Category Archives: Law and Justice

I get a reply from Louis DeJoy!

Only two weeks after Fed Ex delivered my letters to each of the seven sitting USPS governors, seeking to have Louis DeJoy replaced as Postmaster, and citing the many reasons why he must be ousted, DeJoy and his team put together an op ed for the Washington Post. Getting ahead of the media shit storm, Mr. Mail-in Ballot Suppressor?

He begins by rightfully blaming the 2006 Republican lame duck law, The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (a name as puckish as any of the wry German euphemisms of the late 1930s, arbeit macht frei, anyone?) that put the Post Office $55,000,000,000 in the hole to fund retirements fifty years into the future. The Postmaster, from his July 8th Washington Post op-ed/PR presentation:

We survived by suspending payments to our employee retirement fund, and deferring investments and maintenance on facilities, vehicles and equipment. This left the Postal Service workforce ill-prepared to deliver consistent, long-term service to the American public. . .

DeJoy shows this graph

. . . Three years later, our accomplishments have been significant. We worked with Congress to pass the Postal Service Reform Act, which eliminated unfair financial burdens that were placed on the Postal Service as a result of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. We have used our regulatory authority to make the pricing adjustments necessary to correct for more than a decade of defective pricing. . .

. . . By September 2023, 98 percent of Americans received their mail and packages within three days. Although we have slipped recently because of difficulties in overcoming our degraded operating conditions while opening new facilities, and remodeling and repositioning existing ones, we will soon be back to a performance level that can make the nation proud. . .

Now DeJoy starts in with his innovative cost cutting, efficiency improving (in the long run, if not in the short term, not, say, in time for the fall of 2024 — and mind you, a year ago we were at 98% on time, showing we can do it if we try) plan, Delivering for America (DFA). He runs the table with his glittering PR argument (minus any verifiable facts, on-time delivery data or other effects on actual postal customers) to the end of his op ed, which I reproduce without interruption. Note how his closing argument sets up the failing status quo (arranged by his radical right buddies in 2006) , which he posits is the only option to DFA, as an intolerable straw man at the end:

. . . Meanwhile, over the past three years, we have saved an estimated $2.5 billion annually by cutting approximately 50 million work hours; this fiscal year alone, we have reduced transportation costs by nearly $1 billion while significantly growing revenue and increasing our market share in the package delivery business. We have already invested more than $15 billion in renovating our facilities, acquiring new vehicles and equipment, and modernizing our technology. These investments provide our employees with the tools they need to perform their duties in today’s business environment, where we are required to compete with formidable commercial enterprises for our revenue. Along the way, we rapidly deployed our people, technology and logistics know-how to package and deliver more than 900 million coronavirus test kits to people across the nation in less than two days from ordering, confirming our role in the nation’s critical infrastructure.

Consequently, we have cut our projected 10-year losses from more than $160 billion to $65 billion, and we are working hard to eliminate the remaining losses over the next several years. Our progress clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of our plan, and it’s imperative we continue on this path.

“Delivering for America” is the only comprehensive strategy in existence that can save the Postal Service and empower this indispensable organization not just to survive but thrive. Now that we are on this path, we call on voices who continue to advocate the status quo to recognize that inaction has been proved to create a death spiral for the Postal Service. Our initiatives halt this decline, ready the Postal Service for today’s America and develop an institutional character to face the future. These self-help measures are critical for our operational and financial success. Waiting is not an option. Only by moving forward together can we build a modern Postal Service that will effectively meet the needs of the American people for generations to come.

source

I trust this smirking fucking puto as far as I can throw him. How about you? No reason to be concerned that this asshole is in sole charge of mail-in ballots being delayed or delivered on time to be counted in an election expected to be unaccountably close?

Assume Biden wins the election by twenty million votes, and no mail-in ballots from Democratic areas in battleground states are counted. Guess which candidate who didn’t win the popular vote gets to be president again?

Louis DeJoy, stand back and stand by, redux

While corporate media, and panicking Democrats, are obsessed over why a successful president refuses to step aside even though wealthy donors are threatening to withhold $90,000,000 in pledged campaign funds unless he does (NY Times headline today), I am wondering about a more direct threat in the 2024 election.

