DeJoy Reimbursed Employees for GOP Donations

[RandySF]

“Louis DeJoy’s prolific campaign fundraising, which helped position him as a top Republican power broker in North Carolina and ultimately as head of the U.S. Postal Service, was bolstered for more than a decade by a practice that left many employees feeling pressured to make political contributions to GOP candidates — money DeJoy later reimbursed through bonuses, former employees say,” the Washington Post reports.


https://politicalwire.com/2020/09/06/dejoy-reimbursed-employees-for-gop-donations/

[riversedge]

1. and then DeJoy could write off the bonuses as a business expense.

[Me.]

2. Isn't That Illegal?

a type of money laundering?

[GoCubsGo]

11. Yes. Punishable with huge fines and/or prison time.

[dsc]

12. yes it is the same law that D'Sousa broke.

[kysrsoze]

3. That's criminal. I'd say it's prosecutable.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

4. Remember when we used to have

campaign finance laws?

Apparently, now the only crimes are being non-white and not genuflecting before Trump.

[hedda_foil]

5. He evaded campaign finance laws by repaying the employees through company bonuses.

From the original WaPo article mentioned in the OP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/louis-dejoy-campaign-contributions/2020/09/06/1187bc2c-e3fe-11ea-8181-606e603bb1c4_story.html

“Louis was a national fundraiser for the Republican Party. He asked employees for money. We gave him the money, and then he reciprocated by giving us big bonuses,” said David Young, DeJoy’s longtime director of human resources, who had access to payroll records at New Breed from the late 1990s to 2013 and is now retired. “When we got our bonuses, let’s just say they were bigger, they exceeded expectations — and that covered the tax and everything else.”

Another former employee with knowledge of the process described a similar series of events, saying DeJoy orchestrated additional compensation for employees who had made political contributions, instructing managers to award bonuses to specific individuals.
--snip--
A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats.
--snip--
Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.

Such federal violations carry a five-year statute of limitations. There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

--more--

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/louis-dejoy-campaign-contributions/2020/09/06/1187bc2c-e3fe-11ea-8181-606e603bb1c4_story.html

[Hoyt]

6. If payback can be proven, Dejoy will be next crook to step down.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Holy crap!

[crickets]

8. DeJoy needs to go. He needs to be fired yesterday. nt

[DFW]

9. Tom Noe in Ohio spent years in jail for that (Bush 2004)

Why would this not be a felony for DeJoy today? The law hasn't changed. It is a felony to circumvent the legal personal contribution limit by contributing via third parties. Period.

[MerryBlooms]

10. God, they're all felons. I'm so sick of their shit!