‘Only the beginning;’ Ohio AG vows to hold others in $60M public corruption case accountable

COLUMBUS — After a jury found the ex-Ohio House Speaker and an associate guilty of public corruption, Ohio’s Attorney General says the state is planning to work toward holding more people accountable in the biggest corruption case in the state’s history.

Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio GOP chair and lobbyist Matt Borges were convicted Thursday in federal court in Cincinnati.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said Thursday’s guilty verdicts marked “only the beginning of accountability regarding House Bill 6.”

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HB6, which was passed into law in 2019, had several provisions. The most prominent portion was the bailout of two nuclear plants, which at the time were owned by First Energy Solutions, then a subsidiary of First Energy.

Householder and four associates were arrested in 2020 after being accused of taking around $61 million from FirstEnergy Corp. in exchange for orchestrating a scheme to elect Householder as speaker and his allies to House seats, allowing them to then pass the $1.3 billion bailout bill.

“Other wrongdoers in this scandal – especially and including the First Energy executives who funded the corrupt Householder Enterprise – cannot be permitted to escape scot-free,” Yost said Friday, noting that the state’s racketeering lawsuit should be able to resume now.

The AG has asked a Franklin County Common Pleas judge to lift the stay on discovery in the state’s case. The lift would all the state to continue collecting documents and depose key witnesses.

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“Our work has already ended the nuclear subsidy and the “decoupling rider” that enshrined in Ohio law First Energy’s profitability. While portions of HB6 were eventually repealed, these two corrupt benefits for First Energy ended because of our lawsuit, not because of the legislative branch’s belated repeal. The repeal only came after we ended the flow of funds,” Yost said.

Additionally, Yost’s office was successful in freezing former PUCO Chairman Sam Randazzo’s financial assets. FirstEnergy previously admitted to paying Randazzo $4 million with the expectation that he would act in the company’s interests with HB6.

“We are confident in our position, and fully intend to claw back those ill-gotten gains through our racketeering lawsuit,” Yost said.

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