Another day, another Hillary Clinton scandal.
Absolutely stunning details emerging.
Today is the breaking story that there were “systemic violations” (that’s code for violations repeated over and over throughout the entire Postal Service with clear knowledge of wrongdoing) that were designed to help Hillary Clinton in the election.
Yeah, and the Dems are still trying to tell us there is no voter fraud. Right.
Read More: Trump Accelerates Voter Fraud Investigation
I’m ready for Trump to fire the Postmaster General’s ass. Do it Trump! “You’re Fired” and “you’re headed to jail for systemic violations of federal law!”
Here are ore details of the huge scandal, from the Washington Post:
The U.S. Postal Service engaged in “systemic” violations of federal law by pressuring managers to approve letter carriers taking time off last fall to campaign for Hillary Clinton and other union-backed Democrats, investigators said Wednesday.
High-level postal officials had for years developed a practice of granting the employees’ requests for unpaid leave, leading last year to an “institutional bias” in favor of Clinton and other Democrats endorsed by the National Association of Letter Carriers, one of the largest postal unions. The Postal Service violated the Hatch Act, which restricts federal employees from working for or against a political candidate or party during election season.
“The culture and practice was, ‘It’s mandatory, it’s the directive” to make sure employees got time off, Adam Miles, acting director of the Office of Special Counsel, told Senate lawmakers at a hearing following an investigation by the office and the Postal Service inspector general.
The investigation found that 97 letter carriers took time off, sometimes weeks, to take part in the union’s Labor 2016 program, canvassing, making phone calls and working on other get-out-the-vote efforts to help elect Clinton and other pro-labor candidates. The workers were dispatched to battleground states, including Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio. They were reimbursed for their unpaid leave by the union’s political action committee.
Federal employees, including postal workers, are allowed to campaign for political candidates and give them money on their time off. But by directing that time off be granted even over the objections of local post office managers who said they would be understaffed, the Postal Service itself showed a workplace bias toward Clinton and other Democrats endorsed by the union, Miles said.
“USPS . . . facilitated [the union’s] political activity by directing local supervisors to approve union official [leave without pay] requests to participate in Labor 2016,” a report by the Office of Special Counsel found. “Characterizing this political activity as union business conferred a special status on carriers’ leave requests.”
The practice dates to the 1990s, investigators told the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. But the favoritism toward union-backed candidates was not necessarily because the letter carriers union endorsed Democrats.
“The evidence suggests that USPS engaged in this practice to engender good will with the unions,” Miles said. About 92 percent of postal employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements.
Postmaster General Megan Brennan tried to assure lawmakers at Wednesday’s hearing that she took the mistakes seriously and is working to make sure they are not repeated.
“To be labeled as having an institutional bias is pretty damning,” Brennan said. “I will communicate that this is heard throughout this organization.”
The time-off-to-campaign-at-any-cost practice was brought to lawmakers’ attention by a letter carrier in Wisconsin, who testified that the absence on short notice of multiple employees at his post office and those in nearby towns left them short-staffed and paying out overtime to the workers who stayed behind. One letter carrier was gone five weeks.
The local post office manager pushed back and tried to deny the time-off requests, the letter carrier, Timm Kopp, testified Wednesday, but was rebuffed by upper management.
“I know it’s true that historically the Democrat Party has been the party to help the Postal Service,” Kopp told lawmakers, “but these partisan acts will not help, only hinder its efforts.”
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