Former mine executive Don Blankenship Wednesday jumped on Twitter, renewing his feud with U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin.
As WEKU’s John Hingsbergen reports, it was on the day Blankenship was to finish a one-year prison sentence arising from a deadly mine explosion.
Even before the U.S. Bureau of Prisons listed Blankenship as leaving a halfway house in Arizona, the ex-Massey Energy CEO rattled off a series of tweets.
He took swipes at a federal mine safety agency and Manchin, the senator from West Virginia where the Upper Big Branch mine exploded in 2010.
Blankenship was sentenced last year for a misdemeanor conviction of conspiring to violate federal mine safety standards at Massey's mine, where 29 workers died.
A Bureau of Prisons spokesman didn't return requests for comment, and Blankenship was still listed late Wednesday afternoon as being at the halfway house.
Manchin said in a statement that he hopes Blankenship "chooses to do the right thing and disappear from the public eye."
Manchin was governor of West Virginia at the time of the 2010 mine disaster.
