Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s claim to not know about the millions an Akron utility spent supporting his 2018 campaign for governor simply isn’t credible, an Ohio political scientist said in a recent interview. A spokesperson for DeWine pushed back.

FirstEnergy provided that support, then spent more than $60 million to pass and protect a $1.3 billion ratepayer-financed bailout that mostly benefited the utility. In 2019, DeWine signed the law within hours of its passage. 

But now that two GOP officials are in federal prison as part of the scandal and two others involved in the scheme have died by suicide, DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted are downplaying what they knew about FirstEnergy’s support for their campaigns. They’re also downplaying connections between their administration and the utility.

They say they supported the unpopular bailout because they thought it was good public policy to protect nuclear generation in Ohio.

However, a batch of records turned over in response to a records request by a group of news organizations — including Floodlight, the Energy News Network, the USA Today Network and the Capital Journal — are showing that the support they’ve gotten from FirstEnergy is greater than previously known.

Big, dark money

The company made donations totaling $1 million to 501(c)(4) dark money groups supporting Husted in 2018 before he dropped his gubernatorial bid and joined the DeWine ticket. The records also reveal that the company gave as much as $2.5 million to dark money groups supporting DeWine the same year.

Husted’s office wouldn’t say whether the lieutenant governor knew about the contributions at the time they were made. DeWine Press Secretary Dan Tierney last week denied that DeWine knew about the trove of newly revealed FirstEnergy contributions. 

University of Cincinnati political scientist David Niven said there’s a “zero-percent chance” that DeWine’s claim is true. He explained that in 2018, there was a nationwide backlash against the presidency of Donald Trump and support for Democrats was surging. That meant a “razor-wire thin” election for DeWine, a Republican running in a state Trump carried by eight points two years earlier, Niven said.

DeWine “was running in an election cycle when the tide was going against his party,” Niven said. “The notion that he was just this fumbling, naive grandpa who has no idea about seven-figure flows (supporting) his campaign is perhaps the single most far-fetched thing he’s ever said.”

There’s also the fact that it’s questionable for a company to make such a huge expenditure and not make sure the public official benefiting from it knew about it That seems especially true of FirstEnergy, which later admitted to paying an outright bribe of $4.3 million to Sam Randazzo just before DeWine nominated him to regulate the company and other Ohio utilities.

A state indictment of Randazzo and two former FirstEnergy executives says that on Dec. 18, 2018, the executives had dinner with Gov.-elect DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Husted and went from there to Randazzo’s condo to arrange the bribe. Randazzo, who was accused of helping to draft and lobby for the corrupt bailout, died by suicide earlier this month.

Return on investment

Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, was asked last week why FirstEnergy would spend millions supporting his boss and not make sure DeWine knew about it. Tierney cited rules prohibiting dark-money groups from coordinating their activities with campaigns. 

“Regarding your question regarding why donors to independent expenditures might not engage candidates directly on the independent expenditures, my guess is that this goes back to the fact that it is illegal for candidates to coordinate with 501 (c)(4) independent expenditure groups,” Tierney said in an email. “I would guess that entities that frequently make such donations are aware of those legal restrictions. I don’t believe you were trying to accuse the Governor of illegal conduct, as he follows the law, but I would vociferously push back on any such innuendo as there is no basis for it.”

However, merely informing a candidate of a contribution to an independent group doesn’t seem sufficient to meet the state’s definition of “coordination.” That applies to communications “made pursuant to any arrangement, coordination, or direction by the candidate, the candidate’s campaign committee, or the candidate’s agent… ” the Ohio Revised Code says.

Some special interests have made pious claims that they spend millions supporting candidates not to buy influence, but because they wish to support good governance. Niven, the political scientist, said such a claim would be laughable in the context of FirstEnergy and Ohio’s 2018 gubernatorial election.

“This is all about return on investment,” said. “This isn’t even primarily about affecting the outcome of the election, it’s about affecting the behavior of the elected.”

And, Niven said, given that FirstEnergy’s expenditures in 2018 and 2019 won it a billion-dollar bailout, “The return on investment on this thing is spectacular.”

Who benefits?

In an email, Tierney questioned press coverage implying that groups supporting DeWine received all of the $2.5 million in dark money FirstEnergy put up in 2018. The donations were made to a dark money group affiliated with the Republican Governors Association, but only $500,000 was specifically labeled “DeWine.”

