A coal executive who just finished serving a year in prison for being complicit in a deadly mine disaster in West Virginia asked President Trump on Monday to get to the bottom of what really happened under his watch.
Don Blankenship’s letter first thanked Trump for “being a great supporter of coal miner jobs” and then diverted quickly to ask the president to help clear his name, placing much of the blame on the “liberal media” for Blankenship being found guilty of several mine safety violations that led to the deaths of 29 miners.
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“You and I also share something,” he wrote. “We share relentless and false attacks on our reputation by the liberal media.”
Blankenship said the “attacks on me have been relentless since 1985 when the miners at a group of mines I supervised chose to decertify their union membership.” “I am hopeful that in considering this request to improve coal miner safety, you will put aside the media’s false claims about me and help me expose the truth of what happened at the Upper Big Branch (UBB) coal mine in West Virginia on April 5, 2010,” the letter stated.
“No doubt you want to be even more supportive of coal miner safety,” Blankenship wrote. “As a person who grew up in West Virginia and who oversaw the mining of more coal in Central Appalachia than any individual in history, I have a very special affection for coal miners and, therefore, a great interest in coal miner safety. I shared most of my life with coal miners and I owe them a great debt.”
He blamed former President Barack Obama and then-Gov. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, now a Democratic senator, for supporting the investigations into the mine disaster that concluded management was to blame for the failures there.
“The problem with these investigations’ conclusions is that they are not confirmed by forensics, chemistry nor by an explosion expert’s scientific research,” Blankenship wrote. “In fact, the United States government’s two lead witnesses testified under oath in federal court that [the federal mine regulator] forced the miners to cut their airflow in half just days before the explosion. A fact which all these investigation reports ignored even though airflow is the greatest defense against mine explosions.”
A federal safety inspection found that “if basic safety measures had been in place … there would have been no loss of life” at the mine.
Blankenship said the forensics showed the federal mine regulator in Washington to be at blame.
“The purpose of this letter is a simple one. The truth needs to be told about what happened at UBB,” he wrote. “If the truth is not told, coal miners remain at risk of another tragedy like happened at UBB. What happened at UBB is simple.”
The mine regulator “cut the miners airflow in half, natural gas inundated the mine just days later, and sparks from cutting sandstone rock ignited the natural gas. The explosion was not as [the mine regulator] claims, a coal dust explosion.”
