West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice fired Democrat Gayle Manchin — the wife of Sen. Joe Manchin — Monday from her role as secretary of the state’s Department of Education and the Arts after she issued a statement calling on him to save her agency.
Justice, a former Democrat and close ally of President Donald Trump who switched to the Republican Party last year, is weighing whether to sign legislation passed by the Republican-led legislature that would close the agency. Justice said in a press release that Manchin made her views on the legislation known in a press release, even though she’d been asked not to.
“In her press release, she offered to resign and remove any political cloud. If there weren’t any earlier political cloud, now there surely is one. She was very critical, made it political, and put me in a very, very bad position,” Justice said in his own press release.
“She was told that we accepted her resignation, she refused, and we terminated her,” Justice also said.
Manchin is a former first lady of West Virginia…
