Here’s an update Ken Ward Jr. called in from federal court this morning.

Prosecutors this morning continued playing for jurors audio recordings of former Massey Enegy CEO Don Blankenship’s telephone calls.

Jurors heard Blankenship talking with a variety of former Massey executives – Chris Adkins, Baxter Phillips, and Mike Snelling among them – about the company’s stock prices, the best time for corporate officials to exercise stock options and the connection between stock price changes and Blankenship’s “personal wealth.”

In one call Blankenship cautioned Adkins that Massey’s stock price drops when corporate officials sell shares in the company.

“If executives are selling, it pushes it down because people think we know more than we do,” Blankenship said. “We just need to figure out some way to get their attention off the executive stock trade.”

Other calls included complaints from Blankenship and other Massey officials about recent inspection “blitzes” by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration. The calls also, however, included Blankenship urging company officials to insert comments about Massey’s safety efforts into corporate financial statements and a remark from Blankenship – previously made public – that if it weren’t for MSHA Massey might “blow ourselves up.”

Blankenship on another call discusses his desire to curb the number of workers in Massey mines.

“I need to get 1,000 people off the payroll,” he says.

In another call in June 2009, Blankenship laments a memo from Massey insider Bill Ross, raising significant concerns about safety in the company’s operations.

“Its highly confidential,” Blankenship says. “I don’t really know what to do with it.”

Blankenship, the jury heard, told Snelling that the Ross memo “is worse than a Charleston Gazette article” and worries about what would happen if it were ever made public.

“If that was a fatal today or if we had one that would be a terrible document in discovery,” Blankenship said.

Also this morning, Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg McVey used questioning of Blankenship’s former secretary Sandra Davis to get into evidence a series of Blankenship emails, memos and reports to the Massey board.

In one instance Davis testified about documents that indicated Blankenship personally signed off on a press release issued after the Upper Big Branch mine disaster that assured shareholders that Massey did not “condone” safety violations. Prosecutors allege that statement was a lie and that Blankenship issued it to try to stop the company’s stock prices from falling after the April 5, 2010 explosion that killed 29 miners.

In another instance a top Massey official told Blankenship that five Massey mines had improved enough to be removed from a list targeted from tougher enforcement.

“A pleasant surprise” Blankenship wrote on the memo before sending it back. “I feared Upper Big Branch would not make it.”