Robert Murray: “I was so impressed with Trump” (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Coal magnate Robert Murray has given more than $1 million to Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign and inauguration and to climate change deniers. He paid himself $14 million this year.

Now his company Murray Energy has filed for bankruptcy, reporting $2.7 billion in debts and more than $8 billion in obligations.

Murray vocally rejects man-made climate change. He insisted that the coal industry — a leading beneficiary of Trump’s executive orders slashing environmental regulation — must be subsidized by the Federal Government “to make sure grandma doesn’t die on the operating table.

Despite the filing for bankruptcy protection in October, Murray gave himself his bonus, handed out $4 million to his successor Robert Moore, and designated almost $1 million for more climate change denial.

Murray donated more than $300,000 to Trump’s inauguration. He then presented Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry with a list of 16 actions, such as subsidies to nuclear and coal plants, reduction in mine safety regulations, and the rollback of environmental oversight.

Murray said in a 2017 documentary that he approached Trump during the Presidential campaign:

I called Donald Trump’s office at Trump Tower in New York. And when I walked into his office, he was alone.

We talked for 50 minutes — I can talk, he can talk — about coal, about the connection between coal miners’ jobs, coal miners’ families. I was so impressed with him.

Murray exulted, “It was eight years of pure hell under the Democrat party and President Barack] Obama. But we won! It’s a wonderful victory.”

The businessman obtained a key ally when Trump named Scott Pruitt as Administration of the Environmental Protection Agency. As the Oklahome Attorney General, Pruitt had worked with Murray in numerous lawsuits against environment regulations such as the Clean Power Plan.

Murray was among the energy executives in the room when Trump signed an executive order pushing back the Clean Power Plan. And while Pruitt departed in 2018 because of his financial affairs, Murray continued to claim influence with the Administration.

Funding Denial

Since 2017, Murray has also given $2 million to the Boy Scouts of America. But his donations have focused on Trump and on conservative political action committees and groups trying to strip back Obama-era environmental protections.

Among the donations are $300,000 to “Government Accountability and Oversight, activists attacking organizations who oppose Trump’s environmental rollbacks. The “Competitive Enterprise Institute”, a free-market think tank which rejects man-made climate change, received $200,000. The Heartland Institute, a sponsor of climate-change deniers who speak at UN conferences, benefitted from $130,000.

Other recipients include the “International Climate Science Coalition”, a Canadian organization that falsely says climate is “always changing in accordance with natural causes and recent changes are not unusual”, and the “Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change”, which says there is “no compelling reason” to link an increase in carbon dioxide to rising global temperature.

The extent of the donations only came to light because of the documents required in the filing for bankruptcy.

David Schnare, a member of Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency, sees the loss of Murray’s largesse as a tragedy: “He didn’t build libraries, but he did give money away to organizations that he was philosophically aligned with.”