LAS VEGAS – Former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship has finished serving his sentence, but he says he still plans to fight to get the truth out about the 2010 Upper Big Branch explosion.
He also says he will continue to fight to bring issues with the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration to light, and he already has issued a public challenge to U.S. Senator Joe Manchin to debate matters of mine safety.
After serving roughly 10 months at Taft Correctional Facility in California, a month at a halfway house in Las Vegas and another month on home confinement at his house just outside of Vegas, Blankenship became a free man May 10.
In a phone interview with The West Virginia Record, Blankenship said he’s eager to resume his life.
“I meet with them Friday to learn about my probation,” said Blankenship, who turned 67 in March. “I don’t know the rules yet.”
Blankenship, who was sentenced to a year in prison on a misdemeanor conspiracy charge for the 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in Raleigh County that killed 29 miners, reported to Taft Federal Prison in California last May. A federal jury had convicted Blankenship of the one misdemeanor count, while acquitting him on felony charges of securities fraud and making false statements.
“I’m looking at a couple of business opportunities in Las Vegas and other places as well,” the Mingo County native said of his personal and professional plans. “Other than that, I want to see about doing some travel, seeing family and other people I haven’t seen in a while.”
He said his legal team soon will be filing an appeal in his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and he said some other actions related to the trial might happen in federal court.
He said he does want to clear his name, but he said there is a bigger issue.
“I’m more adamant about getting them to tell the truth, getting the truth out about the explosion,” he said. “That would vindicate everything.”
Early on his release day, Blankenship took to Twitter.
“Ann Coulter free speech in news lately,” he tweeted. “She’s lucky – govt put me under $5M bond, gag order, and in prison said my speech ‘troubles the US.’”
He also tweeted that the truth about the Upper Big Branch mine “troubles” the government.
“Government bureaucrats are always ‘troubled’ when the truth exposes their lies,” he typed. “Free speech was expensive for me but UBB truth has to be told. Nat(ural) gas explosion just days after government/MSHA made miners cut airflow.”
More of his May 10 tweets:
* “Chemistry and forensic science make the UBB truth clear. Political science made it necessary that the Joes - Manchin and Main hide truth.
* “If mine management had insisted UBB airflow be cut in half before the explosion it would have been news. Fact the govt did it is not news.
* “Media saying Roberts, Manchin and Main oversaw independent UBB investigations is like saying the 3 Stooges were independent of each other.
* “Sen. Manchin, MSHA lied about deceased miners. Forced miners to reduce air and then said miners were at fault. Shameful!!!!
* “In the future Mine Safety and Health Administration must not be allowed to investigate itself.
* “Government witnesses swore under oath at trial that MSHA demanded airflow be cut. They "begged" MSHA not to cut air.
* “UBB truth is critical to improving miner safety. Hiding the truth puts miners at risk.”
He also challenged Manchin to a debate via Twitter.
“I challenge Sen. Manchin to debate UBB truth. A U.S. Senator who says I have ‘blood on my hands’ should be man enough to face me in public.”
Blankenship expanded on that challenge on the phone.
“He didn’t respond the last time I asked him to debate,” he said of Manchin. “Instead, he said I had blood on my hands. He should learn a few things about what happened before making accusations.”
Blankenship said he’d debate Manchin “anytime, anyplace.”
“I’d like to have a public debate with him so the public can understand what happened,” he said. “Joe should do that because it brings attention to miner safety. And, there’s no better way to promote miner safety.”
Blankenship said he is looking into other ways to keep the issue of miner safety in the public eye.
“Another documentary is possible,” he said. “There was a lot of stuff that came out in trial I knew, but had no evidence of. For example, government witnesses testified that MSHA forced them to change the airflow at Upper Big Branch. Bill Ross, who worked 35 years at MSHA, said he had gone over there to look for documents about Upper Big Branch, but they had disappeared.
“Ross, who worked mostly as a ventilation specialist for MSHA, begged his replacement not to force them to reduce airflow. But, they made them do it anyway. All of that needs to be better known to the public. And, video or TV just seems to be more powerful with that kind of message.”
Blankenship said the reduction of airflow meant about half as much gas was needed to reach explosive range inside the mine.
“The key thing at this point is to move forward in a good way on miner safety and on the law,” he said. “So I’ll try to do what I can to those issues.”
Last year, Blankenship issued a statement calling himself an “American political prisoner” and that he was serving time at Taft as “the one and only misdemeanor of 2,000 inmates (according to prison staff).” He also mailed out copies of a booklet that he said would “shed some truthful light on what really happened to cause the UBB explosion, and how horribly broken our American judicial system has become.”
Earlier this year, a federal appeals court refuses to give Blankenship a full re-hearing of his appeal. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on Feb. 24 denied the request with a three-sentence order.
“The petition for rehearing en banc was circulated to the full court," said the order signed by Court Clerk Patricia S. Connor. "No judge requested a poll under Fed. R. App. P. 35. The court denies the petition for rehearing en banc.”
On Feb. 10, Blankenship’s attorneys sought to vacate a Jan. 19 ruling by a panel of judges last that affirmed his misdemeanor sentencing in U.S. District Court. Blankenship wanted all the judges of the Fourth Circuit to hear the appeal anew.
The three-judge panel in January said the district court had "committed no reversible error.”
Blankenship’s legal team claims the three-judge panel of Senior Judge Andre M. Davis, Judge James A. Wynn Jr. and Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory wrongly approved a meaning of “willful disregard" at odds with precedent that a defendant would know his conduct was unlawful. They also say the judges were wrong to not conclude that Chris Blanchard, who ran the Upper Big Branch mine, should have been made available for re-cross examination.