LEWISBURG – The Greenbrier owned by Gov. Jim Justice and his family will be auctioned off later this month on the steps of the county courthouse, according to a legal notice.
A legal notice of the foreclosure was placed in Lewisburg’s West Virginia Daily News. It says an auction is scheduled for 2 p.m. Aug. 27 at the front doors of the Greenbrier County Courthouse. The auction is being held for failure to pay, according to the legal notice.
In a statement, the Justice Companies acknowledged the legal notice but called it “another political stunt by the Democratic machine.”
“I want to make it clear that the Greenbrier will not be sold, and the Justice family will take all actions necessary to ensure there are no negative impacts to their ownership of the Greenbrier or the Greenbrier’s operations, and that the Greenbrier’s ability to continue to provide world-class service to its guests will be uninterrupted,” attorney Bob Wolford said in a statement, according to a story by MetroNews reporter Brad McElhinny.
Justice bought The Greenbrier in 2009. The deed of trust was originally recorded in 2014 in favor of lender JPMorgan Chase Bank, securing a promissory note by Justice for $142 million. Justice pledged a second lien to Carter Bank & Trust to get better banking terms from JPMorgan Chase, according to a statement from the companies. Justice also is said to have largely paid down his debt to JPMorgan Chase in recent years, reducing it to $9.4 million.
Justice’s statement said it noted last month that the loan had been sold to Beltway Capital, which immediately declared the loan defaulted, initiated foreclosure proceedings and took legal action against the governor and some of its subsidiaries.
“This fraudulent move by JPMorgan is nothing more than the latest political stunt by Democrats to undermine another Republican senator from West Virginia,” the Justice companies said in a statement, also citing JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s “close ties” to the Democratic Party.
“This political stunt is just the latest in several attacks on Governor Justice and his businesses aimed at political gain.”
In his latest Senate financial disclosure, Justice lists a personal debt of $25 million to $50 million to McCormick 101 LLC. Beltway is the company that services McCormick’s loans.
The property up for auction is 60.5 acres of the entire complicated, according to MetroNews. It’s basically a hotel and parking lots. The golf courses, tennis courts and medical facilities are owned by other Justice companies.
The legal notice states that the property will be sold together with all improvements and related rights, fixtures, personal property and equipment, rents, compensation rights, land operate permits, permits for other property rights and related rights.
“Cash in hand paid on the date of sale,” the notice reads. “Purchaser responsible for payment of transfer tax… The subject property will be sold “as is.” The substitute trustee makes no representations or warranties of any kind or nature, including, but not confined to, the condition of the property or title to the property to be transferred.
“The successor trustee shall have no obligation to cause any current tenant or occupier of the subject property to vacate the property.”
Justice and his companies are not foreigners when it comes to their finances.
Liens were placed on The Greenbrier last year. Two liens totaling nearly $900,000 were removed last month, but five others totaling more than $2.75 million remain.
Justice, his family and his businesses are embroiled in a long legal battle with Carter Bank over $300 million in loans. That led to another legal ad last year to auction off The Greenbrier Sporting Club, but the auction fell through after the family filed a lawsuit.
And there have been dozens of other lawsuits centered on the Justice family’s finances and the company. The governor says he is no longer directly involved in the businesses and often plays down media coverage of the problems, saying “things always seem to work out.”
“It’s like a constant barrage of things about my family, and at the end of the day, it always clears up,” Justice said at a news conference last month. “I wish you would write about something that really matters. You know how many times you’ve written about something that literally everyone thought was the storm, the storm, the worst, the worst — the Carter Bank case.
“The Carter Bank issue was an absolutely gigantic issue and it took a lot, a lot, a lot of work by a lot, a lot, a lot of people. It went on for a year. And I told you over and over what the result would be – and this is exactly the result: everything is fine in the neighborhood.”
