DOJ Killed Criminal Probe into Sen. Jim Justice's Coal Empire for Clean Water Act Violations

ProPublica and Mountain State Spotlight reported that the Trump administration's DOJ earlier this year shut down a criminal investigation into coal operations controlled by Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV). The probe, led by EPA’s criminal enforcement division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia, was examining potential violations of the Clean Water Act — the federal law meant to keep America’s rivers and streams free of toxic mining waste. The Office of the Deputy Attorney General intervened to kill it, according to the reporting.

This is not a case of prosecutorial discretion applied to a marginal operator. Justice is a sitting U.S. senator and a close Trump ally whose companies have a long record of unpaid fines, unreclaimed mine sites, and environmental violations. Killing the investigation directly protects political insiders at the expense of West Virginia communities that live with polluted waterways, mountaintop removal scars, and abandoned mines. It also signals that federal law enforcement will selectively enforce environmental laws — a core tenet of Project 2025’s regulatory rollback agenda, which seeks to eliminate enforcement against the coal industry. The correct alternative is to restore the investigation, enforce the Clean Water Act consistently, and ensure that no polluter — regardless of political connections — is above the law.