West Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Justice in fight to keep historic hotel amid U.S. Senate campaign

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, is in a fight to keep his iconic Greenbrier hotel.

A legal notice announcing a public auction for the luxury resort near White Sulphur Springs due to unpaid debts was publicized in the West Virginia Daily News Wednesday — only the latest development in the Justice family’s financial woes.

Justice, who owns dozens of companies and whose net worth was estimated by Forbes Magazine to be $513 million in 2021, has been accused in numerous court claims of being late in paying millions of dollars he owes in debts for family businesses and fines for unsafe working conditions at his coal mines.

He began serving the first of his two terms as governor in 2017, after buying The Greenbrier, which has hosted U.S. presidents and royalty, out of bankruptcy in 2009. The PGA Tour held a tournament at the resort from 2010 until 2019.

His family also owns The Greenbrier Sporting Club, a private luxury community with a members-only “resort within a resort.” That property was scheduled to be auctioned off this year in an attempt by Carter Bank & Trust of Martinsville, Virginia, to recover more than $300 million in business loans defaulted by the governor’s family, but a court battle between the Justice family and the bank delayed that process.

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Wednesday’s notice said the auction involves 60.5 acres — including the hotel itself and the adjacent parking lot — and is scheduled for August 27 at 2 p.m. at the Greenbrier County Courthouse in Lewisburg.

A spokesperson for Justice said the impending auction is not a state government matter and the governor’s office wouldn’t comment. Campaign staff did not return an email from The Associated Press Thursday.

In a statement to West Virginia MetroNews, Justice attorney Bob Wolford accused lender JPMorgan Chase Bank of aligning with the Democrats “to undermine the next Republican Senator from West Virginia.”

The statement said that the Justice family originally secured a $142 million loan in 2014 from JPMorgan Chase and that only $9.4 million in debt remains after payments made as recently as June of this year. On July 1, the governor was notified by JPMorgan Chase that it had sold Justice’s loan to Beltway Capital Management, which declared it to be in default.

A U.S. Senate financial disclosure report filed by Justice on July 13 — after the loan was sold to Beltway — identified The Greenbrier debt to be between $25 million and $50 million.

“Let me be clear that the Greenbrier will not be sold, and the Justice family will take all necessary action to ensure that there will not be any adverse impact on their ownership of the Greenbrier or the Greenbrier’s operations and the ability of the Greenbrier to continue to provide world class service for its guests will be uninterrupted,” Wolford told MetroNews.

West Virginia Democratic Party officials said in a statement that the resort’s foreclosure is not the result of a political stunt, as the Justice family’s attorney contends.

“It is a direct consequence of his own financial incompetence,” they said.

JP Morgan Chase declined to comment.