Trump administration officials earlier this year ended a federal criminal investigation into the coal empire owned by Sen. Jim Justice, a West Virginia Republican and a close ally of the president.
The investigation examined possible criminal violations of the Clean Water Act by multistate mining operations largely run by Justice’s son, Jay, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.
The criminal investigation marks a significant escalation in years-long efforts to control serial pollution violations by Virginia-based Southern Coal and dozens of affiliated mining operations controlled by the family. Over the past decade, Southern Coal and other legal companies have accumulated tens of thousands of suspected violations of the Clean Water Act and have been prosecuted repeatedly by state and federal prosecutors on their failure to properly comply with environmental laws at their mining sites.
The Trump administration’s halted investigation was the result of a joint effort by prosecutors and investigators from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia to determine whether continued violations of pollution laws had risen to the level of criminal behavior, people familiar with the matter said.
People close to the investigation told ProPublica that prosecutors believe they have a strong case. They first had the blessing of Robert Tracci, President Donald Trump’s top aide in the Western District of Virginia, to move forward.
But in recent months, as prosecutors battled Justice Departments in court over the subpoenas, the assistant attorney general’s office shut down the investigation. At the time, Todd Blanche was still running the office, before taking on the role of acting attorney general in April.
“We told them ‘penals down,'” said a person close to the investigation.
The fact that prosecutors even pursued a criminal investigation is remarkable, the people said, because the DOJ only charges about a dozen criminal cases under the Clean Water Act each year. It is rare for senior DOJ officials to derail a criminal investigation initiated by career officials at such an early stage, people familiar with the matter said.
“I’ve never heard of a situation like this before,” said former federal prosecutor Rick Mountcastle, speaking generally about DOJ protocols. Mountcastle spent 24 years as a prosecutor in the Western District of Virginia. “There should not be some sort of untouchable list of people who escape any repression.”
This decision is part of a pattern of behavior at the senior levels of the DOJ aimed at push for prosecution of Trump’s political adversaries and soften allies.
The enforcement of environmental laws against major polluters has plunged under the second Trump administration. Just days after the inauguration, the administration reassigned top career environmental lawyers to DOJincluding those overseeing the Southern Coal affair, to work on the president’s immigration crackdown. At the start of the year, Blanche personally ordered prosecutors to stand down cases against cheating on diesel emissions.
Steven Ruby, an attorney with Justice, said he became aware of the criminal investigation earlier this year.
“Ultimately, the conclusion of the government’s investigation was that there was no evidence to pursue criminal charges,” Ruby said. “There has never been any intentional wrongdoing by the companies.”
While opposing the court subpoenas, the company simultaneously convinced the DOJ to drop the case, he said.
“Justice corporations – because Senator Justice has been governor and because he is now a senator – are being singled out and put under the microscope, and there is media coverage of violations, consent decrees and compliance actions,” Ruby said. “But the fact is that these kinds of problems exist throughout the industry.”
Current and former government officials, familiar with the companies’ environmental record, have called them routine bad actors.
Spokespeople for the EPA and the Western District of Virginia referred questions to the DOJ. The Senate office did not respond to questions.
“There is no reason to open a criminal investigation here,” Emily Covington, a DOJ spokeswoman, said in an email. “Any career prosecutor who would describe a criminal case as strong is simply a deep state prosecutor who continues to advance the priorities of the Biden administration. »
The deputy attorney general’s office regularly participates in reviewing cases, she added. The office determined that this matter was not consistent with the Trump administration’s priorities, she continued, and that it was more appropriate to resolve it through a less punitive civil proceeding. “Ultimately, this was a politically motivated prosecution of a matter that can and should be resolved civilly,” she wrote.
The Justice family runs a vast coal mining business that stretches across the South. Estimates of his fortune fluctuate. Forbes estimated Jim Justice’s net worth to be $1.9 billion through 2021; more recently, he declared him “broke” and facing a billion-dollar debt. But environmental groups have accused its companies to misrepresent their assets to avoid paying environmental penalties.
Ruby said the company’s finances fluctuated because coal was a “boom and bust” industry.
Justice, who was first elected governor of West Virginia as a Democrat, announcement he had become a Republican at a Trump rally in 2017. Trump endorsed Justice’s Senate bid in 2023, amid a contested GOP primary. Justice went on to win the seat, helping Trump clinch the Republican majority in the Senate.
Coal mines often discharge dangerous chemicals like arsenic into waterways and are required to strictly monitor pollution discharges and keep them within certain limits. Family-owned businesses have settled numerous accusations of environmental violations by agreeing to pay fines and invest in better pollution prevention, without admitting or denying guilt.
In recent years, however, the company has repeatedly flouted regulators and the legal process. Jay Justice was not present at court hearings involving violations of the Clean Water Act in the past, and in 2024 a judge in Alabama issued a civil contempt order against him for his repeated failure to respond to these lawsuits. Ruby, the Justice firm attorney, attributed the violations in this case to surrounding facilities that the family does not own. The matter is now in mediation.
A number of recent legal proceedings have highlighted the extent to which legal companies may have knowingly violated environmental laws, a key threshold for bringing criminal action.
Such allegations surfaced in a civil case brought in 2023 by the Justice Companies’ former environmental compliance chief, Robert Fowler. In the lawsuit, Fowler claimed Jay Justice blocked him from spending money necessary to comply with environmental laws, including making court-ordered payments and repairing equipment. As a result, according to emails disclosed in the lawsuit, there were at times complaints about near-daily violations of water permit requirements.
In a resignation letter and in subsequent court filings, Fowler said he feared the circumstances exposed him to “potential civil and criminal liability.” Fowler declined to comment.
Law enforcement officials have denied Fowler’s accusations. Justice firms believe the government’s criminal investigation was based primarily on Fowler’s claims, which Ruby dismissed as allegations from a “disgruntled” former employee.
Last month, an Alabama jury found that the law firms made false statements to Fowler about his role, but it did not award him the millions of dollars in damages he sought in his lawsuit. The judge has not yet made his final decision.
As part of the DOJ’s failed investigation into Southern Coal, prosecutors and federal agents had begun gathering evidence, scrutinizing testimony in the judges’ various civil trials, and had contacted former employees for information. Government lawyers also sent subpoenas for additional documents, people familiar with the investigation said, a move that the company’s lawyers opposed.
People familiar with the matter said Justice Department lawyers were prepared to fight the judges’ lawyers over the subpoenas.
But before they could move forward, Blanche’s office shut it down.
