An energy mogul begged Moore to back his data center complex. It worked.

An energy mogul with a restaurant empire on Maryland’s Eastern Shore had his eyes on a power plant.

To get it, he needed Gov. Wes Moore’s help.

Last fall, months before the public heard about his plans, Paul Prager and his company TeraWulf held a series of meetings with top Moore administration officials to discuss an idea to buy an old coal plant on the Potomac River and reboot it to power what could be Maryland’s largest data center.

It’s a plan he promised would bring environmental remediation, jobs and much-needed reinforcement for the regional power grid.

By early December, Prager almost had what he wanted: a letter outlining the Moore administration’s support.

He was impatient.

“chi chi - I need that letter asap!!!” read the subject line of a Dec. 11 message to Chichi Nyagah-Nash, Moore’s deputy chief of staff. Prager dropped a link to a Washington Post article about his investments to transform his adopted home, the Eastern Shore town of Easton, into a ritzy destination.

An administration official responded hours later with a one-page document that offered to expedite permits for TeraWulf — including those needed for natural gas pipelines — for the plant, Charles County’s Morgantown Generating Station. The letter was signed by the state’s top environmental regulator.

Government negotiations with developers often happen behind closed doors, but these exchanges, obtained by The Baltimore Banner through a records request, offer a rare window into how deals get done. They also reveal how a wealthy and politically connected businessman won the governor’s endorsement for his controversial foray into Maryland data centers — even as key questions about the proposed development’s impact remain unanswered.

TeraWulf’s track record with projects of this scale is short. The company, which was founded in 2021, has historically made most of its money mining Bitcoin.

In statements, both Moore’s office and TeraWulf played down the state’s support for natural gas connections to the contaminated site. They said the state endorsement applied strictly to environmental cleanup at Morgantown, which burned coal for more than half a century before its owners retired its boilers in 2022.

Moore spokeswoman Rhyan Lake called it “very common for any business attraction process to include confidential discussions between the company, state, and local government prior to a public announcement.”

“The TeraWulf project is not receiving and will not receive any special treatment or consideration,” Lake said.

But some say Moore’s letter looks like a backroom deal. Last year, Prager and his wife gave the maximum contribution amount to the governor’s reelection campaign, and opponents say the letter promises permits for the TeraWulf venture without any public vetting.

“It’s what Donald Trump does every day, but we didn’t expect Moore to do it,” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. Slocum has opposed the TeraWulf purchase before federal regulators and has called the Moore administration’s endorsement “pay to play,” arguing that Prager’s campaign donations earned him favorable treatment from the governor.

It’s not clear why Prager was in such a hurry to get the state’s support, but the letter may have proven important for securing his deal to buy Morgantown. Prager suggested as much at a tech conference in March.

TeraWulf approached the Moore administration with a pitch to support the region’s struggling power grid and a “desperate” Maryland county, but only if the state gave him permits to fire up the plant with gas, he said.

“They said, ‘Yup, you’re in,’” Prager said. “In writing. They did this in writing before we would close.”

A $100 million ask

As America’s appetite for computing power and artificial intelligence grows, data centers have become big business. Large-scale proposals such as TeraWulf’s have sparked backlash from Calvert County to the Washington suburbs, where residents fear the impact of these sprawling server warehouses on everything from their water supply to their energy costs.

In Maryland, though, the industry remains in its infancy, and Moore has said that the state can attract responsible developers without the downsides of Northern Virginia’s data center alley. He has stressed a need for data centers that bring local jobs, prioritize clean power and pay for their electricity needs.

Prager’s vision for Morgantown is ambitious.

Powering his proposed facility, called Chesapeake Data Campus, would require more energy than all of Baltimore. Along with a gigawatt of natural gas generation, TeraWulf aims to connect Morgantown to a giant battery — a configuration the company says will allow it to feed surplus power into the grid.

Calendar invitations show that Prager and Moore met at the start of October. In the months that followed, Prager pushed the governor’s office to put its support for his project into writing, lamenting on Nov. 25 that he had “now lost two weeks.” Days later, he wrote Nyagah-Nash a one-word subject line: “please.”

Prager had another ask: that the state appropriate $100 million for his project. But on Dec. 1, Moore’s office told Prager that the state couldn’t afford it.

Instead, Nyagah-Nash proposed an alternative, which Prager received 10 days later.

In a one-page letter, Maryland Secretary of the Environment Serena McIlwain pledged to speed TeraWulf’s application to a state cleanup program and offer “best efforts to expedite any other necessary permits,” including rights-of-way to hook up Morgantown to natural gas.