“… I am sure Ohio political reporters are laser-focused on Ohio matters, I would point out that FirstEnergy operates in seven states,” Tierney said. “Some of those states have Republican governors, others have had recent Republican governors, and even more have had competitive gubernatorial elections recently as well.”

However, of those states, only four — Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Maryland — had gubernatorial elections in 2018. And of those, Ohio’s was by far the closest and thus the most likely to be affected by big expenditures. It’s also the the state that had two nuclear plants that FirstEnergy was desperate to bail out.

DeWine beat Democrat Richard Corday by 3.7 percentage points. The next-closest race was in Maryland, where Republican Larry Hogan beat Democrat Ben Jealous by 12 points — or more than triple the margin in the Ohio race.

In addition, among the documents obtained by the news organizations are messages that demonstrate FirstEnergy’s interest in plowing dark money into Ohio’s 2018 gubernatorial election. One, from FirstEnergy Vice President Michael Dowling, attempted to ease worries over the company’s massive expenditures through the Republican Governors Association to help DeWine and Husted.

“Theoretically, DeWine/Husted could have a balance of $10M in their campaign account and the RGA could spend $40M in support of DeWine in Ohio,” Dowling said in an email first reported by the Cincinnati Enquirer. “My point is that comparing the size of a contribution to the RGA to what the DeWine campaign has raised or what the DeWine Campaign’s current balance is can be done, but I’m not sure is logical.”

Other claims

In addition to pleading ignorance of FirstEnergy’s dark money, the governor and his staff haven’t explained what senior members of his administration who had close connections to the company knew about about a vital part of the scandal — the relationship between FirstEnergy and the man DeWine picked to regulate it.

The governor and his staff have claimed that connections between Randazzo and FirstEnergy were common knowledge when DeWine took office in 2019. However, there’s little evidence to support the claim. 

Meanwhile, Randazzo’s state indictment says Randazzo and FirstEnergy had a long, secret partnership that paid Randazzo millions even before his $4.3 million payoff in 2019. It also lays out evidence that both parties were anxious to keep it hidden. 

Throughout the scandal, DeWine and his staff have staunchly maintained that the governor supported the FirstEnergy bailout not out of any ulterior motive, but because he thought it was good public policy. To support that, Tierney last week pointed to the fact that Cordray, DeWine’s Democratic challenger, also supported keeping FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants open.

But there’s some important context. FirstEnergy gave dark money to support DeWine and oppose Cordray. In addition, DeWine’s chief of staff, legislative-affairs director and his choice to regulate the industry all had lucrative financial connections to the company either contemporaneously or in the recent past.

“It’s just laughable,” Niven said. “They find themselves in the literal center of the biggest corporate-political swindle in the state’s history and their answer is, ‘Well anybody would have done this.’”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said he didn’t know of millions in FirstEnergy support. Is it plausible? is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

An Ohio grand jury has handed up a 44-count indictment against three players in what is likely the biggest bribery scandal in state history. And when the 50-page indictment was unveiled Monday, it provided new details about a decade of payoffs and conflicts as one of them — who became the state’s top regulator — allegedly did a huge electric utility’s bidding. 

The indictment concerns a $1.3 billion dollar bailout that Akron-based FirstEnergy has already admitted to the federal government that it paid more than $60 million in bribes to purchase. 

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, and former state GOP Chairman Matt Borges are serving federal prison sentences for their roles in the 2019 passage of the bailout and the dirty-but-succesful fight to thwart a voter-led repeal. 

When federal prosecutors in 2021 charged those two and three others, they said their investigation continued. But it wasn’t until December that they charged another in the case — Sam Randazzo, a lawyer and longtime energy consultant whom Gov. Mike DeWine nominated to chair the state’s top regulator, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

That left the people who paid the alleged bribes — FirstEnergy’s top executives — uncharged in a scheme that took place more than four years ago. 

Double dealing

All that changed Monday when Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced state charges against Randazzo and former First Energy CEO Chuck Jones and former Vice President Michael Dowling for their alleged roles in the criminal conspiracy. The three were arraigned in Akron on Tuesday and each pleaded not guilty.

They were charged in an indictment that alleged shady dealings between the them stretching back 13 years.