Consider the ease with which a MAGA “public servant” with the power to easily do so, can nullify millions of mail in ballots by simply delaying their delivery for a few weeks, after four years of practice with random, inexplicable nationwide month-long delays in mail delivery.

Do you trust a Postmaster appointed by the “transactional” Orange Quid Pro Quo, a man who donated $2,500,000 to Trump and the RNC in 2016, to deliver millions of mail-in ballots in time to be counted in 2024? Personally, I’d like to see a little oversight of this smug, smirking corporate fucker.

The media, we should note, is silent about the threat DeJoy’s nationwide mail slow-downs pose for an election expected to be unaccountably close. Google him, not much recently written about the arrogant dickhead, in spite of years of controversy, ethics probes, Congressional hearings. The watchdog groups I’ve contacted in the last few weeks are silent, my elected officials are silent, in spite of repeated contacts with them. I suppose there will be media silence, if Trump manages to engineer an Electoral College victory, when millions of undelivered votes are discovered right before the Dictator on Day One is sworn in for his revenge tour.

Which is more important for the outcome, for the future of democracy, endless criticism of the effective incumbent because he is old and walks like an old man, or stopping a massive voter suppression scheme conducted under color of law?

Here are the two most recent media pieces about Trump megadonor Postmaster Louis DeJoy. The first is a July 8 op ed by DeJoy himself, published in Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post. All I was able to read (not climbing that particular paywall) was this wonderful opening:

Louis DeJoy is the postmaster general. I am fascinated by the U.S. Postal Service and its opportunities to serve the American people. Each day, our 640,000 employees operate 32,000 retail and …

The only other recent update on the pugnacious, partisan Postmaster is this report about the Postal Regulatory Commission urging DeJoy to put off his experiments with more budget cuts and policy changes to slow mail delivery until after the 2024 election. Predictably, the arrogant dickhead is doing what the hardcore right wing always does, staying the course.

Meanwhile, corporate media, keep doing your job to advance the interests of corporate persons. Those judicially created psychopaths are people too, with feelings, just like real, God-created people!

And now, let’s repeat, with the Orange Polyp:

Louis DeJoy, stand back and stand by.

Two sides to every story?

Here are two reactions to the recent 6-3 Supreme Court decision crippling Congressional and DOJ oversight of a criminal president and affirming a (far right) president’s prerogative to engage in criminal conspiracy without consequence if he asserts that the crime was part of his “bold and decisive” core official duties as MAGA president (and the crime in question advances the interests of the men who chose the radical, corporatist 6-3 Supreme Court majority).

The first take is from an organization run by Leonard Leo, far right Christian activist in charge of a recently donated $1.6 billion dollar political activism war chest — and engineer of the current Supreme Court and hundreds of Federalist Society diehard federal judges at all levels. Judicial Watch spent millions on advertising to tank the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination and promote their three picks for Supreme Court justices.

Note Judicial Watch’s motto: Because no one is above the law!

Apologies to those trying to read this on a phone screen, here you go:

Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the ruling by the United Stated Supreme Court regarding immunity for official acts by former President Donald Trump: 

Today’s commonsense Supreme Court immunity ruling is a victory for former President Trump, the U.S. Constitution, and the rule of law. The Biden administration’s political decision to try to put Trump in jail for simply being president was unsurprisingly rejected by the Supreme Court. 

 Make no mistake, the Supreme Court is imposing a virtually insurmountable burden on Jack Smith in his vicious pursuit of Trump over the election and document disputes. The unprecedented charges against Trump were frivolous to begin with and, after today’s decision, should be shut down completely by the Justice Department. 

Judicial Watch is in the forefront of the court battles for transparency regarding the Biden administration’s targeting of Trump.

Another view, from American Oversight, expressed with impressive restraint:

STATEMENT FROM AMERICAN OVERSIGHT INTERIM EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR CHIOMA CHUKWU:

“Today is a dark day for American democracy. The Supreme Court’s ruling came after months of delay, revealing the greatest beneficiary of our two-tiered system of justice: Donald J. Trump. By sending this case back to the lower courts for further proceedings just months before the election, making it unlikely that he will face trial by November, the Court has effectively rewarded the former president with de facto immunity for his role in attempting to subvert the results of the 2020 election.  

