U.S. Department of Justice Story Archives - Page 2 of 4

Four More Out-Of-State Prisoners Test Positive At Federal Institution In Gilmer

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is reporting five positive cases of COVID-19 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Gilmer County, West Virginia, less than two weeks after 124 out-of-state prisoners in quarantine were transferred to the state.

The BOP did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but prison officials allegedly identified the four most recent positive cases through a faster form of testing, according to corrections officer Derek Crihfield. Crihfield is the local president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing staff at FCI Gilmer.

Crihfield said executive staff at Gilmer notified the union they were discontinuing the faster tests, offered through Abbott laboratory. Officials said there was concern the tests were both less accurate and could add to the total positive count of coronavirus cases at the facility, according to Crihfield.

“They feel no need to test the inmates because all it’s going to do is run the numbers up,” Crihfield said of officials. “We’re going have to report a bunch of numbers to Gilmer County, and then it’s going to hold us up from being able to transfer the inmates out somewhere else.”

The first positive prisoner at Gilmer was reported earlier in May, after being tested at a local hospital. Crihfield said all five positive prisoners, the last four of which seem asymptomatic, are being isolated from all other incarcerated individuals.

These five are among a total 124 prisoners that the BOP transferred to Gilmer on April 28. The BOP moved them to the medium security correctional facility after designating the institution one of seven quarantine sites.

Crihfield says the BOP assured staff at Gilmer that these prisoners had minimal contact with the coronavirus before their transfer. With a growing number of positive COVID-19 cases, he said he is concerned the BOP might continue to transfer an unclear number of asymptomatic prisoners to other facilities, spreading the disease.

“We didn’t want to be the quarantine site, but now we have a duty to make sure these guys are clear, and not just asymptomatic,” Crihfield said. “Because we don’t want to not test an inmate, send him to the next institution as asymptomatic, and then he spreads it within that institution. That kind of defeats the whole purpose of the quarantine site if we’re just sending these guys out without testing them.”

U.S. Attorney General William Barr told U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on Friday he was stopping future transfers to Gilmer and the Hazelton Federal Correctional Center in Preston County, which also had been a designated quarantine site. Union leaders report Hazelton has not received any new transfers.

Before the transfer on April 28, Gilmer FCI had roughly 4,000 prisoners.

When dealing with the five prisoners who are isolated because they’ve tested positive, Crihfield says the BOP has provided protective wear and well-fitting N95 face masks to staff.

So far, Crihfield says no corrections officers or nonuniform staff have tested positive. FCI Gilmer is not testing its staff, but they have access to outside testing. Still, he said there has not been enough communication by prison officials with the local community, which has caused some tension.

“People are afraid of interacting with our staff,” Crihfield said. “I’d like to stress that we have the proper PPE. And at the end of the day, it’s our job, we have to do it. And we didn’t vote to have these guys come here. We didn’t want them here. But we have to, you know, we have a job to do and we have to do it.”

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Lawyers For Gov. Justice Say There Are No Charges In Federal Investigation

This story was updated on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020, to include the most up-to-date information on Justice’s other ongoing legal affairs.

A criminal defense attorney representing West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced a federal investigation into his client’s annual golf charity was concluded earlier this week without any findings of wrongdoing.

George Terwilliger — a former acting U.S. Attorney General — said at a Tuesday news conference Justice and his family provided full cooperation to federal investigators looking into the governor’s hotel, the Greenbrier, with the West Virginia Department of Commerce and the state Department of Revenue.

A federal grand jury subpoenaed Justice on Tuesday, April 9.

The subpoenas were related to the Professional Golfers Association military tribute tournament that’s hosted at the Greenbrier resort, and how the governor financed it. It requested records from Justice, the state Department of Commerce and the state Department of Revenue from Jan. 1, 2014, through March 6, 2019.

While Terwilliger called Tuesday’s news “important,” he took the opportunity to elaborate on a “terrible toll the investigation has taken on many innocent people and innocent interests.”

