When he got the last word in the Don Blankenship trial’s closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Ruby told jurors he could summarize the government’s case against the former Massey Energy CEO in six sentences. Here they are, from the transcript we posted online:

1. The Upper Big Branch mine sadly was the site of hundreds of serious preventable safety violations, including the most unwarrantable failure orders of almost any coal mine in America.
2. The defendant knew that the Upper Big Branch mine was continually breaking the mine safety laws and that it was one of the worst mines in all of Massey for safety violations.
3. The defendant, the chief executive officer and the chairman of the board of Massey, had it completely within his power, completely within his power to put a stop to the vast majority of the safety violations at UBB if he was willing to spend a little bit more money and take a little bit more time to devote to following the safety laws.
4. Instead, he chose, he chose to keep on breaking the mine safety laws at UBB, not just allowing it, not just sitting passively by while the laws were broken, as if that wouldn’t be bad enough, but taking actions and imposing policies and denying requests that he knew were going to cause the constant law-breaking that existed at that mine to continue.
5. And the reason that he did it was money, millions and millions of dollars for him, hundreds of millions of dollars for Massey, millions for the “yes” men that he surrounded himself with.
6. And when tragedy happened and he found the eyes of the world on him and his safety practices, he lied about it to cover it up and to keep the money machine going a little longer.