“It all began with a well-lawyered theft in 2010,” the indictment said.

It went on to describe how Randazzo was general counsel for a group of large FirstEnergy customers — the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio — while also working as a FirstEnergy consultant. Only, the Industrial Energy Users didn’t know that Randazzo was also being paid by the company they were paying him to fight, the indictment said.

It accuses Randazzo of settling the industries’ claims against FirstEnergy on terms acceptable to FirstEnergy and running the settlements through Randazzo-controlled shell companies where he took a skim — again, unknown to the industrial energy users.

“His clients, the industrial members of IEU-Ohio, did not know he was a consultant for FirstEnergy,” the indictment said. “Randazzo did not tell them. Years later, some of the money would make its way to IEU-Ohio. Some of it would end up in Randazzo’s pocket.”

The Industrial Energy Users appear to have engaged in some cynical conduct of their own, however. The indictment describes a 2015 agreement in which FirstEnergy was to pay Randazzo’s company $8.5 million for “consulting services.”

It was really a cash “side deal” in which FirstEnergy paid the industrial users to drop their objections to a rate hike FirstEnergy wanted, supposedly in the name of “energy security,” the indictment said. In other words, prosecutors said that with Randazzo’s facilitation, FirstEnergy paid off a wealthy, powerful group of electricity users in order to raise rates on everybody else.

Such arrangements proved quite profitable for Randazzo.

“Between 2016 and 2019, FirstEnergy paid… $13,152,639.94 to Randazzo’s two shell companies,” the indictment said. “Of that total, Randazzo gave $7,756.903.84 to his IEU-Ohio Client and kept $5,395,736.10 for himself.”

Cozy relationships

This is the guy the incoming DeWine-Husted administration thought would be a good candidate to regulate utilities — companies to which Ohioans have little choice in paying their billions.

The state indictment describes how, on Dec. 18, 2018, FirstEnergy execs Jones and Dowling met with Gov.-elect DeWine and Lt. Gov.-elect Jon Husted at the Columbus Athletic Club and discussed whether the executives wanted Randazzo to regulate their massive electric utility.

The notion that a governor would ask a huge utility who might be acceptable as a regulator might itself seem startling. But after the dinner, according to the indictment, Jones and Dowling did something even more brazen.

They went to Randazzo’s German Village condo and pursuant to that, Randazzo solicited a $4.3 million payment from Jones and Dowling, the indictment said. FirstEnergy paid the money “without ever having received an invoice for the payment and without any work or consulting services being performed,” the indictment said. It added that the executives made the payment over the objections of a company lawyer.

Randazzo told Laurel Dawson, DeWine’s chief of staff, about the payment, calling it a “consulting agreement.” But he didn’t tell her of the other millions he’d gotten from the utility he was seeking to regulate, the indictment said. Randazzo also never told the Ohio Ethics Commission about any of the money he’d gotten from FirstEnergy, the indictment said.

In Dawson, Randazzo might have had a sympathetic audience. Her husband, Michael Dawson, was a “paid FirstEnergy lobbyist” in 2016, when he’d gotten a $10,000 loan from Randazzo, the indictment said.

But if his chief of staff told DeWine about the huge payoff Randazzo got from FirstEnergy, it must not have fazed the new governor. DeWine nominated Randazzo to be chairman of the Public Utilities Commission — the ratepayers’ supposed protector — on Feb. 4, 2019.

Versatile player

During Householder’s six-week trial in Cincinnati last year, federal prosecutors put on exhaustive evidence of how the FirstEnergy executives financed Householder’s bid to become speaker and to pass the notorious bailout known as House Bill 6. 

“Together, Jones, Dowling, Randazzo and his shell companies worked in concert to steal the power of government and bend it to the will of FirstEnergy,” was the way the state indictment unveiled on Monday put it. 

Most of the details of Randazzo’s involvement in the creation and passage of HB 6 are already known from the federal trial. They show him acting in multiple, conflicting, often-undisclosed capacities — similar to those the state indictment alleges he had already played with FirstEnergy and the industrial energy users.

Even though he was supposed to be a regulator, Randazzo drafted portions of the bailout legislation and passed them between FirstEnergy officials and a Householder employee who had recently worked for the PUCO. They sometimes only shared printed copies of the huge bill, out of an apparent apprehension about leaving electronic fingerprints.

