Within hours of attending a fundraising event on August 21, Roy tweeted that “an intermittent sciatic nerve issue” made it impossible for him to sit down “for any period of time” and that “flying to DC was not an option” for the vote on US Postal Service funding and mail delays held in the House of Representatives on the following day, August 22nd.
Roy claims that proxy voting, which a federal court has ruled to be a permissible use of Congress’s powers, is “unconstitutional,” so he did not vote at all. But, after waiting to see how the vote played out, Chip revealed that he would have voted “No.”
Yet on August 24th, after shirking the vote, Roy was somehow able to travel to DC and attempt to hijack Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee. Roy used his time to insist that the hearings should not be about the integrity of mail service during an election, but about “the scourge of human trafficking.”
DeJoy replied, “I think we should be sticking to Postal Service matters.”
Chip’s performance makes it clear that he is following marching orders from President Trump, who has admitted to defunding the Post Office as a way of suppressing mail-in votes. Roy’s use of human trafficking to disrupt the DeJoy hearing is an appeal to conspiracy theories popularized by Qanon and other foreign and domestic enemies of the U.S. Once again, Chip Roy has shown that he no stomach for the hard work of representing his constituents. He is concerned only with fundraising and grandstanding.
As of August 27th, the fundraising event Roy attended was under investigation by Texas authorities for violating the state’s COVID-19 social distancing and masking guidelines.