Postmaster Gen. Louis DeJoy Owns Stock in Maker of Covid Tests Delivered by Postal Service, Report

[appalachiablue]

- Common Dreams, March 31, 2022. - The Justice Department is being urged to investigate after a watchdog group found the postmaster general holds stock in Abbott Laboratories. -

A watchdog investigation published Thursday revealed that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy owns stock in the manufacturer of rapid coronavirus tests that the U.S. Postal Service has been delivering to households as part of the Biden administration's pandemic response. The Project on Government Oversight (POGO) discovered DeJoy's Abbott Laboratories holding in an examination of the scandal-plagued postmaster general's financial filings, which the group notes "show no evidence of him having fully divested that stock," leaving him positioned to profit off Abbott's partnership with the White House.

"DeJoy may have violated a federal conflict-of-interest law." Abbott, an Illinois-based company that makes the popular BinaxNOW at-home coronavirus test, was one of the companies that the Biden White House tapped to take part in an initiative that has allowed people across the U.S. to order free coronavirus test kits through a government website.
The Postal Service said earlier this month that it has delivered more than 270 million Covid-19 tests to U.S. households thus far.

POGO argued that by failing to relinquish his Abbott stock while participating in the test-delivery project, "DeJoy may have violated a federal conflict-of-interest law." "DeJoy not only owned Abbott Laboratories stock, he appears to have traded the stock after the White House announced on January 7 that the Covid-19 test kits the administration had purchased would be 'sent out through the mail,'" POGO noted. According to Washington Post reporting from January, DeJoy—a former logistics executive—was "intensely involved" in planning for the testing effort. POGO went on to detail DeJoy's suspiciously timed trades:

On January 11, two days before the federal government formally announced that it had awarded Abbott Laboratories a $306 million contract for the test kits, DeJoy engaged in two transactions involving Abbott. In a disclosure he filed on February 2, DeJoy described one of the transactions, which he valued at $1,001-$15,000, as an "opened written call option position." He described the second transaction, which he valued at $15,001-$50,000, as a "closed written call option position"...

On March 24, the federal government awarded a contract modification to Abbott Laboratories worth over $1 billion for test kits...

More,
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/03/31/report-shows-dejoy-owns-stock-maker-covid-tests-delivered-postal-service

[appalachiablue]

3. 'Different standards' it seems. From today:

Postmaster General says he's been cleared in federal probe, Source: AP, March 31, 2022,
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142897090

[yorkster]

7. There needs to be a new probe for the Abbott Labs

stock non-disclosure. Get this odious, arrogant grifter out.

[Hoyt]

4. They still aren't needed. USPS had way too many flat-sorters.

[SheltieLover]

9. This!👆

[dchill]

2. God I wish someone would take de joy out of DeJoy.

So obviously corrupt, but, oh well.

[Hoyt]

6. Oh, that's why they were delivered so efficiently. I'm OK with that.

[OnDoutside]

8. I hate saying it...but if this were the GOP, you'd have a ton of

Congressional investigations opened up, and this seems like obvious conflict of interest stuff

Come on lads, grow a pair !

[appalachiablue]

10. ALSO: Daily Kos, Ap. 1: The ethics cloud permanently parked over DeJoy just got bigger, darker...

Daily Kos, April 1.

It is getting really hard to keep up with all of the nefarious antics of U.S. Postmaster General and Trump holdover Louis DeJoy. It’s not bad enough that he regularly thumbs his nose at President Joe Biden, but he is continuing on with his deeply, deeply corrupt conflicts of interest in which he is using his public position to enrich himself.

The latest comes from ethics watchdogs Neil Gordon and Walter M. Shaub Jr., a prominent former government ethics official, writing at Project On Government Oversight (POGO). The new conflict is DeJoy’s role in the free COVID-19 test kit distribution earlier this year. The distribution of the kits was through the Postal Service, and he was closely involved in planning the logistics of the program. The kits were supplied by a few companies, one of which DeJoy owns stock in—stock he has not divested. Stock he traded in while the program was being planned and implemented.

That, POGO’s ethics experts conclude, is a possible violation of federal conflict of interest law. (Yes, another one.) They report that he has a net worth of $110,000 million and counting, including his current holdings, “a staggering number and variety of assets and income sources.” In the last half of calendar year 2020 when he was serving as postmaster general, he reported “a whopping 861 transactions.”...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/4/1/2089385/-The-ethics-cloud-permanently-parked-over-DeJoy-just-got-bigger-and-darker-This-guy-has-got-to-go