“Our democracy depends on an informed electorate. Today’s decision deprives the public of critical information by preventing this case from immediately proceeding to trial, instead requiring the lower court to first determine which of Trump’s egregious actions fall within the parameters set forth by the Supreme Court. Voters deserve to have the benefit of a jury verdict before choosing their next president in November — the Court’s ruling likely made that impossible.” 

In a 6-3 opinion, the Supreme Court’s ruling states that a president is entitled to immunity for official acts, but not for unofficial acts. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, made clear that even the Supreme Court agrees on a core principle — that no one is above the law:

“The president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law. But Congress may not criminalize the President’s conduct in carrying out the responsibilities of the Executive Branch under the Constitution.”

Who are you going to believe, 100% certain, true-believing smash mouth political practitioners with 100% message discipline or those deluded souls who deliberate, weigh nuances, discuss, hesitate and disagree on various policy matters?

Related question: since Trump is right that Biden is sleepy and senile, why not remove him from the ballot immediately, trembling libtard cucks?

Remaining proactive

Coalitions of anti-fascists defeated far right candidates in the UK and France in recent days, following similar showings in Spain and Iran(!). Here, our corporations are tirelessly promulgating every story that can divide anti-fascist, pro-democracy voters. It is up to us to put this exceptional, seamless 24/7 American corporate storytelling from distracting us from the clear goal we need to focus on– defeating an enraged, entrenched, billionaire-funded reactionary movement determined to advance the interests of the 1%.

Is Biden old and senile? My personal view: old, yes, senile, no proof of it, outside of a humiliating performance in a live, unmoderated TV event billed as a debate. Biden quickly demonstrated he was OK, but the story was front page news day after day, pursued wildly by corporate mass media spinning into tales of Biden’s team criminally hiding his senility for years. The headlines were dominated, day after day, by calls for 81 year-old Biden to step down.

Even if Biden were to yield to unreasonable pressure and the blind terror of some of his fellow Democrats, is there any reason for him to step down prior to Trump’s Nuremberg rally in Milwaukee in a few days? Use your common sense. Why would Biden hand that propaganda win to Trump?

Whether Biden is the candidate (leaving aside the political and logistical near impossibility of replacing a presumptive nominee who won the primaries handily) is not an issue for us to take sides about right now. This is particularly true if we are determined to vote against Trump no matter who the Democratic candidate is. The Biden issue is a disturbing distraction, created to trigger the libs by pro-Trump propagandists. It was designed to divide us and take our eyes off the battle to defeat a party whose announced policies please the Klan, Nazis, Christians who prefer Trump to the teachings of Jesus, and the wealthiest 1%.

Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel in October, and the ensuing total war in Gaza, is being laid at Biden’s feet by reactionary propaganda. What is framed as Biden’s vicious war against the besieged Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is not actually Biden’s war at all. MAKE HIM OWN IT ANYWAY, is the cry of all who would see Americans divided on this emotionally brutal issue. Was the murderous Hamas attack a criminal atrocity? Yes. Are war crimes being committed in Gaza? Yes. Does Israel or the US recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court? No. Does Biden have any direct way to stop this cycle of deadly violence? No. Stop blaming Biden for crimes being committed by the radical right, racist government of our long time ally.

Trump has successfully moved elected officials and right wing judges to support his reframing of the several criminal prosecutions he faces. He loses all of these cases based entirely on the evidence already in the public record. He does not want a day in court to exonerate himself, knowing he can’t. Delay and running out the clock (or bankrupting his adversary) is always his goal and he got it, plus presumptive immunity for all criminal acts committed while he was president. The Georgia RICO case is now the DA Fani Willis, partisan whore who had sex with a colleague case. Under review by a Republican state Supreme Court. The Florida Espionage case is now, with an assist from Ginni Thomas’ husband, the sick and dangerous Jack Smith was illegally appointed case. Down the line.

The corporate press and cable news falls into line, because to corporate media, Trump has the golden click bait touch and they stand to make a shit load of money, as long as they stay on the right side of their golden calf (with a wink to you, Grey Lady).

