Don Blankenship, the former CEO of coal firm Massey Energy who went to prison, has filed to run as a Republican candidate for the Senate in West Virginia.
Blankenship recently spent a year in jail after a federal grand jury indicted him three years ago for conspiracy to violate federal mine safety rules as well as securities fraud. A lack of safety at one of his largest mines in West Virginia resulted in the deaths of more than two dozen miners.
After serving his time in jail, Blankenship wrote to President Trump explaining that he and the president are very similar in that both of them “share relentless and false attacks on our reputation by the liberal media.” Blankenship wrote to the president to seek ways they could work together on mine safety.
“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 coal mine in West Virginia on April 5, 2010,” the former CEO wrote to Trump last spring.
He later asked the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction, but the high court refused to take up his petition to review the case.