According to text messages between Jones and Dowling, Randazzo went so far as to actively lobby for passage of the bailout — which would seem a big departure from the traditional duties of a disinterested regulator. 

Jones and Dowling discussed a meeting about HB 6 that Randazzo had with Sen. Steve Wilson, R-Maineville, and the Senate’s counsel. “We have a good plan to help,” Dowling told his boss.

Other officials

Despite the fact that DeWine had reason to know Randazzo was connected to FirstEnergy, the governor made him the state’s top utility regulator and he signed the billion-dollar bailout that benefitted the company the day it passed. And on July 21, 2021 — the day Householder was arrested — DeWine said he wasn’t in favor of repealing the measure.

The governor subsequently walked that back, but HB 6 is still on the books and Ohio utilities are still getting hundreds of millions in ratepayer subsidies as a result.

DeWine wasn’t the only state official to act at least peripherally in the scandal.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose has refused to explain the “private” updates that FirstEnergy CEO Jones said the state’s chief elections official was providing during an attempt to gather signatures to put an HB 6 repeal on the ballot.

And Yost himself dealt a mortal blow to the signature gathering when he initially rejected the ballot language — cutting nearly in half the time HB 6 opponents had to gather a quarter-million valid signatures. And in text messages presented in the federal trial, Borges told a co-conspirator that Yost thought HB 6 was a bad law, but wouldn’t speak up because of help he’d gotten from FirstEnergy in the past.

Beyond the bailout

Randazzo’s alleged help to FirstEnergy wasn’t limited to HB 6. He also thwarted a PUCO look into the company’s books that was likely to force a cut in electricity bills. That would have caused falling stock prices and a hit to Jones’ and Dowling’s portfolios, the indictment said.

The erstwhile regulator was apparently so helpful that Jones at one point told a FirstEnergy subordinate to back off for fear of being too obvious. In a text message included in the indictment, Jones told Dennis Chack that Randazzo’s pro-FirstEnergy conduct “has a lot of talk going on in the halls of PUCO about does he work there or for us?”

Even so, Randazzo’s behavior at the PUCO continued to be shameless, urging fellow regulators to join him in lobbying for the corrupt bailout, the indictment said. 

Randazzo “began internally lobbying PUCO staff members between July 2020 and September 2020 to generate strategies to save HB 6, despite facing internal objections about the inappropriateness of the effort to save HB 6,” it said.

The indictment included a Sept. 15, 2020 email in which Randazzo told subordinates, “One option (and I really think we need to get other commissioners and staff into a proactive mode): We could, on our own initiative, issue a show-cause order to (FirstEnergy) directing (FirstEnergy) to show that no costs associated with HB 6 have been included in any riders or base rates.”

Had such an order been issued, the result would have been misleading. While the bill didn’t raise consumer costs through riders or base rates, it included a provision that ensured FirstEnergy would collect at least as much as it did in one of its best years and it created a massive subsidy for money-losing coal plants.

Randazzo’s efforts seemed finally to end two months later, when the FBI searched his condo.

FirstEnergy indictments allege corruption went back more than a decade is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

After two former Republican officials in June were sentenced for their roles in a massive racketeering conspiracy, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker said the investigation was continuing. At least two signs emerged last week that the proceedings might be intensifying.

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison on June 29 and former state GOP Chairman Matt Borges was sentenced to five years a day later. Both played roles in a scandal in which Akron-based FirstEnergy and other utilities paid more than $61 million to pass a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout that was mostly intended for a subsidiary that FirstEnergy was spinning off that owned two Northern Ohio nuclear plants.

In addition to Householder and Borges, two others who were arrested in July 2020 have pleaded guilty and a third died by suicide. 

But on March 10, just after a jury convicted Householder and Borges, a reporter asked Parker an obvious question: What about the people who paid the bribes? Would they be charged? Parker would only say that the investigation was continuing.

Attorneys for the men who were FirstEnergy’s top executives at the time of the conspiracy — former CEO Chuck Jones and former Vice President Michael Dowling — have already said in court filings that they believe federal investigators are looking at their clients.

This month brought two more pieces of evidence that federal investigators are considering further prosecutions in the bribery and money laundering scandal.

