Today, from The New York Times:

Three months ago, my editor asked me to see what I could learn about where Joe Manchin's money comes from.

Thousands of pages of documents, hundreds of interviews and many FOIA requests later, this is what I found. (With @JulieATate & @erinschaff) https://t.co/fUdLCSte51

— Christopher Flavelle (@cflav) March 28, 2022

From the beginning of this long (4,000+ words), investigative report:

While the fact that Mr. Manchin owns a coal business is well-known, an examination by The New York Times offers a more detailed portrait of the degree to which Mr. Manchin’s business has been interwoven with his official actions. He created his business while a state lawmaker in anticipation of the Grant Town plant, which has been the sole customer for his gob for the past 20 years, according to federal data. At key moments over the years, Mr. Manchin used his political influence to benefit the plant. He urged a state official to approve its air pollution permit, pushed fellow lawmakers to support a tax credit that helped the plant, and worked behind the scenes to facilitate a rate increase that drove up revenue for the plant — and electricity costs for West Virginians.

Records show that several energy companies have held ownership stakes in the power plant, major corporations with interests far beyond West Virginia. At various points, those corporations have sought to influence the Senate, including legislation before committees on which Mr. Manchin sat, creating what ethics experts describe as a conflict of interest.

As the pivotal vote in an evenly split Senate, Mr. Manchin has blocked legislation that would speed the country’s transition to wind, solar and other clean energy and away from coal, oil and gas, the burning of which is dangerously heating the planet. With the war in Ukraine and resulting calls to boycott Russian gas, Mr. Manchin has joined Republicans to press for more American gas and oil production to fill the gap on the world market.

The rest of the article thoroughly documents how Manchin has used his political power to profit his business.

Reactions

It has been a long time since I've seen this many Twitter references to one article. For example, from environmentalist Bill McKibben:

Amazing and depressing reporting from @cflav @JulieATate of the @nytimes--they have every receipt on the thoroughly corrupt coal-powered life of of Joe Manchin, who has done as much to damage our hopes of dealing with the climate crisis as anyone on earthhttps://t.co/G6obcf15rr

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) March 27, 2022

And from one of the best environmental reporters:

It's remarkable how open Joe Manchin's corruption is -- and how little it affects his reputation, his standing in his party, or his power. He's corrupt right out in the open & it just doesn't seem to matter at all. https://t.co/TiGdBFvrhn

— David Roberts (@drvolts) March 28, 2022

And from on of my favorite bloggers:

Which brings us, through Justice John Paul Stevens’ obvious clairvoyance, to Senator Joe Manchin (D-Bituminous). https://t.co/rUbcuI1EKT

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) March 28, 2022

From his blog post:

The NYT story is startling for its lack of comfortable ambiguity as regards the distance between the quid and the quo. It is not often that an operation with the clout of the Times so directly connects the influence to its peddling. It is altogether remarkable and, truth be told, it shouldn’t be so rare a thing as to stand out the way this investigation does.

By the way, Senator Manchin was on WV Metro News earlier today. There he faced softballs from Hoppy Kercheval with no mention, here, or in the longer interview, of the Times report:

.@Sen_JoeManchin is back from France. Senator Manchin attended an energy conference. What was discussed? What was the Senator's takeaways? He provides context to his trip to @HoppyKercheval. WATCH: https://t.co/yCFQ3nDJuy pic.twitter.com/a36IuhJnNN

— MetroNews (@WVMetroNews) March 28, 2022