A federal judge has ordered companies owned by Gov. Jim Justice’s family to make more than $400,000 in payments that were part of an agreement with federal officials and then missed.
The order came down the same day Justice made public statements urging less public attention of his companies’ financial conflicts, with the governor describing a track record of eventually making good on debts.
“I’ve said many, many times, judge me for what I’m doing as your governor. Absolutely leave my family’s business to my son and daughter. Let them do their job. And at the end of the day see where it comes out,” Justice said in a 12-minute conclusion to a Tuesday news briefing.
“If you want to, write it down and put it in a box. When you go back in a couple of weeks, I bet you and I promise you with my family’s businesses you’re going to say ‘dag, we got all this worked out, everything is fine and dandy – what in the world were we doing?’
The same day, Michael Urbanski, the chief judge for the Western District of Virginia, was entering an order in a case dating back to 2014.
From then until 2019, 23 Justice companies failed to pay mine safety fines totaling $4,776,370, according to federal prosecutors.
In May 2019, the federal prosecutors under the Trump administration’s Department of Justice filed suit over the debt on behalf of the U.S. Secretary of Labor and the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
It’s a civil case, the United States of America vs. Southern Coal Corp., et al. This is different from a similar but new case where the Department of Justice filed suit in late May over $5 million in federal surface mining fines.
In the earlier case, the parties reached a 2020 settlement agreement. The Justice coal companies acknowledged and agreed to pay a little more than $5 million in total fines.
The companies were supposed to make monthly payments of $102,442 until the debt was fully paid.
However, “Defendants have consistently made their monthly payments late,” federal prosecutors wrote in a renewed attempt to collect the money, filed earlier this spring.
The payments started getting spotty in December 2021 and January 2022, but then improved somewhat after federal officials filed notice of non-compliance.
Then, this past January, the non-payment began, according to the federal prosecutors who said they repeatedly notified the Justice companies of past due amounts.
Payments were missed entirely for January, February, March, April and May.
The federal prosecutors have been asking for the court to intervene with an order to pay the past due amount. They say there’s a broader reason for insisting on the payment.
“If Defendants are allowed to ignore their obligations, it undermines the authority of this court and removes the incentive of these Defendants — and their mining companies — from complying with MSHA’s health and safety standards designed to protect the nation’s miners,” the prosecutors wrote.
There are no apparent responses in the renewed case from the Justice companies.
This Tuesday, the federal judge in the case agreed that the Justice companies should make the payments that they agreed to make.
“Within 10 days of the date of this Order, the Defendants shall pay $409,768.00 in delinquent payments to the United States,” the judge wrote.
Judge Urbanski also ordered the Justice companies to make all the future payments required by the consent agreement “until defendants’ total debt is satisfied.”
Justice, a two-term Republican governor, has dozens of business holdings listed on his annual state ethics disclosures. The governor has not placed most of his family’s holdings in a blind trust but has repeatedly said the responsibility of running the businesses has been passed on to Jay and adult daughter Jill Justice.
Justice, who is now in a high-profile U.S. Senate campaign, also faces a broad range of financial pressures on the family businesses. The financial conflicts receive attention from reporters as well as rival campaigns.
On Tuesday, Justice objected to the scrutiny during the expansive, concluding remarks of his weekly state news briefing. He described a political element to the financial conflicts, emphasized the businesses are run by his son and daughter who are not public figures and said the companies would make good.
“People know that since you’re a public official they can enter suit against you in whatever the case may be. It’s easy to catch a lot of arrows because you’re a public official,” he said.
“Absolutely, our companies and our family will always meet our obligations and do what’s right.”