On Aug. 4, Hilary M. Williams, who is representing FirstEnergy, submitted a filing in a massive class-action case against the company over the bailout scandal. She informed the scores of lawyers for the pension and investment funds suing the company that they’re not the only ones who want to see the emails and text messages the FirstEnergy executives sent as the bribery scheme was taking place.

“Counsel… we confirmed this morning that we may disclose to the parties that certain governmental authorities have requested the production of the entire contents of iPad and iPhone devices used by Mr. Jones or Mr. Dowling from January 1, 2016 through December 31, 2020,” Williams wrote. “In keeping with the protocol in this matter, those documents will be produced to all parties, and we expect to do so at approximately the same time that production is made to the requesting governmental authorities.”

She added. “Mr. Dowling and Mr. Jones used more than a dozen devices during the relevant time period, and processing and reviewing the contents of those devices requires substantial processing time and then time to review for confidentiality and privilege. We are working to complete the review as quickly as possible, and expect to make these productions on or about September 15, 2023.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office didn’t comment on whether the “governmental authorities” Williams referred to worked for Parker, whose office prosecuted Householder and Borges.

However, Parker last week sent a letter to the Public Utility Commission of Ohio asking the regulator to further postpone its investigation into the racketeering scandal.

“The PUCO proceedings involve issues related to the U.S. Department of Justice of the United States’ investigation, and the United States believes that continued discovery in the PUCO proceedings may directly interfere with or impede the United States’ ongoing investigation,” the letter said. “For that reason, the United States respectfully requests that PUCO stay the PUCO proceedings for a period of six months from the date of this letter. The United States reserves the right to request that the stay be extended beyond this time.”

Among those the feds may be investigating are Jones, Dowling and Sam Randazzo, whom Gov. Mike DeWine nominated to chair the PUCO in early 2019. 

In a deferred prosecution agreement, FirstEnergy said it paid Randazzo a $4.3 million bribe just before his nomination in exchange for favors the ostensible regulator did for the company. Randazzo denies wrongdoing, but in the Householder trial, witnesses testified that Randazzo played a key role in drafting the corrupt bailout legislation.

Plaintiffs in the class-action suit earlier this month filed texts and emails between Jones, Dowling and Randazzo. They indicate that the three met in Randazzo’s Columbus condo in December 2018 and arranged to pay the soon-to-be regulator $4.3 million and made it clear that they expected something in return. They also appear to indicate that in addition to his work on the the bailout, Randazzo helped exempt FirstEnergy from a 2024 rate review it had been required to undergo.

The class-action plaintiffs are accusing FirstEnergy of violating securities law by concealing its illegal conduct from investors. Last week, they filed a transcript of an earnings call from July 23, 2020 — days after Householder, Borges and three others were arrested in the racketeering conspiracy. In it, Jones appeared to mislead analysts about his and his company’s role in it.

“I believe that FirstEnergy acted properly in this matter, and we intend to cooperate fully with the investigation to, among other things, ensure our company and our role in supporting House Bill 6 is understood as accurately as possible,” said Jones, who would be fired months later. “In the meantime, we wanted to share our preliminary perspective on this issue and reinforce the values with which we operate our company.”

Jones also claimed that he and his subordinates followed “the highest standards of conduct.”

“This is a serious and disturbing situation,” he said. “Ethical behavior and upholding the highest standards of conduct are foundational values for the entire FirstEnergy family and me personally. These high standards have fostered the trust of our employees, our customers and the financial community. We strive to apply these standards in all business dealings including our participation in the political process.”

Jones sat for a sworn deposition in the class-action case in July. Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kimberly Jolson ordered Dowling to sit for one in October.

Ohio corruption investigation might be heating up — again is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

CINCINNATI — Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder spent possibly his last moments as a free man around 2:30 p.m. Thursday and they couldn’t have been pleasant. 

U.S. District Judge Timothy Black gave the Glenford Republican the maximum possible sentence of 20 years and then ordered blue-shirted U.S. Marshals to immediately take him into custody. He rose, put his hands behind his back, the marshals cuffed him and led the once-powerful pol away.

But before that humiliation, the judge blistered Householder for being the ringleader of a racketeering scandal in which Akron-based FirstEnergy paid him more than $59 million in bribes in exchange for a $1.3 billion bailout, most of which was intended to save two failing nuclear plants in Northern Ohio.

