U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy assured state election officials in a letter released Monday that he'll work with them to handle their warnings of problems with election mail delivery during the primary season, while insisting that the Postal Service will be ready for the flood of mail-in ballots ahead of the November election.
The Postal Service already dealt with most concerns raised by election officials, he said, after they warned that properly addressed election mail was returned — a problem that can cause voters to be automatically placed on inactive status — and that mail-in ballots were postmarked on time but arrived after election deadlines.
DeJoy said that training is already being beefed up for postal employees and that the Postal Service is already in constant contact with election officials and will work them to address quality problems that caused incorrect deliveries or mail to be returned to sender. He also said he'd work with them to avoid a repeat of “flawed ballot envelope designs," though many envelopes were already designed and printed, officials said.
The Postal Service also has teams in place to tackle mail flagged as “undeliverable as addressed,” or any other problem that might arise with election mail, DeJoy wrote.
The concerns were raised by the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors, even as former President Donald Trump continues to falsely claim he won in 2020 and seized upon the mail delivery troubles to sow doubts about the upcoming election. He repeated his claim Sunday on social media that the Postal Service is not up to the task.
In 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic, election officials reported sending just over 69 million ballots in the mail, a substantial increase from four years earlier.
While the numbers this year may be smaller, many voters have embraced mail voting and come to rely on it. And both Democrats and Republicans have launched efforts to push supporters to vote early, either in person or by mail to “bank” their votes before Election Day on Nov. 5. In a sign of how quickly Election Day is approaching, the first batch of mail ballots were sent last week to absentee voters in Alabama.
Steve Simon, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, on Monday stood by his assessment that the Postal Service has been slow to respond to concerns. He said that localized problems can be easily addressed but that “larger issues still remain.”
“If the nation’s election officials felt these issues had been properly addressed with USPS staff over the last year, then there would have been no need” for the election groups to air their concerns last week, he said.
Mandy Vigil, president of the National Association of State Election Directors, agreed “that the issues we’ve raised have not been resolved adequately going into the November election.”
In his response, DeJoy acknowledged that a massive network reorganization caused some temporary problems but assured the two bipartisan election groups that changes are now being limited to avoid slowing election mail ahead of the November election.
He suggested that Postal Service's performance in past elections should speak for itself.
Postal Service officials said that nearly 98% of ballots were returned to election officials within three days and that 99.9% of ballots were delivered within seven days in the last presidential election — at the height of the pandemic in 2020.
“As demonstrated consistently in previous elections, election mail routinely outperforms our regular service performance due to our long-standing processes and procedures,” DeJoy wrote.
First-class mail is currently averaging 2.7 days for delivery, DeJoy said, even though the two groups wrote in a letter last week that some election officials received timely postmarked ballots after Election Day and outside the three to five business days Postal Service sets as the standard for first-class mail.
Nonetheless, DeJoy said, voters shouldn’t procrastinate with mail-in ballots this election season. Both the Postal Service and state election officials are urging anyone voting by mail to return their ballots well before Election Day or to use drop boxes where available.
Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
FILE - U.S. Postal Service trucks park outside a post office in Wheeling, Ill., Monday, Jan. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs is staying locked up after a judge Wednesday rejected the hip-hop mogul’s proposal that he await his sex trafficking trial in the luxury of his Florida mansion instead of a grim Brooklyn federal jail.
U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter ruled that Combs' plan — which included a $50 million bail offer, GPS monitoring and strict limitations on visitors — was “insufficient” to ensure the safety of the community and the integrity of his case.
Carter, agreeing with prosecutors who fought to keep Combs in jail, found that "no condition or set of conditions” governing his release could guard against the risk of him threatening or harming witnesses — a central charge in his case.
Combs' lawyers were making their second attempt in as many days to spring him from the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he has been held since pleading not guilty Tuesday to charges he physically and sexually abused women for years.
Combs has been in federal custody since his arrest Monday night at a Manhattan hotel. A federal magistrate on Tuesday rejected Combs' initial bail request. On Wednesday, he and his lawyers struck out with Carter, the judge who will preside over his trial.
Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo says he will now ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Carter's ruling and release Combs. In the meantime, he wants Combs moved from the Brooklyn lockup, which has been plagued by rampant violence and horrific conditions, to a jail in New Jersey. Carter said decisions on placement are entirely up to the federal Bureau of Prisons.
“I’m not going to let him sit in that jail a day longer than he has to," Agnifilo said to reporters outside the courtroom.
Combs looked at family members and tapped his heart several times as Wednesday’s hearing began, then sat stoically as he listened to arguments. Afterward, as federal agents led him away, his relatives somberly embraced and exchanged hand slaps.
