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“Our businesses continue to move right along and do quite well,� Justice said.

Justice’s defense marked the latest disconnect between his words and his or his businesses’ actions.

Moments later, Justice said he had no knowledge of the Greenbrier Hotel Corp. owing over $3.5 million in unpaid sales taxes, interest and penalties, according to tax liens issued by the State Tax Department. He valued the asset at over $50 million in a financial disclosure report he filed as required by his U.S. Senate candidacy.

Seven liens issued by the State Tax Department in February show the White Sulphur Springs-based Greenbrier Hotel Corp. totaled $3,521,047, covering a three-month period from June 30 through Oct. 31, 2023.

“I really don’t know anything about this at all,� Justice said at his briefing Wednesday. “This one, I don’t know a thing in the world about. Brand new news to me, but I’ll check it out.�

Justice pledged that he would put his children in charge of his family’s business operations upon taking office in 2017. Justice’s daughter Jillean Justice is listed as president of the Greenbrier Hotel Corp., with the governor’s son, Jay Justice, listed as a director of the corporation.

But the governor has suggested in court proceedings and interviews since taking office that he remains familiar with his coal companies’ operations.

“We continue to pay the bills,� Justice said Wednesday.

String of court judgments, disputes

An ever-lengthening string of court judgments and disputes suggests otherwise.

Nearly 300 West Virginia properties owned by Justice or his businesses — on which they owed almost $400,000 in delinquent taxes — went up for sale in public auctions in June.

Roughly 95% of those properties sold to other buyers for just over $500,000, according to a Gazette-Mail review of state Auditor’s Office data.

Of the 281 properties secured by other bidders, 95 were in Justice’s own name, selling for just over $75,000. Another 15 properties on which roughly $241,000 was due didn’t receive a bid.

The properties in McDowell, Raleigh and Wyoming counties were included in public auctions held in those counties.

This month, a federal judge ordered one of Justice’s coal companies to surrender a helicopter in response to the company failing to pay a roughly $13 million judgment against it in favor of a British Virgin Islands firm.

That firm, Caroleng Investments Limited, said Justice’s Bluestone Resources didn’t meet its obligations under a 2015 agreement under which it sold coal-producing property and assets to Bluestone in exchange for a cash payment and future royalty payments.

Last month, a Virginia circuit court judge formally denied attempts by Justice, his family and businesses to set aside documents admitting over $300 million of debt owed to Carter Bank & Trust, a Virginia bank trying to collect that debt.

Also last month, a Greenbrier County Circuit Court judge scheduled a hearing for April on motions in a case in which Greenbrier Sporting Club companies that loom large in Justice’s business empire have moved to block a Carter Bank-planned auction of key club properties to collect on debt they say they’re owed through a 2015 trust deed.

The Greenbrier Sporting Club is a private equity club that offers memberships to those who buy real estate at The Greenbrier resort, which is owned by Jim Justice.

Some club members have disputed Justice family ownership interest in the club, saying they hold that interest instead.

Last month, Indiana-based 1st Source Bank listed 45 property items — mainly of Caterpillar and Ford construction equipment — it’s looking to possess as collateral from Bluestone Resources that 1st Source says secured unpaid loans in a $4.5 million-plus lawsuit it filed against Justice’s company.

Another Justice coal company, Southern Coal Corp., has said it can’t comply with a federal court order for it to pay $503,985 to maintain collateral for financial obligations to a ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä-based workers’ compensation and employers’ liability insurance provider.

The provider, BrickStreet Mutual Insurance Co., has said Southern has failed to comply with the order stemming from a ruling Southern failed to satisfy its obligations under a 2015 contract with BrickStreet for workers’ compensation and employers’ liability insurance.

Southern admitted in November 2023 that it had failed to reimburse BrickStreet for claim payments since 2017, failed to pay BrickStreet’s invoices from May 2019 through June 2020, isn’t actively mining coal, has no income or open bank accounts, and lacks assets that can be liquidated.

Last month, a judge found Justice’s Southern Coal Corp. in civil contempt for owing the collateral and said it would order Southern to pay a fine of $2,500 per day if it didn’t comply with the court’s order to pay to maintain the collateral within seven days.

‘We continue to pay the bills’

Despite so many of his business assets being in peril, Justice maintained Wednesday his business empire was in good shape.

“We continue to pay the bills,� Justice said. “From the standpoint of any personal stuff that we may have, our family has built an empire and stuff that employs lots and lots of people.�

Wednesday will mark one year since a federal court entered a roughly $1.75 million judgment against Justice family coal companies after a jury found they failed to provide required notice to full-time employees prior to laying off more than 50 of them starting in October 2019 at the Burke Mountain Mine Complex in McDowell County.

The federal labor law, the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, requires most employers with 100 or more employees to give notification 60 calendar days before plant closings and mass layoffs.

“These workers had no ever-loving warning of what was about to hit them,� Beckley-based labor attorney Sam Brown Petsonk, who has prosecuted the case on behalf of Raleigh County resident Jules Gautier and other terminated employees, told the Gazette-Mail last year. “Our people deserve better than that.�

‘Glad to’ testify — but not doing it

Another gap between Justice’s words and actions resurfaced this week beyond the scope of his business empire.