“News of the investigation — even though no allegations of wrongdoing were ever made — was enough to cause sponsorship money to the golf tournament to dry up, which hurt the charitable goals of that considerable effort,” Terwilliger said.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the investigation.

Justice is in the middle of a couple other legal affairs, both of which he’s working with Terwilliger to tackle.

In December, Terwilliger filed a writ of prohibition against a lawsuit regarding Justice’s out-of-capital residency. Justice is also facing federal civil actions over $4.7 million in unpaid fines and fees for mine safety and health violations against 23 of the family’s coal companies. A hearing scheduled Tuesday in the case was cancelled.

In a document filed Tuesday afternoon, attorneys for nine coal companies owned by the Justice family asked the court to withdraw a motion to dismiss the case due to “ongoing settlement negotiations.”

The companies, which include Double Bonus Coal Company, Dynamic Energy, Inc., Frontier Coal Company, Inc., Justice Energy Company, Justice Highwall Mining, Inc., Keystone Services Industries, Inc., M&P Services, Inc., Nufac Mining Company, Inc., and Pay Car Mining Company, Inc., are just a portion of the 23 Justice companies federal prosecutors are perusing.

“Even if you haven’t done anything wrong, it’s still tough to be involved in a federal investigation,” Terwilliger said. “It’s stressful, it’s expensive, just the existence of an investigation hurts your reputation.”

A spokesman from Gov. Jim Justice’s office said no state dollars were spent on Terwilliger’s legal fees related to the federal subpoenas.

Media were notified of Terwilliger’s press conference Tuesday morning by an advisory from Justice’s state-run office.

“The subpoenas involved state agencies and this is a matter of undeniable public interest that involves Governor Justice and his family,” the governor’s spokesman said.

Reporter Brittany Patterson contributed to this report.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

DOJ Files Suit Against Gov. Justice's Family Companies Over Mine Violation Debts

Updated May 8, 2019 at 2:45 p.m.

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a civil lawsuit against 23 coal companies owned by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, seeking more than $4.7 million in unpaid fines and fees for mine safety and health violations.

The delinquent fines were brought to light by investigations by NPR and the Ohio Valley ReSource as the Justice companies’ overdue debts ballooned from just under $2 million in 2014 to more than $4 million in 2018.

The lawsuit was announced Tuesday by U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen of the Western District of Virginia and David Zatezalo, the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA.

In a news release, the DOJ said the 23 companies named in the lawsuit incurred nearly 2,300 mine safety and health violations over the last five years. According to a 2019 financial disclosure filed with the West Virginia Ethics Commission, all 23 companies are owned by the Justice family.

The civil complaint says the companies failed to pay nearly $4 million in penalties associated with those violations. The companies are located across five states: Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky.

Justice Complaint (PDF)
Justice Complaint (Text)

The DOJ said the Justice-owned companies ignored multiple demands by MSHA, the Department of Treasury, and the U.S. attorney’s office to pay the delinquent debts.

“As alleged in the complaint, the defendants racked up over 2,000 safety violations over a five-year period and have, to date, refused to comply with their legal obligations to pay the resulting financial penalties,” Cullen stated in the news release. “This is unacceptable, and, as indicated by this suit, we will hold them accountable.”

“MSHA stands with the Department of Justice in seeking to hold mine operators responsible for the penalties they owe,” Zatezalo said in the same release. “Failure to pay penalties is unfair to miners who deserve safe workplaces, and to mine operators who play by the rules.”

Michael Carey, a lawyer who represents the Justice companies, said in an interview that the Justices have been actively negotiating with both the U.S. attorney’s office and MSHA and felt blindsided by the suit.

“The Justice companies are frustrated that the U.S. attorney’s office decided to go through with this litigation at this point because we’ve been negotiating with them to resolve this matter for several months now,” he said.

Carey also repeated an oft-cited concern from the Justice family that a large chunk of the assessed fines referenced in the complaint were accrued when some of the companies the Justice family currently owns were controlled by Russian mining company Mechel OAO.

