The U.S. Postal Service has sealed a five-year contract that cost $120 million with XPO Logistics, a company that has financial ties to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.
DeJoy has previously worked as XPO’s supply chain chief executive from 2014 to 2015.
Since he took became the postmaster, DeJoy has divested roughly in between $65.4 million and $155.3 million worth of his XPO shares.
DeJoy’s family businesses will continue to lease office buildings to XPO, which is expected to generate up to $23.7 million to DeJoy and his family over the next decade, according to a person who spoke to The Washington Post anonymously.
Following the report, the advocacy groups are also questioning the ethics of the deal.
Yet, DeJoy insisted that he is committed to operating the post office as a public entity and has no interest in privatizing the service.
“The U.S. Postal Service does not believe in and has not advanced the idea that it should operate as a private entity. In fact, we have advanced the opposite idea,” Jeffery Adams, Postal Service spokesman, said. “To carry out our universal service mission, and given our role as a fundamental part of the nation’s critical infrastructure, we believe that we must remain an integral part of the United States government.”
DeJoy was appointed as a USPS postmaster by former President Donald Trump last year ahead of the presidential election, despite not having previous postal experience before. He is also one of the former president’s top donors. Many Democrats accused him of intentionally slowing down the mail to benefit Trump’s reelection effort.