On and on, down the line, media-driven divisive issues for Americans worried sick about the billionaire-funded march toward a Nazi America to gnash their teeth over and nervously snarl at each other about. Now several more House Democrats (including the otherwise respectable Jerald Nadler of NY) and countless columnists and cable pundits have come out saying Biden must step aside. Let’s fight about whether the Democrats are not being “reckless” in not creating a new process to force the winner of their primaries, the incumbent who presided over many of their greatest recent policy achievements to renounce his candidacy, shall we? The New York Times made a hell of a Brett Kavanaugh-like argument for that, doubling down on their Trump enabling demand the other day.

Biden has assembled an excellent and effective administration. His administration has accomplished an impressive amount for the citizens of this country, against organized lockstep opposition by the power-crazed party of Trump, the human embodiment of retribution. The president does not have to appear daily on TV to attack his critics, lie to voters, deny things he said the day before. The president assembles and oversees a team, and Biden has a first rate one. Trump’s people have assembled a guide for how to finally make a radical right president the unaccountable Unitary Executive and how he will ensure loyalty across the entire government for his extreme “bold and decisive” plans from day one. Trump denies knowledge of this reactionary blueprint for a fascist USA [1]. What else do you need to know?

Do not read the news and freak out, hard as that may be to do. Don’t pay much attention to the polls, most people who answer them are senior citizens with landlines and a rightward bend to their political views.

Remain proactive and take political action, no matter how seemingly small. There is much to do before our exceptional nation can act with the political maturity and pragmatism shown by the UK and France in recent days. Anything less and, I can say this with reasonable assurance, see you in the death camp, my fellow libtard cuck.

[1]

Covfefe Policy Agenda for Project 2025

(from the Heritage Foundation’s website)

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.

This is the goal of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project. The project will build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative Administration. More About Project 2025

Policy: This book is an invitation for you the reader—Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, and Ms. Smith—to come to Washington or support those who can.  Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State.

Note the subtle touch of the Day One, a reference to the principle that the Leader’s word has the force of law.

“My client pleads guilty to Covfefe in the second degree, your Honor.“

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.

Know your enemy

The billionaire reactionaries behind fearsome  MAGA figurehead Donald Trump have commissioned a 900 plus page manifesto which is only now beginning to get attention.   It is called Project 2025.  It is the blueprint for an America where the clock is turned back to around 1919 (before women could vote, the year of Red Summer  when violent reprisals by lynch mobs against returning Black WWI veterans skyrocketed).

Here is a short summary of some of its plans, put together by Robert Reich.

Naturally the Lying Orange Polyp has tried to distance himself from the plan.  He claims to know nothing about it. 

It turns out that 23 of the 37 authors of the reactionary wet dream were members of his administration.   Here is a short list of several of them.

Of course, it is no surprise that America’s Greatest Liar would lie about it.  He claimed not to know who his supporter David Duke was.  He claimed to know nothing about the violent militias he later called on for his Hail Mary attempt to violently stay in office on January 6th.   He claimed never to have had sex with a porn star he paid $130,000 to, in a complicated scheme to avoid detection, to remain silent about their brief, weird sexual liaison.  He claimed never to have had sex with the woman who, in his telling,  flirted with him in a department store who he then raped, and was found civilly liable for raping (untrue, merely sexually assaulting, as he will point out).   After losing two defamation cases she brought against him, he continues to call her a liar.   There are 30,000 plus more examples from his four years in office.

The sickening surprise is the corporate media’s exclusive focus on the supposedly disqualifying age of a candidate three years older than the Orange Polyp.  The New York Times today leads with several headlines calling Biden’s fitness to run into question:

Resilience Has Fueled Biden’s Career. But So Has Defiance. (He has repeatedly defied NY Times requests for an exclusive interview)

A Senate Democrat Says Biden Must “Do More” to Assuage Voter Concerns. (Joe Manchin still a Democrat? Kirsten Synema?)

