Postmaster and crooked GOP fundraiser Louis DeJoy should get an award for Best Backhanded Apology. He said that he “regrets” if any of the employees which he, in essence, extorted into contributing to Republican candidates, were made to feel uncomfortable. His spokesman says he was “not aware” that anybody felt that way. Oh, boy. Washington Post:
Five people who worked for DeJoy’s former business, New Breed Logistics, say they were urged by DeJoy’s 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.
Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s 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.
“Louis 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,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations — and that covered the tax and everything else.”
We have all worked in circumstances where a version of go along to get along is in play. It is interesting to see a scenario where going along with breaking federal law is what’s needed to get along. What a corporate culture. But this is Trump world, so nothing, and I mean nothing, is out of bounds or surprising.
Yet Another Criminal Appointee.
My only regret is that he’s still Postmaster General. With North Carolina gunning for him on state level charges Trump can do nothing about, he’d better run and soon.
Of course, if some Democratic bigwig donor were to pull the same shenanigans, the GOP wouldn’t hesitate to weaponize that against him (and the Party as well). But, since the guy’s a GOPer–to quote the Peter Allen classic–“anything goes.”
(I can’t recall for certain if it was during the Romney campaign or the Trump campaign, but there was some big company owner who forced his employees to attend a GOP rally; if they weren’t scheduled to work, they were forced to attend off-the-clock and if they were scheduled to work, then work shut down for the rally. And the GOP candidate saw nothing wrong with it. But just imagine if a Democratic candidate were holding a similar rally and one of his supporters pulled this. The GOP would call that nearly criminal and–with no loss of irony–declare the Democrat was no friend of labor.)
State workers in Mississippi were allowed to take off to go see the Traitor here in Jackson and his fellow traitor from the UK. Didn’t see that in the paper, a state worker told my wife and me while filling out some forms.
He’s trying to cover his backside. Using straw donors to mask political contributions is a federal and state felony. Federal statute of limitations may have run out, but DeJoy is still at risk for prosecution under North Carolina law. The chances of that happening aren’t great, but Dejoy now has a big red circle drawn around him that will attract the attention of tax auditors. Tax fraud is a federal felony that could put DeJoy in the house of many doors for many years.
Oh, DeJoy is a joy for prosecutors looking for an open-and-shut case. As I told him in my final email to him, had he the good sense to imitate the Mercers and Kochs and stayed out of the spotlight, he could have avoided this. Instead, he’s on the list of Trump appointees EVERYBODY’S coming after when Trump is gone.
We in Ohio are familiar with this. It was used by one of the biggest stateGP donors on behalf of such candidates as the execrable Josh “The Empty Suit” Mandel when he challenged Sherrod Brown in his 2012 Senate race.
The entire repub party is a criminal enterprise!
It’s part of a transnational criminal enterprise now run by Putin.
I was sitting in the lobby of a Bank of America many years ago and thumbing through their company publication. They had articles telling their employees to support Republicans and such. I wanted to vomit. I was there with a client that was black and I know lots of their customers are black. The GOP has never been anything but the KKK in suites.
Is it me or does this guy ALWAYS look like he’s major league pissed off? Of course he has good reason to be pretty unhappy as he’s dodging giant flaming bags of shit coming at him from all directions. IANAL but there’s a question that’s formed in my mind since this particular news broke. Let’s assume there are receipts so to speak – donations and records of the “bonuses” that were actually a combination of reimbursement and HUSH MONEY. That’s one detail that jumped out in the reporting – that bonuses didn’t just cover the cost of the donation but (at least in some cases) the extra taxes caused by the bonus and even a little “vig” for the effort on the employee’s part. White collar cases are often tough to win because the average juror’s eyes glaze over when dealing with spreadsheets but this is one where they should be able to follow along well enough as the prosecutor lays out the case. And tosses in a thought or two about those bonuses covering those taxes.
But that’s not the question on my mind. As you note DeJoy brought this on himself by stepping into a bright spotlight where doing what he wanted to do (use a gig for Trump to scam himself some more money due to his financial conflicts of interest) and curry favor with Trump (I wonder what perks Trump promised him?). The thing is, he is filthy rich because he sold that company! That begs the question of whether the company that bought him out did the kind of legal due diligence it was supposed to do prior to closing on the sale. If they did then they know about this stuff. If they didn’t, and if they are publicly traded then they’ve got legal problems of their own. Either way, having the FBI, the (NC) SBI and federal and state regulators crawling up their asses isn’t good for business! Worse, if they haven’t been squeaky clean in their own right both before and after purchasing DeJoy’s company then they are in just a big a heap of trouble!
That’s my question. Is DeJoy getting major heat from them to get the hell out of Dodge? To get the hell out of the spotlight like yesterday? And string things out for a bit before quietly cutting himself a deal after the election? What kind of leverage do they have? Plenty, as in DeJoy’s entire ill-gotten fortune. Even if he can avoid major criminal trouble he’s going to cause enough headaches for the company that bought him out to make for one helluva civil suit assuming they don’t have too many skeletons in their closet.
The guy is going to have the feds, the state of NC AND the folks he sold his company to carving chunks out of him! No wonder he’s got that angry and pained look on his face. He’s probably shitting his pants so much that special Depends with “special overflow leg bags” for each leg of his trousers can’t hold it all.
If the employees wrote checks or put the “donations” on plastic, they should have records.
Jeez, do ANY of tRump’s buddies NOT break the law? Don’t answer that. I already know!
It’s my job that Dejoy is going to try to kill. I’m 60 and the day that I hope to never see might come. This is one of the many reasons I hope for a resounding Trump defeat at the polls.
Another guy who probably regrets taking a trump job position. This would probably never have come out if he still ran under the radar.