In November, Justice said he would “be glad to� provide sworn testimony in a case alleging inhumane conditions in West Virginia’s corrections system, though he predicted he would have little to say on the subject despite his having the final say over key corrections funding streams.

“I would welcome anyone at any time to swear me in to doing sworn testimony,� Justice said during a November press briefing. “But we don’t want to just do something that is an absolute tee-total waste of time over something I don’t know anything about.�

Justice’s comment was a response to the notion of him testifying in response to a class-action lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the state-run Southern Regional Jail and Correctional Facility in Raleigh County, where nearly a fifth of all inmate deaths at the state’s regional jails had occurred from the start of 2009 to May 2023, per data obtained by the Gazette-Mail through a Freedom of Information Act request.

State officials agreed to pay $4 million to settle the lawsuit in a proposal presented in federal court two weeks later after a federal judge concluded that Justice administration officials intentionally destroyed evidence in the case.

The plaintiffs, who have been Southern Regional inmates, said Justice had knowledge regarding issues raised in the case, noting testimony from former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeff Sandy suggesting his department had made the Governor’s Office aware of over $200 million in deferred maintenance costs.

The plaintiffs cited Gazette-Mail reporting that the state used $28.3 million in previously incurred corrections expenses to draw down that sum in federal COVID relief appropriations and fund a Governor’s Office-controlled gifts, grants and donations account rather than reimbursing the corrections system.

The Justice administration spent $10 million of the $28.3 million on a new baseball stadium for Marshall University in October 2022.

Justice promised fresh scrutiny of the state correctional system after U.S. Magistrate Judge Omar Aboulhosn highlighted testimony that state officials failed to follow a process concerning litigation holds for sharing of evidence in the case.

“We’re trying to straighten it up,� Justice said during a November press briefing.

But on Wednesday, in another class-action case alleging inhumane conditions in the state corrections system, Justice persisted in looking to get out of sworn out-of-court testimony.

Justice argued in a Wednesday court filing he shouldn’t be deposed because the topics for which the plaintiffs seek his testimony comprise his “discretionary exercise of core state constitutional prerogatives and policymaking.�

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of incarcerated inmates across the state in August 2023, contends pervasive and unconstitutional overcrowding, understaffing and deferred maintenance at state correctional facilities. The suit says Justice and state Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia deprived inmates of basic human necessities and “acted with deliberate indifference towards the health and safety of inmates.�

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs seek to compel the state to spend budget surplus money to make all deferred maintenance repairs required at state correctional facilities totaling at least $270 million. The lawsuit cited depositions from former Department of Homeland Security secretaries indicating deferred maintenance went from $200 million to $277 million from January 2018 through July 2022.

The lawsuit asserts the plaintiffs had insufficient portions of food and that plaintiff Tyler Randall was exposed to mold and rodent feces at Southwestern Regional Jail in Logan County.

“If that’s what we need to do that will make people feel better and be happier and everything, I’d be glad to do it,� Justice said in November of testifying about his oversight of the state corrections system.

‘Centerpiece’ deprived of funding

At his annual State of the State addresses, Justice has touted making education the state’s “centerpiece.�

But under Justice, West Virginia has been one of few states that have sought and used federal waivers related to qualified COVID relief funding for multiple years. The waivers have allowed West Virginia to set aside a requirement that states maintain support for elementary, secondary and higher education relative to their overall spending to qualify for COVID relief funding.

The American Rescue Plan Act allows the Education Department to grant a waiver of those requirements “for the purpose of relieving fiscal burdens incurred by States in preventing, preparing for, and responding to the coronavirus.�

West Virginia is out of compliance for elementary, secondary and higher education for fiscal year 2023 and is seeking a waiver. The fiscal limbo hindered West Virginia’s legislative session, causing leadership to discard some budget priorities, including $50 million for an empty flood-resiliency fund, while eyeing a potential special session to address those priorities later this spring.

Department of Education officials told the Gazette-Mail five states have outstanding waiver requests. Seven other states had waivers approved for fiscal year 2022, according to the agency’s website.

In a waiver request dated Feb. 21, Justice said in correspondence to the Department of Education that West Virginia is on track to steadily increase education spending on a per-pupil basis and cited expenses in noneducational areas increasing at a greater rate because of inflation and worker shortages in corrections, nursing and child welfare.

The waiver requests have drawn criticism that the state hasn’t spent enough on education.

Trump-tying, and trying to tidy upIn self-defense mode when concluding his remarks at Wednesday’s briefing, Justice tied himself to former president Donald Trump, who also has a legally tarnished business empire mired in debt.

“There’s a lot of similarities,� Justice said. “He’s got people that are really pushing on him from the standpoint of what he’s doing.�

The future of Justice’s business empire, he insisted, shouldn’t be a concern.

“At the end of the day,� the governor said, “it all seems to work out, doesn’t it?