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Mnuchin, Trump’s loyal henchman

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, wearing a face mask, walks with news reporters, following a series of meetings with members of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. July 21, 2020. REUTERS/Tom Brenner

He did what was necessary to ensure Dear Leader could steal the election:

 In early February, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin invited two Republican members of the Postal Service’s board of governors to his office to update him on a matter in which he had taken a particular interest — the search for a new postmaster general.

Mr. Mnuchin had made clear before the meeting that he wanted the governors to find someone who would push through the kind of cost-cutting and price increases that President Trump had publicly called for and that Treasury had recommended in a December 2018 report as a way to stem years of multibillion-dollar losses.

It was an unusual meeting at an unusual moment.

Since 1970, the Postal Service had been an independent agency, walled off from political influence. The postmaster general is not appointed by the president and is not a cabinet member. Instead, the postal chief is picked by a board of governors, with seats reserved for members of both parties, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate for seven-year terms.

Now, not only was the Trump administration, through Mr. Mnuchin, involving itself in the process for selecting the next postmaster general, but the two Democratic governors who were then serving on the board were not invited to the Treasury meeting. Since the meeting did not include a quorum of board members, it was not subject to sunshine laws that apply to official board meetings and there is no formal Postal Service record or minutes of what was discussed.

Nearly six months later, that meeting, along with other interactions between Mr. Mnuchin and the postal board, has taken on heightened significance as the Trump administration confronts allegations it sought to politicize the Postal Service and hinder its ability to handle a surge in mail-in ballots in November’s election. In interviews, documents and congressional testimony, Mr. Mnuchin emerges as a key player in selecting the board members who hired the Trump megadonor now leading the Postal Service and in pushing the agenda that he has pursued.

Mr. Trump’s animus toward the agency dates to at least 2013, but his criticism of its finances escalated once he took office and found new focus in late 2017, when he first bashed it for essentially subsidizing Amazon, another target of his ire. Amazon’s founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post, whose coverage has often angered Mr. Trump.

“This Post Office scam must stop. Amazon must pay real costs (and taxes) now!” the president wrote on Twitter on March 31, 2018, one of several such attacks over the years.

Twelve days later, he issued an executive order putting Mr. Mnuchin in charge of a postal reform task force. But it was not until earlier this year that the administration found a way to enforce its postal agenda — one that has now collided with the pandemic and the approaching election.

A few weeks after the February meeting with Mr. Mnuchin, one of the attendees, Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of the board of governors, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2017, threw a new name for postmaster general into the mix: Louis DeJoy.

Mr. DeJoy, a longtime logistics executive, was known for his hard-charging leadership style and his ability to convert disorganization into efficiency, as well his generous donations to the Republican Party, including to Mr. Trump. In October 2017, Mr. DeJoy had hosted a fund-raiser for the president’s re-election campaign at his North Carolina home.

His résumé was far different than recent postmasters general, most of whom had risen through the Postal Service ranks. Megan J. Brennan, who had announced in October 2019 her intention to retire as postmaster general at the end of January, began her career as a letter carrier in Pennsylvania.

Mr. DeJoy, who ran New Breed Logistics before selling it to XPO Logistics in 2014, would be coming from the private sector to assume control of a highly unionized, sprawling bureaucracy with more than half a million employees. His companies had experience working with the Postal Service, moving bulk shipments of packages from fulfillment centers and ferrying them to local Postal Service centers. But both companies had fewer than 10,000 employees, none of them unionized, and he had never worked in the public sector.

The companies were also the subject of a litany of complaints from workers, including more than a dozen lawsuits accusing managers — but not Mr. DeJoy personally — of presiding over a hostile environment rife with sexual harassment and racial discrimination and where workers were fired for getting sick or injured.

The board’s vice chairman at the time, David C. Williams, raised concerns about Mr. DeJoy’s candidacy and Mr. Mnuchin’s involvement, telling lawmakers during sworn testimony this week that he “didn’t strike me as a serious candidate.” Mr. Williams, a Democratic appointee, resigned before the vote as it became clear that Mr. DeJoy would be the pick.

The article goes on to show just what a “joy” it was to work for DeJoy’s company. His history of worker exploitation is simply appalling.

Loyal henchman Mnuchin and his accomplices on the board knew a corrupt Trumper when they saw one.

Is there any part of government these criminals have not corrupted?

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