Congressman urges Biden to fire USPS board of governors for ‘silence and complicity’ with Trump ‘arson’

Bill Pascrell says Postal Service officials ‘sat silent’ during former administration’s attacks on mail-in voting

(EPA)

Democratic Congressman Bill Pascrell has urged Joe Biden to fire members of the US Postal Service Board of Governors following Donald Trump’s attempts to undermine mail-in voting under its Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

The New Jersey congressman condemned the board’s “silence and complicity” during service cuts and the president’s repeated attacks against expanding vote-by-mail efforts.

“After several years of unprecedented sabotage, the United States Postal Service is teetering on the brink of collapse,” the congressman wrote in his letter to the president.

“Through the devastating arson of the Trump regime, the USPS Board of Governors sat silent,” he said. “Their dereliction cannot now be forgotten.”

In May, the board unanimously appointed Mr DeJoy – a top donor to the GOP and Trump campaign – to lead the agency, which ordered sweeping service cuts, including removing mail-sorting machines, cutting overtime and removing mailboxes, efforts that saw delivery delays across the US amid a surge in demand due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The president does not have authority to remove the postmaster general, but Congressman Pascrell asserts that Mr Biden can remove the board members – appointed to “represent the public interest” – “for cause".

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the letter during a briefing on Monday but did not have any additional information.

The board consists entirely of Trump appointees, including two Democrats and four Republicans.

“As America’s perhaps most enduringly trusted institution, a central economic and social engine for every community in America, and a vital vanguard of the democratic tradition, the Post Office must play an essential role in our national life for generations to come,” the congressman wrote to the White House. 

“The continued challenges in preserving our Postal Service to survive and endure are gargantuan, and so demand bold solutions to meet them,” he said. “To begin that work, we must have a governing body that can be trusted to represent the public interest."

Congressman Pascrell – a prominent critic of the Trump administration who has repeatedly sought to uncover the former president’s elusive financial records and disclosures – has accused officials in the previous administration of committing innumerable crimes against the US, from endangering national security to ripping families apart and engaging in treachery and treason.

Last year, he pressed the USPS inspector general to investigate the administration’s efforts to “sabotage” the agency. In September, he requested New Jersey’s attorney general to open a “wide-ranging investigation of Trump’s actions to interfere in our elections” and impel a grand jury “for the purpose of considering criminal indictments” against then-president Trump and Mr DeJoy for “the subversion” of the state’s elections.

Democrats have accused Mr DeJoy of intentionally undermining the agency he oversees, while President Biden’s predecessor repeatedly and falsely insisted over several months that 2020 elections would be “corrupt” and “rigged” because of vote-by-mail expansions during the pandemic.