‘Is Your Backup Plan to Be Pardoned Like Roger Stone?’: House Dem Ignites Postmaster DeJoy Hearing With Brutal Line of Questioning
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) asked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy whether his “backup plan” is “to be pardoned like Roger Stone” on Monday during DeJoy’s hearing before the House Oversight Committee.
Cooper opened by telling DeJoy that a letter sent by one of his constituents to the social security office just twenty miles away “took 12 days to arrive,” before adding, “Just this morning, excellent reporting from Nashville’s Channel 5 TV proves that Nashville’s mail trucks are being forced to leave on schedule even when completely empty.”
“Imagine it, 53-foot trucks forced to travel hundreds of miles completely empty due to your so-called reforms… That’s not efficiency. That’s insanity. For anyone thinking of voting absentee, the effect of your policies is to unilaterally move up election day from November 3rd to something like October 27th, and if you force more empty trucks on the highway, you will be able to single-handedly move up election day even earlier,” he continued, claiming, “According to NPR, already 550,000 primary ballots — absentee ballots — were rejected in just 30 states, and one of the main reasons was late delivery.”
“How dare you disenfranchise so many voters when you told the Senate committee last week that you had a sacred duty to protect election mail,” declared Cooper. “You know that it’s a felony for a Postal Service officer or employee to delay delivery of the mail. A postal employee can be fined or imprisoned for up to five years for delaying the mail but, somehow, you can delay all the mail and get away with it? They can be prosecuted, but you can’t? Even if your actions are a million times worse?”
He asked, “Mr. DeJoy, do you have a duty to obey U.S. Law like every other American?” prompting DeJoy to respond, “I do, sir.”
“Well, previous postmasters general have been punished for much smaller conflicts of interest than yours,” Cooper claimed, noting, “In 1997, the 70th postmaster general, Marvin Runyon from Tennessee, had to pay $27,000 because of a $350,000 conflict of interest.”
“If your $30 million conflict of interest, 100 times larger than Mr. Runyon’s, were treated like your predecessors, you would have to pay a $2.7 million fine and probably be ousted from being postmaster general. So, Mr. DeJoy, are you above the law that applies to other postmasters general?” he questioned.
DeJoy answered, “I don’t agree with the premise. I’m in full compliance with all ethical requirements that I need to have, and there’s no IG investigation and I welcome the result of that report.”
Cooper then went on to ask if DeJoy paid “back several of your top executives for contributing to Trump’s campaign by bonusing or rewarding them,” to which DeJoy snapped, “That’s an outrageous claim, sir, and I resent it… The answer is no.
As Cooper pushed on the subject, DeJoy complained, “I’m not here to answer these types of questions. I’m here to represent the Postal Service… All my actions have to do with improvements of the Postal Service. Am I the only one in this room that understands that we have a $10 billion a year loss?”
However Cooper ignored DeJoy’s complaints and asked, “Mr. DeJoy, is your back-up plan to be pardoned like Roger Stone?” eliciting gasps from the room.
DeJoy shook his head, laughed, and replied, “I have no comment on that. It’s not worth a comment.”
President Donald Trump pardoned Stone — a former adviser — in July after he was convicted of seven felonies that included “lying to federal investigators” and “tampering with a witness.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
