This piece is based on publicly available records, company websites, press releases, and news coverage.
This is Newton County’s decision to make, not mine. But a project this size, an hour from here, affects the whole region, so I think it’s fair for any of us in East Texas to be asking questions. And when Judge Cochran told everyone in the comments to go read Clean Holding Company’s press release for themselves, I tried to do exactly that but here’s what I found instead.
First, Clean Holding Company (CHC) itself. CHC is the company Judge Cochran said reached out asking him for a letter of recommendation — the same type of letter he’d previously given USA BioEnergy — for what he himself described only as a “200 meg center” with its own associated power plant and a large greenhouse operation on the Innovation Park site. (Worth noting: he didn’t use the words “data center.”)
So I looked into them — and a few things stood out enough to make me ask questions.
Doesn’t it seem odd that a company reportedly closing on a deal this size doesn’t have a real Contact page? Clicking “Contact” in their own site navigation just redirects to their Jobs page — and clicking “Jobs” leads to nothing but a resume-upload form. No address, no phone number, no email, no leadership team named on their own website.
No independent news coverage anywhere outside USA BioEnergy’s press release and its pickup by local media outlets, and no state or country of incorporation.
And here’s where it gets even stranger: CHC’s own website describes two completely different businesses, and neither one matches what’s being proposed in Newton County. One page describes hydrogen fuel cells for trucking, rail, shipping, and aviation — that page has since been taken down; an archived version is linked below. Another lays out a full “Development Roadmap” for orbital, satellite-based compute infrastructure — four phases running from 2026 to 2040, representing “$5–10 billion in cumulative infrastructure investment over approximately 15 years,” according to CHC’s own numbers. So which one is the real CHC?
CHC’s LinkedIn page lists 22 followers and claims 11–50 employees, but shows only one associated member: Sean O’Brien, listed as CBO.
There’s more on CHC. After finding the Contact-to-Jobs redirect and the mismatched business descriptions, I kept digging and found a page that isn’t linked anywhere in CHC’s own site navigation — findable only through a Google search. It’s called “Citadel Press,” dated May 8, 2026, and in it, CHC describes itself yet another way: “a U.S.-based clean and hybrid energy infrastructure developer” running “630 MW of natural gas turbine generators,” announcing an agreement to acquire “a 1,650-acre industrial property in East Texas to support hyperscale data center and industrial development projects.” That acreage figure matches exactly what’s been reported about the Newton County site. And notice: this is CHC itself, in its own words, openly using the term “hyperscale data center” — nearly three months before Judge Cochran’s post and USA BioEnergy’s press release, both of which avoided the phrase entirely.
I found an actual Newsroom page. It lists five press releases. One is the orbital compute initiative from June 2026. One, from January 2026, is about securing “630 mWs of Simple Cycle Gas Turbines” — matching the turbine figure from the Citadel Press release. And three more, all from 2025, claim CHC was selected to provide “dedicated energy” for a $16.8 billion data center build, a $19.2 billion data center campus, and a $6.4 billion data center build — over $42 billion in combined claimed deals.
I searched for independent coverage of all three and found nothing — not one trade publication, wire service, or industry outlet mentions Clean Holding Company in connection with any of them. That’s notable because outlets that specifically cover this kind of industry news clearly do report on deals like this when they happen — similarly named companies have real, verifiable press coverage for projects far smaller than what CHC claims here. A company claiming involvement in over $42 billion of data center energy deals with zero outside confirmation, on top of everything else — the leadership team missing from their own website, the redirecting Contact page, and now four different and conflicting descriptions of what this company even does — is worth sitting with.
Within hours of the judge’s post, USA BioEnergy released their own press release, so I looked into them next. When Newton County residents started pointing directly at a data center in the comments on the judge’s post, what came back wasn’t an answer to that specific concern. It was a polished press release talking about an “energy campus” and “digital-infrastructure innovators” — without ever actually saying the words “data center” — while publicly thanking the judge for his support. That’s not the same thing as answering what residents actually asked. And this isn’t the first time Judge Cochran has been quoted in USA BioEnergy’s own press materials, either. An October 2025 release quotes him directly: “Small advanced nuclear power is among the safest energy sources ever developed, designed with multiple layers of safety to ensure protection of the community and environment.” That’s not the language of someone who only wrote a generic letter of support — that’s an on-the-record technical claim, published under the company’s own branding. And that same release has USA BioEnergy’s own Chairman, David Prom, saying the company had “seen significant interest from data center developers interested in co-locating at the site.” So USA BioEnergy has used the words “data center” openly before. That makes their carefully worded 2026 announcement about CHC — the one that never says “data center” once — look less like an oversight and more like a deliberate choice.
While I was on USA BioEnergy’s site, something else stood out: nearly every piece of news coverage I could find on them is about this one Bon Wier project. For a company headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, that seemed worth noting on its own.
