Trumper coal baron funded climate denial as he bankrupted his company

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/climate/murray-energy-climate-denial-coal.html#click=https://t.co/yBeYNeJPcy

"As his coal mining company hurtled into bankruptcy, Robert E. Murray, the former chief executive, paid himself $14 million, handed his successor a $4 million bonus and earmarked nearly $1 million for casting doubt on man-made climate change, new court filings show.

The company, Murray Energy, filed for bankruptcy protection in October, reporting $2.7 billion in debts and more than $8 billion in obligations, in large part to pension and health care plans for workers. But those debts appear to have done little to scale back the spending habits of Mr. Murray, a prominent supporter of President Trump who helped engineer dozens of climate change and environmental rollbacksover the past three years.

The 79-year-old coal executive has been a vocal denier of the established science that human activities like the burning of coal are causing climate change and once warned that his dying industry must receive subsidies from the federal government “to make sure grandma doesn’t die on the operating table.”

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Murray Energy also has funded FreedomWorks, the national conservative group associated with the Tea Party; the libertarian Cato Institute; the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow; and Judicial Watch, which has backed Mr. Trump against impeachment."...(more)