When announcing DeJoy's appointment, the USPS board of governors noted that New Breed "was a contractor to the U.S. Postal Service for more than 25 years," and received awards for high quality in the 1990s. The announcement didn't mention XPO's ongoing ties to the USPS.
According to federal records, when he became postmaster general, DeJoy still owned a large equity stake in XPO, totaling between $30 million and $75 million. Federal ethics officials recently approved his decision to keep these assets, but outside experts with decades of experience in government are raising red flags.
"The idea that you can be a postmaster general and hold tens of millions in stocks in a postal service contractor is pretty shocking," said Walter Shaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics, who resigned in 2017. "It could be that he's planning on selling it, but I don't understand the delay. He has managed to divest a lot of other things. And if he wasn't prepared to sell that off, he shouldn't have taken the job."
Schaub, who is now a senior adviser at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, suggested that if DeJoy doesn't divest his holdings soon, it could be construed as an illegal conflict of interest. Schaub also questioned why the ethics officials approved this arrangement.
It's illegal under federal law for federal government employees or their spouses to have a "financial interest" in companies that intersect with their official duties. The ethics experts who spoke to CNN said DeJoy could have mitigated these conflicts by divesting, agreeing upfront to recuse himself from some matters, receiving legal waivers, or even establishing a blind trust.
"If you have a $30 million interest in a company, of course it's going to impact you," said Stuart Gilman, who spent 12 years at the Office of Government Ethics, where he was the assistant director. "I would assume that there is a problem here. It certainly doesn't pass the smell test."
