Ohio – Former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder's public corruption trial is underway regarding what prosecutors say was a $60 bribery scheme involving HB6 and greedy right wing politicians and GOP businessmen, and it just keeps getting better.
Householder is accused of using some $100,000 in bribery money, part of $500,000 in illegal monies the FBI confiscated from his personal accounts, for costs on his home in Florida. His co-conspirators got hundreds of thousands of dollars too, prosecutors say, if not millions.
David DeVillers, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, has called it one of the worst misuses of Ohio tax-payer money in American history, and public corruption and money laundering of mass proportions. Nearly a dozen others, practically all of them Republican operatives, have been arrested in connection with the now infamous bailout fiasco.
An FBI agent testified on Thursday that the former state lawmaker pocketed $500,000 from the bribery scheme, if not more. Special Agent Blane Wetzel also said that while Matt Borges, a former lobbyist who is on trial with Householder, purportedly got $366,000 and Jeff Longstreth and Juan Cespede, two co-defendants who have pleaded guilty and are slated to testify in the against Householder and other defendants in the case, some $2.3 million between them
Republicans and Democrats alike removed the indicted former House speaker from office last June, the House voting 75-21 to expel the embattled state representative in connection with a multi-million dollar pay-to-play scheme that has rocked Ohio Republicans and enraged Democrats who are the minority in both the House and Senate.
Householder is the first member to be expelled from the Ohio House of Representatives in 164 years, his ouster coming behind federal racketeering charges and a mountain of other charges related to House Bill 6. He has denied the allegations.He called his expulsion while his criminal case is pending undemocratic and said the basis for it, disorderly conduct, is ludicrous. And he called it a disrespect to voters.
"They have taken away the vote of the 72nd house district and disenfranchised voters," Householder told reporters after his expulsion last year.
But Democrats say it was long overdue and should have been done sooner, and so do some Republican state lawmakers angry with the former speaker's misgivings.
Republican Brian Steward co-sponsored the expulsion resolution and said afterwards that if bribery, money laundering and racketeering are not disorderly conduct then what is, and former House Speaker Robert Culp, a Republican and one time Householder ally, agreed He said at the time that the expulsion was needed and that "now we can put this behind us."
The expulsion operates for a year and a half and Householder can run for office again, if he is vindicated on the pending public corruption and racketeering charges, which sources say is unlikely. Culp was succeeded earlier this year as House speaker by Rep Jason Stephens, a rural southern Ohio Republican
The House voted 90-0 in July of 2020 to remove Householder as speaker, a week after he and four other Republican affiliates, including Borges, were arrested following an indictment with respect to the $ 60 million pay-to-play scheme, which also steeped with claims money FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron and two Ohio nuclear power plants position at the core of the celebrated case
While the House quickly got rid of him as its speaker, initial efforts to remove Householder from office altogether stalled, partly because he and and Borges were two of the top influential Republicans in Ohio at one time, at least until authorities came lurking around, including the FBI, and the IRS.
A Republican political consultant and ally to former Ohio GOP governor John Kasich who managed the 2014 campaign of auditor Dave Yost, Borges was chair of the state GOP party from 2013 until former president Donald Trump assumed office in January of 2017.He is a Trump critic and lobbied against the former president's failed reelection bid last year.
Also arrested besides Housholder and Borges and a few others, were Neil Clark of Grant Street Consultants, Oxley Group co-founder Juan Cespedes, and Jeffrey Longstreth, an adviser to Householder.
Described in a damning FBI complaint as widespread public corruption and conspiracy involving FirstEnergy Corp with bribery at the helm, prosecutors say the case is one of the worst bribery schemes in Ohio history. At the center is Householder's relationship with FirstEnergy Corp officials and a $1 billion financial rescue, now defunct legislation dubbed House Bill 6 that added an additional fee to every electricity bill in the state, and that generated some $150 million to the energy company.
FirstEnergy helped finance Householder's election in 2018, the scorching FBI complaint says, coupled with bankrolling a successful effort led by the former House speaker to get the Republican-dominated general assembly to pass a bill that allocates $1.3 million for the troubled energy company.
That bailout bill came via the statewide electricity bill surcharge under HB6, which was supported by only 10 House Democrats.
A failed 2019 referendum seeking to repeal the legislation was also financed in part by the energy corporation. HB 6 was eventually discarded by state lawmakers.
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