In the months before the 2020 election, Donald Trump and Washington lawmakers put the Postal Service under the control of a former Republican National Committee chairman who has also led the Senate GOP’s major super PAC, according to federal and state documents reviewed by us.

The Trump administration is facing allegations that it is deliberately sabotaging the United States Postal Service to try to prevent an expansion of vote by mail and swing the 2020 election, after the president this week said he would block emergency funding for the agency. News reports also revealed that the Postal Service has begun removing mail sorting machines, prompting Democratic lawmakers to launch an investigation into the politicization of the agency and request an inspector general probe as well.

In the lead-up to those developments, Trump nominee Mike Duncan was appointed to the USPS’s board of governors in 2018, and he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in December 2019 to a full seven-year term. Duncan currently chairs the board.