Election updates:  President Biden spoke at a Philadelphia church, as calls continued for him to quit the race. (see, e.g., NY Times editorial calling for him to be forcibly removed as candidate)

As New York Times headlines continued to hammer home, Biden has always been defiant, a Democratic Senator says he’s still not convinced Biden can be president, calls continue for him to quit.

Any mention of Trump? Funny you should ask, it’s the very next headline.

The process of choosing a running mate for Donald Trump has created a new roster of rising Republicans.

Any word about Trump’s fitness to be MAGA’s retribution, carry out revenge on Rosie O’Donnell and others on his enemies list, bolstered by preemptive Supreme Court immunity for criminal acts he deems necessary for “bold and decisive [official] action”? A peep about Project 2025?

Nah!

Hours wrestling with relentless bots…

Computers and their ilk operate on a yes/no, black/white, on/off system. They tolerate no mistakes, you must input exactly what they require, fair enough, their entire operating system is binary, based on yes or no. Much like our modern corporate entities in that way.

In this black and white machine world I felt like I was arguing with Alito over the meaning of “Originalism”. Alito: it’s whatever fucking I say it is, heretic. Me: you previously said all your judicial decisions are based strictly on the original intent of the framers. Alito: fuck you, cuck.

I spent several frustrating hours setting up a required payment plan, jumping through one hoop after another on a third party website, revealing personal and financial information, in order to publish my second post on Substack. Two hours of full-throated Tourretic cursing I hope the neighbors weren’t around to hear. I finally complied with every request, in the form they required, with the help of the lightning fast, generally helpful Substack bot.

Anyway, here’s today’s post, recycled from a recent one here. Check it out

Happy Independence from tyrants day

We live in a nation that declared its independence from a tyrannical king (he ruled by Divine Right so it was impossible, by definition, that he could be a tyrant) by stating the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal.” So far so good.

Now, 248 years later, a small group of wealthy men who are more equal, more important, wiser, more deserving, infinitely more powerful, have loudly declared their own self-evident truth: power and wealth equals moral superiority and the right to impose that superiority on all inferiors.

Since the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that racist separation of people is inherently unconstitutional, these enraged, supremely entitled fuckers have been on the warpath against “activist” judges expanding constitutional rights. They have created their own powerful network of orthodox, doctrinaire, true believing activists united into a movement by a set of “conservative-libertarian” principles and the many well-funded influential “think tanks” that promote them. This network includes the Federalist Society, a judicial appointment machine, which has six of their fiercest proven culture warriors on the Supreme Court.

Not long ago it would have been unthinkable that “originalist” justices who can find no support in the original writings, debates and intent of the sacred Founding Fathers, no support in the Constitution or in judicial precedent, would create new binding law wholly out of their belief that their unappealable interpretation of the will of Jesus Christ and their mandate to protect vast wealth are, justly or unjustly, the last, final, unappealable verdict on all issues in democracy.

These proven activist “conservative-libertarian” members of a doctrinaire, political/moral ideologically-driven judicial fraternity have the last word in what is lawful and what is not. The scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency, a public protection outfit created by well-known Marxist Richard Nixon, do not get the final word on what is harmful to humans, the Federalist Society does. Women and girls have no constitutional right to bodily autonomy. The president, if he conspires to commit crimes with his official advisors in the room, may never be prosecuted if his VP, AG or Chief of Staff is one of his co-conspirators in the crime now protected, by six Federalist Society judges, as an official act — the Federalist Society will now decide if a given president is acting officially when he kills a political rival. Abortion is not healthcare, there is no environmental emergency, democracy is whatever we say it is, women and girls are not a protected class of citizens, go to hell libtard cucks, atheists and feminazis, we are overturning decades of totally unfair and sick radical Left activism!

July 4th is a day to take heart, my friends. The colonists’ rebellion against the will of the infinitely more powerful King of England, who rightfully owned the colonies, was launched with little hope for easy victory. The cause looked doomed early on and for most of the war of independence.

American authoritarians have been hard at work for seventy years to bring about this historical moment when they could turn back the clock to the days when insatiable white Robber Barons were great — no regulation of polluting industry, no labor laws, no bodily autonomy for females (even raped ten year-olds), no laws against the human right to be racist, even violently so, no fixing the environmental crisis we face, unlimited assault weapons for angry, even insane, white men, no voice of the masses of American voters in deciding matters of public urgency, no more “majoritarian tyranny”!!!

