U.S. Postal Service has paid Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s former company $286M since 2013

WASHINGTON >> The U.S. Postal Service has paid about $286 million over the past seven years to XPO Logistics, the former employer of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. He still holds at least a $30 million stake in the company, which has ramped up its business with the Postal Service since he took the helm at the agency.

The figures, obtained by The New York Times from a public records request, shed new light on the extent to which the company where DeJoy was a top executive — and in which he still has a substantial amount of money invested — is intertwined with the agency he now runs, fueling questions about a potential conflict of interest. They emerged on the same day that the House Oversight Committee issued a promised subpoena for documents that the panel has said DeJoy is withholding from Congress, including information about his personal financial affairs.

Through about 100 contracts with XPO Logistics and its subsidiaries, the Postal Service has paid the firm $33.7 million to $45.2 million annually since 2014 for services that include managing transportation and providing support during peak times.

The documents also show a surge in revenue for XPO from the Postal Service since DeJoy took over on June 15. The Postal Service paid XPO Logistics and its subsidiaries about $14 million over the past 10 weeks, compared with $3.4 million during the same time frame in 2019 and $4.7 million in 2018.

A spokesman for XPO attributed the uptick to the expansion of a contract with the Postal Service that was amended in December, months before DeJoy was selected to lead the agency.

David Partenheimer, a spokesman for the Postal Service, said that DeJoy had no involvement in contracting decisions and had recused himself from any involvement in dealings with his former company.

DeJoy, he added, was “prohibited by the government ethics rules from any involvement with XPO’s USPS contracts.”

In response to calls from Democrats in Congress for an investigation, the Postal Service’s inspector general has opened an inquiry into DeJoy’s operational changes and his personal finances, including his ownership of XPO stock.