West Virginia Consumers for Justice and Hugh Caperton, CEO of Harmon Development Corporation. Blankenship is featured in Laurence Leamer's 2013 book The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption and Peter Galuszka's 2012 book Thunder on the Mountain: Death at Massey and the Dirty Secrets Behind Big Coal. Conflict of interest with Spike Maynard On January 15, 2008, photographs of Blankenship vacationing on the French Riviera with West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Spike Maynard, while Massey had a case pending before that court, appeared in The New York Times. On April 3, 2008, ABC News reported that Blankenship attacked an ABC News photographer at a Massey facility near Belfry, Kentucky as the photographer attempted to question him about the photos. "If you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're liable to get shot!" Blankenship stated in the video. Maynard later lost his bid for reelection to the West Virginia Supreme Court in the primary election. On February 14, 2009, Blankenship told The New York Times, "I've been around West Virginia long enough to know that politicians don't stay bought, particularly ones that are going to be in office for 12 years... So I would never go out and spend money to try to gain favor with a politician. Eliminating a bad politician makes sense. Electing somebody hoping he's going to be in your favor doesn't make any sense at all." Comments on Mitch McConnell In April 2018, Blankenship released an ad in which he calls Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "cocaine Mitch", urging potential voters to "ditch" McConnell. In May 2018, he released another ad attacking McConnell, his wife, Elaine Chao, and his in-laws as his "China family", and again called McConnell "cocaine Mitch". The premise of the moniker was that McConnell's father-in-law owns a shipping company that in 2014 was found to have of cocaine on one of its vessels set to leave Colombia. The Colombian authorities did not accuse the company of conspiring to transport the cocaine, and the company was never investigated for the matter. McConnell, who has no role in the operation of his father-in-law's shipping business, was never suspected by any authorities of having any involvement in the incident. The Washington Post's Fact Checker column investigated the "cocaine Mitch" claims and gave them a "Four Pinocchios" rating, concluding that "Blankenship has no evidence to support his crude and incendiary attack." After