Combs, 54, is accused in an indictment of using his “power and prestige” to induce female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs” that Combs arranged, participated in and often recorded on video. The events would sometimes last days and Combs and victims would often receive IV fluids to recover, the indictment said.
The indictment alleges Combs coerced and abused women for years, with the help of a network of associates and employees, while using blackmail and violent acts including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings to keep victims from speaking out.
Arguing to keep Combs in jail, prosecutor Emily Johnson told Carter that the once-celebrated rapper has a long history of intimidating both accusers and witnesses to his alleged abuse. She cited text messages from women who said Combs forced them into “Freak Offs” and then threatened to leak videos of them engaging in sex acts.
Johnson said Combs' defense team was “minimizing and horrifically understating" Combs' propensity for violence, taking issue with his lawyer's portrayal of a 2016 assault at a Los Angeles hotel as a lovers’ quarrel. Security video of the event, which only came to light in May, showed Combs hitting and kicking his then-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in a hotel hallway.
“What’s love got to do with that?” an incredulous Carter asked.
Johnson also seized on a text message from a woman who said Combs dragged her down a hallway by her hair. According to Johnson, the woman told the rapper: “I’m not a rag doll, I’m someone’s child.”
“There is a longstanding pattern of abuse here,” Johnson said.
Combs’ Florida house is on Star Island, a man-made dollop of land in Biscayne Bay near Miami Beach, reachable only by a causeway or boat. It is among the most expensive places to live in the United States. Combs’ request echoed that of a long line of wealthy defendants who have offered to post multimillion-dollar bails in exchange for home detention in luxurious surroundings.
If he had been granted bail, Combs would have been confined to his home, with visits restricted to family, property caretakers and friends who are not considered co-conspirators, his lawyers said. After prosecutors said they served a search warrant Tuesday on Combs' private security chief, his lawyers offered to hire a new firm to monitor him and ensure he abided by the proposed agreement.
Carter was unmoved, questioning the plan as an “allegedly fool-proof system."
Many allegations in Combs’ indictment parallel accusations in a November lawsuit filed by Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura. Combs settled the suit the next day, but its allegations have followed him since.
The AP does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly, as Ventura did.
Without naming Ventura but clearly referring to her, Agnifilo argued that the entire criminal case is an outgrowth of one long-term, troubled-but-consensual relationship that faltered amid infidelity. The “Freak Offs,” he contended, were an expansion of that relationship, and not coercive.
“The sex and the violence were totally separate and motivated by totally different things," Agnifilo said, contending that Combs and Cassie brought sex workers into their relationship because "that was the way these two adults chose to be intimate.”
Prosecutors portrayed the scope as larger. They said they had interviewed more than 50 victims and witnesses.
Like many aging hip-hop figures, Bad Boy Records founder Combs had established a gentler public image. The father of seven was a respected businessman whose annual Hamptons “White Party” was once a must-have invitation for the jet-setting elite.
But prosecutors said he facilitated his crimes using the same companies, people and methods that vaulted him to power. They said they would prove the charges with financial and travel records, electronic communications and videos of the “Freak Offs."
In March, authorities raided Combs' Los Angeles and Florida homes, seizing drugs, videos and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant, prosecutors said. They said agents also seized guns and ammunition, including three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers.
A conviction on every charge would require a mandatory 15 years in prison with the possibility of a life sentence.
This story has been edited to correct the spelling of Cassie’s legal first name: Casandra, not Cassandra.
Dalton reported from Los Angeles.
From right, Justin Dior Combs, Quincy Brown and King Combs, arrive at Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Marc Agnifilo, attorney for Sean "Diddy" Combs, arrives at Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams speaks about federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges against Sean "Diddy" Combs during a news conference, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
Marc Agnifilo, attorney for Sean "Diddy" Combs, arrives at Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
FILE - Sean "Diddy" Combs appears at the premiere of "Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story" on June 21, 2017, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (AP Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)
Marc Agnifilo, attorney for Sean "Diddy" Combs, arrives at Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
From left, King Combs, Quincy Brown and Justin Dior Combs arrive at Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
In this courtroom sketch, Sean Combs, center, is flanked by his defense attorney Marc Agnifilo, left, and Teny Garagos, in Manhattan Federal Court, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams speaks about federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges against Sean "Diddy" Combs during a news conference, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Pamela Smith)
FILE -Sean 'Diddy' Combs participates in "The Four" panel during the FOX Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour in Pasadena, Calif., Jan. 4, 2018. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)
In this courtroom sketch, Sean Combs, seated right, looks at his attorney, Marc Agnifilo, left, as he delivers his bail argument as Combs' family in the gallery, background, raise their hands indicating to Judge Tarnofsky that they are in attendance, to bolster the defense attorney's bail argument, Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2024, in Manhattan Federal Court in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)
