Political rivals of Gov. Jim Justice are criticizing his financial disclosure form in the race for U.S. Senate as a day late and many dollars short.
Justice’s campaign submitted the disclosure Monday, just as a small financial penalty could have kicked in. The form submitted on behalf of the man once described as West Virginia’s only billionaire included a long list of assets but showed that many make little to no income. The disclosure also included millions of dollars in liabilities.
“Even after a 90-day extension and a ‘grace period,’ liberal Jim Justice stretched out the filing process as long as he possibly could. Hopefully he will start paying his debts he owes to our hardworking coal miners and West Virginia taxpayers,” stated John Findley, campaign manager for the Senate campaign of Congressman Alex Mooney.
Financial disclosures with the Senate are mandatory for members and candidates.
Justice took 151 days from the time he declared his campaign before finally filing the financial disclosure report. The submission finally went through 134 days after it was first due and took place on the first day a fine of $200 could kick in.
Mooney, Justice’s competitor in the Republican primary, already submits required financial disclosures for his position in the House and turned in the most recent one May 25.
They’re both aiming for the possibility of taking on incumbent Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, filed his most recent one May 15.
For many years, Justice was described as West Virginia’s only billionaire, but Forbes downgraded him after 2021 debt disputes. Justice’s political persona has been as a businessman who can buzz the numbers.
“Governor Jim Justice has created thousands of jobs and saved businesses, like The Greenbrier Resort, and kept companies open in tough economic times. He is a job creator, and his opponent is a self-serving career politician with decades in political office relying on the largest Never Trump group in the country to get him elected to the U.S. Senate,” stated Roman Stauffer, campaign manager for Jim Justice for U.S. Senate.
His list of assets stretches for 147 entries, ranging from checking accounts to the network of companies in his family-owned coal, timber and tourism operations.
The estimated value of the assets was between $37.5 million and more than $1.9 billion. Yet many of the assets are listed as producing no or little income.
The report also specifies significant debts, with Justice reporting between $37.5 million and $108.1 million in liabilities between promissory notes and lines of credit between 2010 and 2023.
Two debts on the filing are promissory notes characterized as between $1 million and $5 million each to Bray Cary, the broadcaster and businessman who served as Justice’s senior adviser, as well as his Cary Foundation Inc. No explanation is provided for the notes, both issued August 31, 2021, shortly after Cary left the administration.
West Virginia Senate Finance Chairman Eric Tarr, a Republican who has endorsed Mooney, took note of the debt to Cary.
“You have somebody who loaned him personally at a 10 percent interest rate, money for whatever. We have no idea what those loans are for, and then it happened immediately after he left the Governor’s Office and went to be on the board of governors at West Virginia University,” Tarr said on “580 Live” on WCHS Radio.
“The second thing that is very curious to me, in relationship to having almost no income reported for him personally out of all these assets, is that there’s a lot of personal line of credits from those assets to Jim Justice at 0 percent interest rate with payment on demand. It’s very questionable to me, so what happens on that personal line of credit from your business to you with 0 percent interest that is just payable on demand on a company that you control.”
An example is a line of credit from the Greenbrier Hotel Corp., owned by the Justice family, to Jim Justice for $5 million to $25 million at 0 percent interest.
More examples include a line of credit from the Justice-owned Tams Management of $500,000 to $1 million to Jim Justice at 0 percent interest. And: a line of credit from Bellwood Corporation of $1 million to $5 million at 0 percent interest.
“These are just questions worth asking,” said Tarr, R-Putnam.
Justice has been receiving criticism nationally from Democrats for months, particularly over his companies’ finances. On Monday, before his financial disclosure was filed, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee knocked him for being tardy with the disclosure.
“Jim Justice is once again disregarding the law, hiding potential conflicts of interest, and depriving West Virginians of important information they have a right to know. This is only the latest in Justice’s barrage of financial scandals, which are sure to receive further scrutiny as the GOP’s nasty primary continues to escalate,” stated Amanda Sherman Baity of the DSCC.