I say to my fellow Americans today, on the anniversary of the launching of our always delicate experiment in democracy and striving toward human equality: fuck those fucking putos. This is a moment for courage and true patriotism, all hands on deck.

In this perilous moment, faced with choosing problematic democracy or American Nazism, we must all fight to preserve the freedoms we have and recover the ones recently taken from us by six unelected members of a radical right judicial fraternity who were selected by their fellow fanatics (and five of six appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote) for their proven devotion to their anti-democratic cause. Fuck those fucking putos.

Stay strong and don’t lose your focus. Happy July 4th!

A frustrated citizen, shouting into the silent darkness

My fourth attempt to reach the Senate committee that oversees the operations of the US Post Office.

Federal Voter Suppression Scheme, under color of law, in full effect

fourth attempt to reach your committee

Partisan megadonor Louis DeJoy preps the federal agency he heads to suppress millions of targetable ballots against the candidate he’s made massive donations to.  There is a quorum of governors in place to replace him (two vacancies being Tubervilled?).  Not even their Election Mail Committee seems concerned about the inexplicably long nationwide delays in mail service ahead of what is expected to be an unaccountably close election. 

I would like to send you the letters I sent to the USPS Board of Governors with details about this terrifying reality that nobody, including the Senate committee that oversees the Post Office, seems at all concerned about.   HOW DO I DO THIS?

Is there any way to get a response to my query?   I have had only silence, and an automated reply, from my two senators, my congressman, your committee.

Is democracy worth fighting for, or is the radical right’s position that “majoritarian tyranny” has put this failing country in a fix only autocracy can save us from the more intelligent assessment of the challenging moment we face as a nation?

I decided, and I think wisely, not to add “what the fuck is wrong with you useless fucking fucks? Are you all already preparing to transition to full Nazi rule, you goddamned mercenary mother abusers?”

I also didn’t trouble them with the damning fact that within two months of DeJoy’s appointment in June 2020, he had already ordered 671 high volume mail processing machines dismantled.  He also ordered the removal of mail boxes across the country (guess which zip codes were affected). 

Trump refused, in August 2020, as the pandemic raged, to release funds ($3,000,000,000, approved by Congress) needed to get the Post Office up to full speed before the election and ensure the timely delivery of ballots cast by mail. Instead DeJoy’s post office sent letters to millions of voters informing them that their mail in ballots might not be available in time for them to vote by mail. The Post Office Inspector General apparently did not find that DeJoy, who predicted additional Post Office cutbacks and massive delivery delays before Election Day, had done anything unethical, or maybe not.

Here is the Postal IG’s report. The Inspector General concluded that there was no ethical conflict with the Trump megadonor and his wife, Dr. Aldona Wos (Trump’s nominee to be US Ambassador to Canada) owning between $30,100,000 and $75,000,000 in assets in Postal Service competitors like UPS and trucking company J.B. Hunt as DeJoy met all ethics requirements regarding disclosure, divestment and recusal from decisions in which he may have a conflict.

Of course Trump’s Postal IG found that. [1] Why wouldn’t he, or if you prefer, why would he? Recall Trump’s imbecilic retraction of his statement about Putin meddling in the 2016 election. The world’s most prolific liar said, with the straightest of faces, that he’d obviously meant exactly the opposite of what he said, as one does.

It turns out that the Trump “megadonor”, who is nowhere near a billionaire (net worth a puny $600,000,000) gave a piddling $2,500,000 to Trump and the RNC in the last election cycle or two. Here is the website for Louis Dejoy and Aldona Wos’s charitable foundation.

[1] From the IG’s report:

On July 21, 2020, and August 3, 2020, DeJoy provided written memoranda to the Board of Governors (the Board) and Ethics recusing himself from participating in matters involving the remaining 14 company holdings identified by Ethics. In the memoranda, DeJoy also instituted a screening process to avoid participating directly or indirectly in any matters involving those identified holdings. DeJoy took these preventative measures within the three-month period required by federal ethics regulations.