Presidential aide, Postmaster DeJoy spoke in June 2020, after Trump tweeted unhinged mail-in ballot claims
"Thank you very much for the telephonic discussion yesterday," the USPS General Counsel told the White House in a letter.
In June 2020, top officials from the U.S. Postal Service had a conversation with a White House aide shortly after then-President Donald Trump incoherently alleged that his re-election campaign would be subverted by fraudulent mail-in ballots.
Dr. Julia Nesheiwat, then a top security advisor to President Trump, spoke with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and members of DeJoy’s staff on June 24, 2020, two days after Trump attempted to articulate the claim.
The Sentinel learned of the phone call through emails released by the USPS in response to a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Postal Service General Counsel Tom Marshall made a written record of the discussion in a letter to Dr. Neishewat, which begins: “Thank you very much for the telephonic discussion yesterday with the Postmaster General and our team to discuss election mail.”
More specific details about the impetus for the phone call are unavailable. The USPS declined to comment. Dr. Neishewat didn't respond to a request for comment made through the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based foreign policy think tank where she currently has a fellowship. But the conversation came on the heels of President Trump saying on Twitter that “MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS.”
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In the same post, Trump described the election as “RIGGED” and “THE SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES!” His baseless attacks on the integrity of mail-in voting fueled anger among his supporters, which culminated in deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a desperate attempt to thwart the transition of power to the Biden administration.
Trump's broadsides on mail-in voting throughout the 2020 election campaign also stoked suspicion among his critics that Postmaster DeJoy, a wealthy Republican donor and Trump appointee, was undermining access to the ballot by enacting substantial service cuts.
DeJoy vigorously defended the changes to service as necessary cost-cutting measures, and responded to criticism by promising to delay the changes until after the election. There were no serious accusations of the Postal Service tipping the scales for Republicans after votes were counted, in an election year that saw Democrats end up in control of all elected branches of the U.S. government.
The effort by top USPS officials to make a written record of the phone conversation between the Postmaster General and the White House bolsters DeJoy's contemporaneous claims that he was serious about upholding the agency's independence.
In October 2022, a federal court in Washington ruled that DeJoy followed election law when implementing his new service schedule, but did, however, fail to follow proper administrative procedures when moving forward with the plan. The delay in mail service harmed local and state governments by impeding “their ability to provide safe alternatives to in-person voting” during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled.
The letter from Marshall is somewhat light on details, but the USPS General Counsel noted that Dr. Neishewat offered “to assist us in spreading the message regarding how to ensure the efficient and timely handling of mail pertaining to elections.”
Dr. Neishewat also had a “specific question” about “delivery processes,” according to Marshall, which the General Counsel answered by listing information that the Postal Service would “love you to highlight, to help ensure that election officials and others take those processes into account when making decisions and on educating the public on what to expect when using the mail to vote.”
Marshall's enthusiasm for Dr. Nesheiwat's assistance reads like the White House aide may have been looking for information to dissuade Trump from making claims, such as “MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES, AND OTHERS.”
But Dr. Neishewat has appeared reluctant to soften the ex-President's far-right leanings in at least one public appearance. In an interview with the national security podcast Burn Bag, which was released the day after President Biden's inauguration, one of the hosts gave Dr. Neishewat an opportunity to denounce the events of January 6, 2021, which she declined to take.
“When we look at domestic threats, especially the threat of domestic terrorism, have we seen a shift from Islamic extremism to more politically-motivated terrorism, for example, on the far-right?” co-host A'ndre Gonawela asked.
“There's been challenges with rioting, and the fact that a lot of looting has taken place,” Dr. Nesheiwat said in response, referring to incidents related to the 2020 uprising against police violence that followed the murder of George Floyd.
“[Former] Attorney General [William] Barr talked about antifa at one point,” she said, referring to militant antifascists who were often invoked by the Trump administration when justifying indiscriminate acts of violence by security forces against protesters in the summer of 2020.
“They are an organization, even if they are decentralized,” she said of antifascists, making no mention of the calamitous putsch attempt launched by Trump and his supporters earlier in the month.
Click here to access the emails we obtained from the USPS. There are 5,752 pages of them. Records of the conversation between Dr. Neishewat and Postmaster DeJoy can be found on pp. 2,830-2,837.
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