The Greenbrier Hotel, located in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va., is set to go to public auction Aug. 27 because of a default. The hotel is owned by Gov. Jim Justice and run by his family. (Getty Images)
Gov. Jim Justice often brags about being a businessman and not a politician. He likes to say that he runs West Virginia like a business. If he’s running the state like he ran his own businesses, it’s no wonder so many agencies are struggling financially.
Two weeks ago, the Greenbrier Hotel, owned by Justice and run by his children, was listed for auction after the Justice Companies defaulted on the bank’s loan. According to a statement from the Justice Companies, the debt had been reduced to $9.4 million, or 235 years worth of salary for the average West Virginian.
On Aug. 27 at 2 p.m., the Greenbrier Hotel will be auctioned off on the front steps of the Greenbrier County Courthouse in Lewisburg — lucky for Justice it’s in his hometown, so maybe he’ll arrive on time.
When Justice was questioned during his Friday briefing about the auction, he said that the sale of the loan was “so peculiar it’s unbelievable,” and said it was politically driven because he’s running for Senate and will be the one to flip the Senate in favor of Republicans.
“It almost approaches blackmail,” Justice said.
But not only was the company not paying the loan, taxes weren’t being paid either. Five liens totaling more than $2.7 million (or about 67.5 years salary for the average West Virginian) still remain against the Greenbrier Hotel Corp.
In his briefings, when questioned about the liens, Justice acts like it has nothing to do with his job as governor. In fact, he became so upset that Metronews’ Brad McElhinny asked him about the liens a few weeks ago, that McElhinny has been banned from Justice’s briefings.
Let me just use this opportunity to go back to the governor’s speech at the Republican National Convention in July. You may have missed Justice saying this because you were distracted by Babydog on the stage beside him.
“The foundation of my life is the truth. … I challenge the media all the time to find something that knowingly I’ve told them that’s not the truth. And they can’t do it because I’m not going to do that,” Justice said.
Yes, we can. And we do.
Justice talks all the time about how transparent he is, and how he encourages others to be transparent. Banning a member of the media from your briefings is the opposite of being transparent. Not answering questions about your personal businesses is not being transparent.
But back to Justice not paying his bills. Less than a week after the Greenbrier was listed for auction, a motion was filed by the federal government asking to hold 23 of the Justice family’s coal companies in contempt for unpaid health and safety fines dating back over the last 10 years totaling about $600,000 or about 15 years salary for the average West Virginian. These fines go back to 2014 — before Justice was elected governor and was running his businesses full time.
According to a settlement agreement made in 2020, the entire debt — about $5.13 million — was supposed to be paid off by March 1, 2024.
Some poor legal assistant emailed the companies’ legal representatives about the debt dozens of times, and for weeks after they were due.
“The only thing consistent about [the Justice companies’] payments is the fact they are consistently late,” the federal attorneys wrote.
That’s not just true for payments, it’s true for Justice in general. As I’ve written multiple times, he’s consistently late to his own weekly administrative briefings and speaking events .
During Friday’s briefing, West Virginia Watch reporter Caity Coyne asked Justice if his coal companies are going to pay the fines, and what’s the financial situation at the Justice family businesses. In the middle of her question, the audio cut out — glitch or on purpose? — and Justice said he couldn’t hear her well because she was muffled.
He did say he’s not “involved anywhere close to the daily operations … to what you would think I would know for our businesses,” and if there’s a problem, it gets taken care of.
“We may be a few minutes late to the fire, but we always show up to the fire,” Justice said.
Well, if you get to the fire once it’s engulfed the entire structure, it’s too late.
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