Don Blankenship

Don Blankenship ran Massey Energy for 18 years. On April 5, 2010, the Upper Big Branch Mine — a Massey subsidiary — exploded, killing 29 miners in the worst US coal disaster since 1970. Federal investigation found the cause was deliberate: Massey kept two sets of safety records, gave mine managers advance warning of surprise federal inspections, and disabled methane monitors. Two miners had died in a separate Massey fire in 2006. Total under Blankenship's tenure: 31 deaths. His criminal fine: $250,000 — a sum he earned in approximately 2 days' total compensation.

• —MSHA Final Report, December 6, 2011: "an entirely preventable coal dust explosion" caused by "unlawful policies and practices." Root cause not accident or negligence — deliberate safety suppression confirmed by the federal agency responsible for mine safety.
• —Two sets of books: Massey maintained internal records documenting actual hazards, while the official examination books shown to MSHA inspectors were sanitized. This is not a compliance failure — it is evidence destruction as company policy.
• —Advance warning of surprise inspections: Gary May, a former Massey superintendent, pleaded guilty in March 2012 to conspiring to impede MSHA enforcement. He confessed to tipping mine operators before surprise inspections so they could hide violations — poor airflow, loose coal, scarce rock dust — before inspectors arrived.
• —Disabled methane monitor: federal prosecutors alleged a methane monitor on a cutting machine was disabled months before the April 5 explosion.
• —Miner intimidation: the independent investigation (May 19, 2011) documented Massey threatening workers with termination for raising safety concerns.
• —Violation record: 3,000+ MSHA citations over 15 years. In the year before the explosion, the mine was closed 60 times by MSHA. In March 2010 alone: 50 violations. Unwarrantable failure rate — MSHA's most severe category — ran at more than 5× the national average.
• —Prior deaths: Aracoma Alma Mine fire, January 2006 — 2 miners killed. A widow stated Massey management expected the mine to prioritize "production over the safety of the coal miners." Massey settled for $4.2 million — the coal industry's largest financial settlement at the time.
• —Accountability arithmetic: Blankenship\'s 2009 salary was $17.8 million. His 2009 deferred compensation was $27.2 million. His criminal fine for 29 deaths: $250,000 — 2 days\' total compensation. His prison sentence: 1 year. Under federal law, willfully violating mine safety standards that kill workers is a misdemeanor. The maximum is 1 year. U.S. v. Blankenship, No. 5:14-cr-00244 (S.D.W. Va.): convicted December 3, 2015 of conspiracy to willfully violate federal mine safety standards. Sentenced to 1 year in federal prison + $250,000 fine.
• —What he was acquitted of: securities fraud, false statements to the SEC, conspiracy to defraud the United States. The acquittals reduced a potential multi-decade sentence to the statutory maximum for a misdemeanor.
• —Alpha Natural Resources, which acquired Massey after the disaster, pleaded guilty in 2011 and agreed to a $209 million total settlement — including $1.5 million per family of each victim — plus comprehensive safety reforms. The CEO who built the system that killed 29 people paid $250,000.

In 2002, a West Virginia jury awarded $50 million to Harman Mining after finding Massey fraudulently cancelled a coal supply contract and drove Harman out of business. While Massey appealed to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, Blankenship funneled more than $3 million into the campaign of Brent Benjamin — a candidate for the court — exceeding all other Benjamin supporters combined. Benjamin won. He refused to recuse himself from the Massey appeal, and cast the decisive vote in the 3–2 majority that overturned the $50 million verdict. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this violated the Constitution. This is not an allegation. Five justices said so.

• —The $3 million figure is not dark money — it was disclosed campaign expenditure. That is what makes this so stark: Blankenship openly spent more than $3 million electing a judge to a court with a $50 million case against him pending, and when that judge then voted in Massey's favor, the West Virginia Supreme Court saw no problem with it.
• —U.S. Supreme Court, Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868 (2009): 5–4 decision. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority: "there is a serious risk of actual bias — based on objective and reasonable perceptions — when a person with a personal stake in a particular case had a significant and disproportionate influence in placing the judge on the case by raising funds or directing the judge's election campaign when the case was pending or imminent." The Court held Benjamin's failure to recuse violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
• —The $3 million Blankenship spent exceeded the amount spent by all other Benjamin supporters combined. It equaled roughly 3,000 times the legal cap on direct contributions to a candidate's campaign — the excess went through issue-advocacy expenditures that were technically legal but targeted the election.
• —Benjamin won his seat. He then joined the majority to overturn the $50 million verdict. He was the deciding vote.
• —The independent investigation into the Upper Big Branch disaster — separate from SCOTUS — explicitly stated that Massey had used its power "to attempt to control West Virginia's political system." The Caperton spending is the documented example.
• —Framing note: what Blankenship did was not bribery under criminal law — no money changed hands with Benjamin directly, and no criminal charge was ever filed. The SCOTUS case is a constitutional ruling on due process recusal obligations. But the Court said the spending created a constitutionally impermissible bias. "Buying the court's vote" through an election is the moral description of what happened. The Supreme Court, in effect, agreed.

Massey Energy committed thousands of violations of the Clean Water Act, polluting Kentucky and West Virginia waterways with coal slurry over years of operations. The company settled for $20 million. The estimated potential fines under the law were $2.4 billion — Massey paid less than one cent on the dollar of its legal exposure. Separately, residents of Prenter, West Virginia alleged that underground slurry injection from a Massey facility had contaminated their water supply. A confidential settlement was reached in 2012.

• —The Clean Water Act violations were not isolated events — they were the accumulation of routine operational discharges across multiple Massey facilities over years. Coal slurry — a byproduct of coal processing containing fine coal particles, clay, and water — was discharged into Kentucky and West Virginia waterways.
• —$20 million settlement (2008): the settled amount. $2.4 billion: the estimated potential fine for the volume of violations documented. The ratio is the story — Massey paid less than 1% of its legal exposure and continued operating.
• —Prenter, West Virginia: residents filed suit in December 2008 alleging that a Massey underground slurry injection operation had contaminated the local water supply. A confidential settlement was reached June 12, 2012. The terms of the settlement are not public.
• —Blankenship was separately accused of withholding knowledge of groundwater contamination from neighbors in the area of Massey operations while arranging a clean private water line to his own home. No criminal charge arose from this allegation.
• —The Clean Water Act settlement predates the Upper Big Branch disaster. It was not a deterrent. The following year, Massey continued accumulating the violations at UBB that the MSHA would later describe as deliberate and systematic.