In May 2009, Mechel OAO purchased Bluestone Coal Company from Justice. In 2015, Justice bought the company back. The metallurgical mining company has operations in West Virginia’s McDowell and Wyoming counties.

Carey said “approximately 50 percent of the fines that have been assessed are in relation to when the Russians operated the property.”

“We believe there is a basis to contest those and we simply don’t owe it simply because we bought it,” he said. “But that was part of the ongoing negotiation.”

However, an Ohio Valley ReSource analysis of delinquent debt information casts doubt on that argument.

ReSource Investigation

Last month, an Ohio Valley ReSource analysis of federal mine safety data found that the Justice family companies owed $4.3 million in delinquent debt for mine safety violations. That meant the Justice companies had by far the highest delinquent mine safety debt in the U.S. mining industry. And it was also far more than the companies owed when Justice ran for governor in 2016, when he pledged to make good on such debts.

In 2016, an investigation by NPR, the ReSource and partner station West Virginia Public Broadcasting found that Justice’s mines owed $2.6 million in overdue mines safety fines, as well as millions more in unpaid tax debt.

Then-candidate Justice said those debts would be paid.

“When it all really boils right down to it we’re taking care of them,” Justice said at a rally announcing his gubernatorial bid. “We’ll absolutely y’know, take, make sure that every one of them is taken care of.”

But the ReSource analysis of 2018 MSHA data shows that more than four years after that initial investigation, the Justice companies — now mainly controlled by the governor’s children, James Justice III and Jillean Justice — had allowed that debt to grow.

The investigation also addressed the Justice companies’ claim that Mechel OAO is responsible for much of the debt from overdue fines. The ReSource analysis examined debt for violations assessed to owners at the time of the initial violation. The debts associated with violations assessed to those mines while they were owned by Mechel are not included in the $4.3 million total that MSHA data show the Justice companies are responsible for. Even if the Justice companies are successful in their argument regarding the debt incurred by Mechel OAO, that would represent a small portion of the overall sum the companies owe.

Gubernatorial Hopeful's Coal Mines Settle With Feds

Federal officials have reached a settlement requiring $5 million in upgrades to prevent further pollution by Appalachian coal mines owned by West Virginia gubernatorial candidate Jim Justice.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice announced the settlement with Southern Coal Corporation and 26 affiliates Friday.

A news release says the settlement resolves allegations of Clean Water Act violations from Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia mines.

Southern Coal must use an EPA-approved environmental management system, undergo internal and independent environmental compliance auditing, incorporate training, implement data tracking and evaluation measures, and pay escalating penalties for future violations.

The company faces a $900,000 civil penalty and must produce a $4.5 million letter of credit and trust to ensure work is completed.

Justice is the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

W.Va. to Participate in Eleventh Drug Take-Back Day

Law enforcement agencies across West Virginia will participate in a national event Saturday attempting to get unused prescription drugs out of homes where they could potentially be abused.

The federal Drug Enforcement Agency and Department of Justice sponsor several National Drug Tack-Back days every year. Saturday’s event marks the 11th annual event.

The events aim to provide a safe, convenient and responsible method of disposal while also educating the general public about the potential for their abuse.

Events in West Virginia will take place at several locations from 10 am to 2 pm Saturday. To find a drop off location near you, visit the federal DEA’s website.

Researchers to Study Crime Reporting in the State

Researchers plan to survey West Virginia residents about their experiences with crime as part of a study of crime reporting in the state.

Other study topics include residents’ willingness to seek help from law enforcement and their perceptions of the criminal justice system and community safety.

The three-year study is funded by a $448,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant awarded to the West Virginia Division of Justice and Community Services.

Division director Rick Staton says in a news release that data from the study will complement existing crime data reported by law enforcement.

The survey will be conducted by the Criminal Justice Statistical Analysis Center with assistance from West Virginia University’s Research Center on Violence.