Ratepayers could have used that money for things like education, health care or to start businesses, the judge said.

“You handed that money to suits in private jets,” Black said.

The judge made the speech and imposed the sentence after saying Householder clearly perjured himself during his criminal trial, which lasted from late January until mid-March. 

In it, Householder claimed to barely know FirstEnergy executives as federal prosecutors put on a mountain of evidence that Householder flew on their corporate jets, sat in their luxury boxes and dined in fancy restaurants as they plowed tens of millions of the corporation’s dollars into dark-money accounts. 

“You conned the people of Ohio and you tried to con the jury, too,” Black said in his gravely voice as Householder, clad in a gray suit and red tie, slumped his bulk back in his chair. 

The money from FirstEnergy and one of its subsidiaries was used to elect fellow Republicans in 2018 who would vote to make Householder speaker in early 2019. More than $500,000 of it was used to pay off Householder’s credit card bills, settle a lawsuit and to repair a house he owned in Florida.

Tens of millions more went to pass the corrupt bailout — House Bill 6 — and to fund a thuggish campaign to thwart a citizen-initiated repeal.

Earlier in the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Glatfelter said Householder used FirstEnergy’s dark money to crush a “citizen veto” and “because of this House Bill 6 remains in effect today.” 

That’s also because Republican supermajorities in Ohio’s gerrymandered legislature have refused to repeal the corrupt law even after arrests were made, and as they try to make it virtually impossible for citizens to initiate amendments to the Ohio Constitution.

Also arrested in the scandal were lobbyists Juan Cespedes and Jeffrey Longstreth — who cooperated with prosecutors within days of their arrests — and Neil Clark, who died by suicide. Former Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges is slated for sentencing at 11 a.m. today, Friday.

Steven Bradley, Householder’s attorney, sought leniency for his client. Referring to the possibility of a 20-year sentence, he said “That is effectively a life sentence for Larry Householder given his age and health situation.”

Householder is 64 and overweight.

Bradley argued that his client was around 60 when the racketeering conspiracy began in late 2016 and that prior to that, Householder did “innumerable” good deeds “for decades.” A 20-year sentence would “effectively give no consideration” to those good deeds, Bradley said.

But when he spoke on his own behalf, Householder appeared to do more to harm his case than to help it, just as he did at trial.

“My greatest commitment is to my creator… My next commitment is to my family,” he read from a prepared statement as he stood at the podium.

Householder said that in the course of 38 years of marriage, “I can count on one hand” the number of nights he spent away from his wife, Taundra. Householder also described the crushing pain they suffered when they lost a four-year-old daughter.

But then he pushed his claims past the point of plausibility.

He said Taundra was planning to retire from her teaching position and next year, when he turns 65, he wanted to retire as well, saying he planned to “hang up my suit and tie.”

Householder made that statement in the same courtroom where, only three months earlier, prosecutors put on testimony and displayed bank records and written messages from early 2020 that showed FirstEnergy and AEP putting money into dark money groups intended to fund an effort to change the state’s term limits so Householder could stay in office for as long as 16 more years.

The former House speaker also implied that he wanted a lenient sentence not for himself, but for his family. Taundra, he said, would be alone while “I’ll be in a cold cell hours away.”

But what might really have set Judge Black off was Householder’s profession of selfless public service.

“My life has been a total and full dedication to making life better for those I serve,” he said.

Black described voters who put out Householder yard signs, donated their hard-earned money to his campaigns, and pushed a button for him in the voting booth.

“I’m not talking about some corporation or the (former FirstEnergy CEO) Chuck Joneses of the world,” Black said. Householder’s constituents who supported him “were saying, ‘I’m choosing to trust you,’ and you betrayed that trust,” the judge said.

Black used Householder’s own words to give the lie to his claims. He quoted several recordings of Householder that were surreptitiously made during the conspiracy and played at trial.

“If you’re going to f**k with me, I’m going to f**k with your kids,” Householder said in one of them.

“Bottom line, you were a bully,” the judge said.

If the federal racketeering statute didn’t cap sentences for a single count at 20 years, sentencing guidelines would have recommended life for the former House speaker, Black said. One reason for that is because Householder’s use of a mountain of hidden corporate money to elect a legislature, pass an exponentially bigger bailout for the company, and to crush a citizen repeal is “an assault on democracy,” the judge said.

