accessed by agency staff, is a personal record not subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.
“Who has Postmaster General DeJoy been meeting with and why is he trying so hard to keep it a secret?” said Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight. “DeJoy is supervising the delivery of everything from mail-in ballots to medications right now, and the public is entitled to see how he’s spending his time and who has been influencing his decisions.”
He should also redact his stupid alignment of Districts and who’s reporting to who. It makes zero sense. Now you have District mangers who are are no longer in charge of mail plants in their same area/ building. There not even in charge of transportation, IT, HR who are people sitting in his own building. They all report to someone else now. Simply ridiculous.
There’s more higher level positions & people in HQ now, then ever before. What he accomplished is chaos.
another Trump lackey,hiding something that belongs to the public,worst PMG,appointed by the THE worst president ever.
Why is the stooge of Das Fat Dildo trying to hide? Why can’t he reveal to the public his movements written down? He was taught well by the man that accepted his campaign bundles of joy! To lead America one must be sneaky even when caught.