Following reports that President Biden’s DOJ targeted West Virginia Governor Jim Justice’s (R) family, Republicans have been outraged.
The DOJ has launched a civil lawsuit against the Justice family’s coal empire, which includes over a dozen coal companies that his son Jay Justice runs or owns, pointing to “repeated breaches of the law” in an effort to recoup what Todd Kim, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Natural Resources and Environment Division, called “repeated breaches of the law.” Justice is also a Republican senatorial candidate seeking to unseat Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV).
Kim stated in a statement that “our environmental regulations serve to safeguard communities against detrimental effects of industrial processes, including surface coal mining business operations. The Justice Department is attempting to collect the fines that the defendants are due as a consequence of their repeated breaches of the law via this lawsuit.”
In the Western District of Virginia, U.S. Attorney Christopher R. Kavanaugh asserted that defendants over the course of five years “engaged in more than 130 acts that violated federal law, thereby posing safety and health hazards to people and the environment,” and that the Justice family-owned companies “failed to correct those violations and were directed to stop their mining activities on more than 50 occasions up until the violations were abated.”
He said, “Today, with the filing of this case, the process of making defendants responsible for endangering the public’s health and safety and our environment begins.”
The amount of fines and costs for the civil action total around $7.6 million, according to a news statement outlining the case.
The Biden DOJ was perhaps the first to be accused of blatant power abuse, according to the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC), which linked the news to Justice’s most recent Senate campaign.
“The Department of Justice under Joe Biden has completely lost its way. Democrats abusing their position by using the federal government as a weapon to target the family of a Republican senatorial candidate,” according to NRSC spokesman Tate Mitchell.
“Did anybody really believe Biden’s use of the DOJ as a weapon against his political rivals would end with Trump?” questioned Donald Trump Jr.
“So Biden is using the DOJ as a weapon to target a Republican Senate candidate’s family. Total misuse of authority,” according to GOP strategist Andrew Surabian.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) described it as “utterly brazen. I was not joking when I said that the Biden DOJ is by far the most political & partisan DOJ in the nation’s history.”
“The Justice Department under Biden is attempting to support the Democrats. America is in a crisis,” Richard Grenell said.
Following recent polls that showed Justice leading Manchin by double digits in his bid to oust the Democrat and aid Republicans in regaining the majority in the Senate, the DOJ took action.
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