Embattled postal leader is Trump donor with deep GOP ties

WASHINGTON (AP) — Louis DeJoy, the embattled leader of the U.S. Postal Service, is the first postmaster general in nearly two decades who is not a career postal employee. That doesn’t mean he’s unfamiliar with the agency.

The wealthy Republican donor owned a logistics business that was a longtime Postal Service contractor, and he has significant financial stakes in companies that do business or compete with the agency. That has led critics to question whether he has conflicts of interest, something DeJoy is almost certain to be asked about during two days of testimony beginning Friday before congressional committees.

DeJoy also has come under scrutiny for policies that have slowed mail deliveries and raised fears of chaos in the November presidential election.

“All these so-called cuts that happened in the middle of the night, it’s hard to understand how the postmaster general could believe he could do this and nobody would find out,” said S. David Fineman, a former chairman and member of the agency’s board of governors.

DeJoy, 63, took over June and pledged an overhaul. The Postal Service is struggling financially under a decline in mail volume, the coronavirus pandemic and a congressional requirement to fund in advance its retiree health care benefits. Democrats say the process that led to his appointment was opaque and they have questioned whether political patronage was involved.

DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, have a history of donating to conservative causes and Republican candidates, including $1.2 million to President Donald Trump’s election efforts. DeJoy is on the board of The Fund for American Studies, a Washington nonprofit dedicated to "the ideas of liberty, limited government and free markets,” to which his family’s charitable foundation has contributed more than $350,000.

Until he...