One of those press releases was about USA BioEnergy being submitted for outside recognition by the Texas Forest Country Partnership (TFCP) out of Lufkin — the same regional group actively promoting this project, which secured three separate industry awards for it in a single early-2023 announcement: the CiCi Community Impact Award, Business Facilities’ “Community Impact Deal of the Year,” and a CoreNet Global North Texas Chapter finalist nod. Looking at TFCP’s board is where things got interesting: Eddie Hopkins, former director of the Jasper Economic Development Corporation, is listed there as representing the Deep East Texas Council of Governments (DETCOG). Since Eddie Hopkins “retired” from JEDCO and is from Newton, I thought maybe he was representing Newton. However, what I found is the DETCOG seat for Newton is held by Judge Cochran himself. And Jasper isn’t on that board at all — no seat, no representative, nothing. Jasper’s withdrawal from DETCOG was approved by Governor Greg Abbott back in 2021.
So where does that leave things? Eddie Hopkins is listed on TFCP’s board as representing DETCOG, but I can’t find any public record of him currently holding a position there. Maybe there’s a simple explanation. But between that, Judge Cochran’s own DETCOG seat, and TFCP’s promotional role with USA BioEnergy, it looks like a small, familiar circle deciding how this project gets talked about regionally.
That celebratory photo comes from a March 2023 press release, when the Texas Forest Country Partnership announced that USA BioEnergy’s original biorefinery project at this site had secured three outside industry awards. Governor Abbott is quoted praising USA BioEnergy “for choosing East Texas as the home for their new advanced biorefinery” — and the Texas Economic Development and Tourism Office, part of his own administration, is listed as one of the state partners that helped secure the project going back to 2022. So Abbott’s office has been actively involved with this exact site for years — well before Chairman David Prom’s October 2025 comments about “data center developers,” and well before Abbott’s own June 30, 2026 campaign stop in Bullard, East Texas, where he called for banning AI data centers from rural Texas neighborhoods, saying he was “fighting for East Texas values.” His 2023 support was for a biorefinery, not a data center — that distinction matters. But it’s still fair to ask: does his new stance on rural data centers apply to a site his own administration has championed for years, one that’s since attracted exactly the kind of development he now says he opposes? Or is this about other counties, other companies, and election-year timing?
What’s happening here feels bigger than one project. It looks like a pattern: a small group of familiar names shaping how projects like this get talked about across the region, while the public finds out through press releases instead of being part of the conversation. When developments this size move forward with this little transparency, and this much overlap in the political relationships involved, it’s fair to question whose priorities are actually being served. East Texans deserve a seat at the table, not a recap after the fact.
All across the country, people are standing up to county and city leaders who are selling their communities to the highest bidder without ever asking the people who actually live there — the ones who’ll have to live with the consequences.
It’s hard not to notice a pattern here too: careful, vague language right up until residents start asking pointed questions — and then a walk-back, a clarification, or silence. If a decision carries consequences for all of us, it deserves a public forum where the people affected actually get heard, not a press release after the fact.
Supporting Documentation
Judge Cochran’s Face Book Post
Screenshot sequence: CHC’s “Contact” link redirects to their Jobs page; their Jobs page leads only to a resume-upload form.
Local media coverage —
KJAS – USA BioEnergy Press Release
East Texas Banner – USA BioEnergy Press Release
Clean Holding Company website (cleanholdingcompany.com/clean) — hydrogen fuel cell page, alongside CHC’s “Orbital Compute & Energy Infrastructure” development roadmap (PDF). Note: the hydrogen fuel cell page has since been taken down (confirmed via a live check and a Wayback Machine “Page Not Found” capture, Aug 10, 2026). Link to the Wayback Machine’s archived capture from June 15, 2024 instead of the live URL — no local PDF was saved of the original content, so the archive.org link is the primary source for this one.
Web Archive /https://cleanholdingcompany.com/clean
Screenshot: CHC’s LinkedIn company page showing 22 followers, “11–50 employees” claimed, and “1 associated member.”
Clean Holding Company — “Citadel Press” (cleanholdingcompany.com/citadel-press), dated May 8, 2026. Not linked in the site’s navigation; found via Google search.
Clean Holding Company — Newsroom page (cleanholdingcompany.com/newsroom), listing five press releases including the $16.8B, $19.2B, and $6.4B data center energy claims.
USA BioEnergy — “Bon Wier ‘Innovation Park’ Welcomes Clean Holding Company,” July 31, 2026.
USA BioEnergy’s Press Release July 31, 2026
USA BioEnergy — “Applied Atomics Named as Energy Partner for USA BioEnergy,” October 14, 2025 (PDF). Contains both the Cochran nuclear-safety quote and Prom’s “data center developers” quote.
Screenshot: Texas Forest Country Partnership “Our Board” page, showing Eddie Hopkins listed under DETCOG.
Screenshot(s): DETCOG Board of Directors, July 2026–June 2027, showing Newton County/Judge Cochran and confirming Jasper County does not appear anywhere on the roster.
Lufkin Daily News — “Jasper County withdrawing from Deep East Texas Council of Governments,” April 29, 2021.
Photo: Governor Greg Abbott with Nancy Windham (TFCP), Nick Andrews (USA BioEnergy), then-Judge Ken Weeks, and Adriana Cruz (Texas Economic Development & Tourism Office).
Texas Forest Country Partnership / USA BioEnergy — award press release, March 28, 2023 (PDF).
The Texas Tribune — “Abbott calls for ban on data center development in rural Texas,” June 30, 2026.
Abbott Calls for Ban on Data Center Development