Congress
IRS files tax lien against Jim Justice
The IRS recently filed notices of a federal tax lien against Republican Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia — the latest example of ongoing financial troubles that have trailed the former governor, members of his family and their network of businesses over the years.
One of the documents from the IRS — obtained by Blue Light News — lists Justice and his wife, Cathy, as having a total balance of more than $8 million in unpaid assessments.
The documents represent the only instance of the IRS filing a lien against Justice personally, according to a public Greenbrier County database that goes back decades.
A spokesperson for Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the IRS decided to move forward with the lien at this time. The IRS filed two documents. Both indicate they were prepared and signed Sept. 30, and stamped Oct. 2 by a clerk for Greenbrier County.
But according to the IRS website, “generally the IRS can pursue collection of a tax liability up to 10 years from the date it was assessed. A Notice of Federal Tax Lien may be filed any time within that 10-year period.”
One of the assessments from the IRS is dated Nov. 25, 2015, appearing to put the agency near the end of its 10-year window for taking action.
The IRS, reached for comment on the lien against Justice, said that “by law federal employees cannot discuss specific tax situations” and referred to a general FAQ on liens on the agency’s website.
A reliable ally for President Donald Trump, Justice joined the Senate in January by flipping the seat previously held by retiring Sen. Joe Manchin, a long-time Democrat-turned-Independent. The tax periods listed on the latest IRS document are 2009, 2017 and 2022, the first of which was before Justice was governor and all of which were before he announced his Senate bid.
Justice served as governor for two terms in West Virginia. During that time he faced a steady drip of news reports about the finances of his business empire and his family, which he repeatedly bristled against and repeatedly vowed that things would work out in the end.
“I’m super respectful and I try to answer any question,” Justice told reporters during a briefing in West Virginia in 2021.
“I’ve told everyone that if you’ll tend to the business of the state of West Virginia as I’m tending to the business of the state and you’ll just stay out of my family’s personal stuff you’ll find the final outcomes will be exactly what I’ve told you they’ll be. They’ll be worked out,” he added.
A Democratic trio attempted to pass an artificial intelligence bill via a unanimous consent request on Tuesday but were blocked on the Senate floor.
Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) sought to pass their Artificial Intelligence Risk Management and Security Act using the procedural mechanism, which allows expedited consideration of legislation but fails if one senator opposes it.
“The whole world has recognized that we’ve got to do something,” Warner said in a speech on the floor. “We should not miss the moment to put a safety protocol in place now.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) objected to the bill, preventing any chance of passage.
“Congress must not legislate on the issue of artificial intelligence hastily or in a closed manner,” he said on the floor, adding that it gave some in the government too much power to dictate the technology that could be permitted to be released.
As some lawmakers grow concerned over dire warnings from AI labs’ top executives about the technology’s risk to humanity, Congress’ attempts to legislate AI guardrails have largely stalled.
In the past few weeks, two other AI-related bills, the Ratepayer Protection Act and AI Emergency Button Act, were also nixed in an attempt to pass them unanimously.
Warner, Schatz and Kim’s new bill would have established a new safety board within the Commerce Department to vet models before they are deployed and set safety standards for the industry. It would also have created a reporting process for safety and security incidents.
Sen. Darline Graham sought to take up her brother’s mantle Tuesday, going after former special counsel Jack Smith for obtaining the late-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s phone data.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” the South Carolina Republican told Smith as he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, adding that the anguish the prosecutor caused her brother “makes me sick.”
Lindsey Graham, until his unexpected death in July, was among the most vocal in his outrage over revelations that Smith secretly collected electronic data from GOP lawmakers as part of the Biden-era investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The late senator was also unapologetic in his support for a provision tucked into a government funding package, which was later repealed, allowing senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 or more if they discover their electronic records were seized without notification — language specifically designed to compensate Smith’s targets.
But Smith replied that Lindsey Graham was not a target of his investigation and was not suspected of wrongdoing — in fact, he considered Darline Graham’s brother “a patriotic public servant” who likely would have been a “witness” in his case against Trump for attempted election subversion.
“Your brother investigated the claims that Donald Trump was making,” Smith told Darline Graham. “He found them to be false.”
The federal government’s internal watchdog told Congress Tuesday that it has concluded President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in unilaterally canceling $810 million in federal funding.
In a letter to congressional leaders obtained by Blue Light News, the Government Accountability Office’s top lawyer panned Trump’s declaration Friday that he is nixing money Congress appropriated through a controversial budget maneuver called a “pocket rescission.”
“The Constitution vests in Congress the power of the purse,” GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez wrote,
adding that “Congress did not cede this important power” by enacting the 1970s impoundment law intended to stop presidents from withholding money Congress approves.
“Any withholding of appropriated funds beyond their date of expiration, regardless of size, subverts both the constitutional process for enacting federal law and Congress’s constitutional power of the purse,” Perez added. “The President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind.”
It is unclear what practical effect, if any, the letter will have on the interbranch funding fight. Outside groups sued the administration last year over a prior pocket rescission, but the Supreme Court issued a preliminary ruling that they did not have standing to challenge the matter. The Trump administration has argued that only the head of the GAO is able to sue under the 52-year-old law governing rescissions.
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