Black explained the special harm done by public corruption like that committed by Householder and his co-conspirators. To do so, he quoted former President Theodore Roosevelt, who ironically advocated the citizen-initiated amendment process in Ohio that Householder’s former Republican colleagues in state government are now trying to gut.

“There can be no crime more serious than bribery,” Roosevelt said in a 1903 message. “Other offenses violate one law while corruption strikes at the foundation of all law.”

When Borges, the former GOP chair, is sentenced today, it’s unclear what he’ll face. His involvement in the conspiracy was considerably less than Householder’s, but Judge Black showed that he’s not much in the mood for leniency when it comes to Ohio’s corrupt political culture.

Also uncertain is when — or if — others might be charged.

Former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and Vice President Micheal Dowling — as well as former FirstEnergy Solutions President John Kiani — directed the flood of corporate dollars into the Householder-controlled dark money groups, according to prosecutors. 

And FirstEnergy admitted in a deferred prosecution agreement that it paid  a $4.3 million bribe to Sam Randazzo just as Gov. Mike DeWine was appointing him to chair the Public Utilities Commission. Randazzo the helped draft the corrupt bailout law, according to trial testimony.

On the steps of the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse just after the sentencing, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Parker was asked when or whether those men or others might be charged.

“We continue to look through evidence and we continue to listen to recordings and speak to individuals, so if something’s there we’re going to go there, too, and address it,” he said.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.

Federal judge blasts Householder as a “bully,” sentences him to 20 years is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Sam Randazzo, the former chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, isn’t even a defendant in a massive class-action lawsuit against Akron-based FirstEnergy. But a battle is growing bitter over documents regarding $4.3 million FirstEnergy paid a group controlled by Randazzo just as Gov. Mike DeWine nominated him in 2019.

The dispute arises from a bribery and money-laundering scandal that took place between 2017 and 2020. In it, FirstEnergy and other utilities paid more than $61 million to pass a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout that mostly went to prop up two aging nuclear plants in Northern Ohio that FirstEnergy was trying to spin off.

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, R-Glenford, and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges in March were convicted of racketeering for their roles in the scheme by a federal jury sitting in Cincinnati. They’re scheduled to be sentenced at the end of June and now there’s rampant speculation about who might be indicted next.

FirstEnergy signed a deferred prosecution agreement and agreed to pay a $230 million criminal penalty. 

FirstEnergy’s former CEO, Chuck Jones, and its former Vice President, Michael Dowling, directed the $4.3 million payment into the bank account of a group controlled by Randazzo, the Sustainability Funding Alliance of Ohio. In a recent court filing, Radazzo’s attorney, Roger Sugarman, made a disclosure that seems to indicate that the Sustainability Funding Alliance didn’t have much of an existence beyond Randazzo.

“SFAO has never had, nor has it maintained an email account, email address, computer, or mobile phone (different from those used by Mr. Randazzo.),” Sugarman wrote. 

Randazzo, Jones, and Dowling deny paying or taking bribes, but in its deferred prosecution agreement, FirstEnergy said it “paid $4.3 million dollars to (Randazzo) through his consulting company in return for (Randazzo) performing official action in his capacity as PUCO Chairman to further FirstEnergy Corp.’s interests relating to passage of nuclear legislation and other specific FirstEnergy Corp. legislative and regulatory priorities, as requested and as opportunities arose.”

During the March criminal trial in Cincinnati, prosecutors put on evidence that even though he was supposed to be regulating FirstEnergy, Randazzo helped draft House Bill 6, the corruptly passed bailout law.

Neither he, Jones, or Dowling has been charged in the case, but the FBI searched Randazzo’s Columbus condo in the months after Householder was arrested and lawyers for the two former executives have made recent court filings saying they believe their clients are in the feds’ crosshairs. A judge in the class-action case against FirstEnergy denied a request by Jones and Dowling to delay sworn depositions even though she agreed that they faced the possibility of self incrimination.

Investors — including large public-pension funds — are suing FirstEnergy as well as Jones and Dowling personally. They’re arguing that their reckless conduct in the bailout scandal improperly cost investors big money.

