Louis DeJoy Begins Serving as Postmaster General Despite Conflicts of Interest

Louis DeJoy officially began serving as the 75th Postmaster General of the United States and USPS Chief Executive Officer, having been unanimously selected by the USPS Board of Governors on May 6, 2020. DeJoy was a major Republican Party megadonor who contributed over $1.2 million to Trump’s election efforts and more than $440,000 to Republican causes since January 2020 alone. He had no prior postal experience, marking the first postmaster general without USPS experience since 1992.

Unprecedented Conflicts of Interest

DeJoy held between $30 million and $75 million in equity stakes in XPO Logistics, a major USPS contractor that had secured more than $500 million in federal postal contracts since 2014. He was the former chairman and CEO of New Breed Logistics, which he sold to XPO Logistics for $615 million in 2014, subsequently serving as CEO of XPO’s supply chain business in North America and on XPO’s board of directors until 2018. While DeJoy divested shares in UPS and Amazon before assuming his role, he retained his substantial XPO holdings, creating obvious conflicts given USPS’s business relationship with the company.

Political Appointment Through Trump-Selected Board

The USPS Board of Governors that selected DeJoy was entirely composed of Trump appointees confirmed by the Senate. The Board conducted what they described as an “extensive nationwide search” reviewing over 200 candidates, but ultimately selected a Trump megadonor with no postal experience to lead the nation’s mail system just months before a presidential election expected to rely heavily on mail-in voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Significance

DeJoy’s appointment represented an unprecedented politicization of the historically independent Postal Service. His lack of postal expertise, combined with massive financial conflicts of interest and status as a major Republican donor, raised immediate concerns about his ability to serve the public interest. These concerns would prove prescient in the months ahead as DeJoy implemented operational changes that severely degraded mail service during the 2020 election, leading to multiple federal investigations and court orders. His appointment exemplified the Trump administration’s pattern of installing loyalists with conflicts of interest in positions of public trust to serve political rather than institutional objectives.