In a statement, TeraWulf Vice President Kerri Langlais said the state’s support for cleanup of the industrial site at Morgantown “should not be confused with approval of any specific future development or operational configuration.”

She called it “entirely appropriate and responsible” for the company and state officials to discuss environmental cleanup and economic development before a large purchase. Redevelopment of the Morgantown site will still go through the typical permitting process, Langlais said, and TeraWulf expects to meet with Charles County residents after federal regulators have approved the purchase.

Whether the state’s letter could smooth a pathway for TeraWulf’s data center isn’t clear.

“Politicians are very good at seeming to say what people want to hear,” said former Attorney General Brian Frosh. To Frosh, a Democrat who served as Maryland’s top law enforcement official from 2015 to 2023, the letter is vague enough to satisfy TeraWulf without promising to cut the company a break.

As a state senator in 1997, Frosh sponsored the bill that established MDE’s hazardous remediation program, and he said getting TeraWulf enrolled could prove important for cleanup at Morgantown.

But Frosh believes TeraWulf could rely on emissions-free sources like solar panels or wind turbines to run its data centers, and he questioned why the Moore administration would back the company’s fossil fuel plan in the first place.

“I don’t think it’s illegal to say that,” Frosh said of the letter, “but it’s not politically smart.”

‘Rarin’ to go’

TeraWulf, which is transitioning away from Bitcoin mining and has pursued other data center projects in Kentucky, Texas and New York, is politically connected in its home state.

Its external affairs lead, Michael Enright, who facilitated many of the conversations with Moore’s office, served as chief of staff to former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley. The company recently hired four lobbyists from the influential Annapolis firm Perry Jacobson.

Campaign finance records show that Prager and his wife, Joanne, gave a total of $24,000 to Moore and Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller in January of last year, about 10 months before TeraWulf’s October meeting with the governor.

When Prager finally received the Moore administration’s letter on Dec. 11, he was pleased.

“Team: Rarin’ to go on a number of fronts,” he wrote back. “great letter from MDE – super - thanks.”

A day later, Prager followed up to coordinate a meeting with Moore at the Army-Navy football game, scheduled for that weekend in Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium. He offered to visit the governor’s box or host in his own.

Moore’s office did not address a question about the Army-Navy game, and TeraWulf declined to say whether the men met there.

But by late January, Prager had a deal to buy Morgantown from Houston-based GenOn Holdings. The sale requires approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and the terms remain confidential.

GenOn executives did not respond to emailed questions for this story.

Prager had hoped to unveil his plan alongside state leaders, even asking in one December message for a picture with the governor. Moore’s staff huddled about a “Morgantown Announcement” in late January, and Enright shared a draft of the news release for Chesapeake Data Campus.

When that announcement was finally published on Feb. 2, it was the first the public heard about Prager’s plan.

A picture with the governor

Prager is well known in Easton, where he owns much of downtown and manages a line of high-end restaurants.

He and Moore convened near these downtown properties on May 14 for an event called the First Responders Celebration, an annual tribute to local police and firefighters that Prager has hosted for six years. Moore was the guest of honor, and Prager introduced him to the Easton crowd as a “friend.” After separate speeches, the two men posed for a photo.

Easton leaders praise Prager’s investments in their community, but many in Charles County are less interested in his vision. One of those skeptics, Charles County resident Tina Wilson, traveled to Easton to hear the governor speak alongside Prager. She listened as the TeraWulf CEO invoked Moore’s campaign mantra to “leave no one behind.”

“My eyeballs just rolled in the back of my head,” said Wilson. “Because I feel as though we’re the compromise.”

Wilson, president of the Port Tobacco River Conservancy, said she’s frustrated that TeraWulf hasn’t spoken with her community aside from a closed-door meeting with Charles County Council members. She worries about impacts of a gas-powered data center on air quality, noise and the Potomac. (TeraWulf has pledged that it won’t draw water from the river.)

Months after Prager received the state letter, Wilson and other opponents got their own session with Moore’s team, albeit a brief one.

Slocum of Public Citizen recalled that he and Wilson met with top Moore staff on March 13 for a 30-minute video call, during which, he said, officials insisted that they had made no commitments to TeraWulf’s data center plan. Slocum now believes he was misled.

“Prager secures meetings, and the governor pledges support for a very controversial project. We secure a meeting with the governor’s chief of staff,” he said, “and they lie to us.”

Asked after the Easton event about Prager’s campaign contributions, Moore denied that connections or donations influenced his dealings with TeraWulf.

“I would say to the people, and not just in Charles County but in any jurisdiction, that their voice matters in this,” he said. “Their voice helps to determine whether or not anything gets my support.”