NEW: Tillis Benefited from “Straw-Donor Scheme” Led By Current Postmaster General He Refuses to Hold Accountable

Tillis “One of the Biggest Beneficiaries” of Scheme, “Collected Nearly $300,000” from Employees at DeJoy’s Company

DeJoy Has Donated to Lindsey Graham, Martha McSally, John James & the NRSC

A jaw-dropping investigative report from the Washington Post has exposed Senator Thom Tillis as “one of the biggest beneficiaries” of an alleged “straw-donor scheme” led by the current USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who Tillis has refused to hold accountable for delays in veterans’ prescriptions and other mail delivery service interruptions. 

Tillis has banked “nearly $300,000” from a corrupt fundraising maneuver that appears to have violated state and federal campaign finance laws and been orchestrated by DeJoy, the Republican mega-donor and former corporate executive who’s currently mismanaging the Postal Service. Despite the service reductions that have delayed the mail delivery of veterans’ prescriptions and other essentials to North Carolinians, Tillis has refused to hold his major donor accountable. 

The same goes for Senators Lindsey Graham and Martha McSally and failed politician John James, who have all taken thousands of dollars in political contributions from DeJoy but refuse to take action on the alarming USPS changes that are causing widespread delays in delivery of critical mail for their constituents and threaten to disenfranchise millions of Americans in the November election. 

“Senator Tillis is at the center of a corrupt straw-donor scheme, and under the influence of those campaign dollars, he refuses to demand answers or action from the Postmaster General in the face of severe mail delivery disruptions to North Carolinians,” said DSCC spokesperson Stewart Boss. “This is exactly why voters do not trust Senator Tillis, have given him low marks on doing his job, and will vote him out in November.”

Washington Post: Louis DeJoy’s rise as GOP fundraiser was powered by contributions from company workers who were later reimbursed, former employees say
By Aaron C. Davis, Amy Gardner and Jon Swaine

Key Points: 

• 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.

• Two other employees familiar with New Breed’s financial and payroll systems said DeJoy would instruct that bonus payments to staffers be boosted to help defray the cost of their contributions, an arrangement that would be unlawful.

• 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.

• There is no statute of limitations in North Carolina for felonies, including campaign finance violations.

• One of the biggest beneficiaries of donations from New Breed employees has been GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose campaign committees collected nearly $300,000 from people at the company in 2014, campaign finance records show.

• Ultimately, New Breed did not go public. Instead, Warburg Pincus sold it to XPO Logistics the following year for $615 million, according to company announcements and SEC records. The month the deal closed, New Breed employees made a slew of political donations in a two-day period — more than $407,000. Almost three-quarters of that went to support Tillis’s Senate bid.

• Clarke, Hauck and DeJoy were among 10 New Breed employees who led the giving. On Sept. 29, each gave identical donations of $12,600 to the Thom Tillis Victory Committee, campaign finance data shows. The next day, the same 10 employees each gave $10,000 to the North Carolina Republican Party.

• Since then, five of those individuals have significantly cut back their political contributions, and one has not given again at all, FEC filings show.

Read the full investigative report here. 

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