And as an important part of the case, they want to know what Randazzo did with the millions he got from FirstEnergy and what he might have said about it in emails and text messages.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and Randazzo’s lawyer, Sugarman, have been arguing over the past two months about whether the former PUCO chairman has turned everything over, and over the past few weeks, the argument has gotten nasty.

In early April, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kimberly Jolson ordered Randazzo to produce documents regarding what he did with the millions he got from FirstEnergy as he was poised to become the top Ohio official regulating the company. Third parties such as banks and accounting firms also produced records.

When plaintiffs lawyers complained to the court that it wasn’t enough, Randazzo on May 15 turned over more information. It said that he used FirstEnergy’s millions to pay more than $1.5 million in federal taxes, $1.4 million in mortgage payments, and he lent his daughter $100,000 for her restaurant.

Still, the plaintiffs lawyers complained, that wasn’t enough. They couldn’t know whether Randazzo had turned over all email or text messages because he and his lawyers didn’t explain what they did to look for them. They didn’t want just to know what happened with the money, they wanted to know what Randazzo told other people about it.

Judge Jolson agreed that Randazzo’s response was inadequate, writing, “Their reluctance to be transparent about their search methodology does not suggest good-faith compliance with their discovery obligations.”

On May 24, Sugarman filed a sworn affidavit with the court declaring that in 2021 he hired an outside firm to search phones and computers used by Randazzo and his wife to look for responsive messages between Jan. 1, 2015 and Nov. 2020 and turned them over. As for explaining how the search was done, Sugarman wrote that “search terms, search protocol and keywords” were confidential and asked that the judge review them in private.

Still not good enough, the class-action lawyers said late last week.

Lawyer Joseph Murray said that things like the search terms used aren’t confidential. He added that the outfit that conducted the 2021 “undescribed search is (not) identified, no searched email accounts are identified; no searched mobile phone numbers are identified; no searched computers are identified.”

Further, Murray wrote, Randazzo and his lawyers “unilaterally” decided to cut off their search at Nov. 20, 2020 — four months after the FBI made arrests in the scandal.

And Murray said, “the April 2021 date of their undescribed search efforts was during a period when Randazzo and (the Sustainability Funding Alliance) were contending that this $4.3 million dollar transaction was irrelevant. As such, the robustness of these efforts to satisfy the April 5 Order (to turn over material) is questionable. Indeed, it seems implausible that the unknown April 2021 search terms and custodians were designed to capture documents they maintained were irrelevant less than two weeks (earlier.) Moreover, these concerns are only heightened by the fact that only one email and no text messages have been produced since the April 5 Order.”

Murray and the class-action plaintiffs asked the court to provide them with the search terms Randazzo used and to be allowed to conduct an hour-long, sworn deposition of Sugarman to question him further about the search.

That provoked a fierce response from Sugarman, Randazzo’s lawyer, on Wednesday. 

“Plaintiffs’ relentless and factually baseless harangues, evolving complaints and parsing of words cannot and do not change the fact that Mr. Randazzo and (the Sustainability Funding Alliance) have produced (all) documents regarding the $4.3 million payment within their possession, custody, or control, and have complied with this Court’s Orders,” he wrote. 

As for the proposal to question him under oath, Sugarman took it personally. 

He wrote the “attack on the honesty, truthfulness, and accuracy of the certifications in the Declarations are particularly galling. But it does, however, show Plaintiffs’ true intentions — to harass, annoy, and waste the resources of Mr. Randazzo, (the sustainability alliance) and their counsel. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio has never been a forum where ad hominem and unsupported personal attacks have been countenanced, and this Court should not start now.”

However, later on Wednesday, Judge Jolson again sided with the plaintiffs who are suing FirstEnergy — at least in part. She said that she had assumed that Randazzo had already shared the search terms with the plaintiffs, and based on her own review of the material, “no legitimate concerns about attorney-client privilege or work product preclude sharing the details of the search terms, protocol, and methodology with Plaintiffs.”

She ordered Randazzo to turn them over by Friday. 

As for the request to depose Randazzo’s attorney, Jolson wrote she “will not make any rulings on these issues in the present Order,” and added, “There is more work to be done by the parties… “

The judge ordered that a status report be filed by June 16.

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In Ohio, former PUCO chair’s alleged stonewalling fuels court battle is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.