Ohio Speaker Householder's $60m bribes explained - it goes deep

[muriel_volestrangler]

Following his January 2017 trip on Company A’s [i.e. FirstEnergy’s] private jet, in March 2017, Householder began receiving quarterly $250,000 payments from Company A into a bank account in the name of a 501(c)(4) entity secretly controlled by Householder called Generation Now.

Arrested along with Householder were his longtime aide, Jeff Longstreth, who helped him set up Generation Now, former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges, and FirstEnergy lobbyists Neil Clark and Juan Cespedes. Apparently, they were a chatty bunch.

In 2019, Clark described himself on recorded communications as Householders “hitman” who will do the “dirty shit.” Clark stated, “When Householder’s busy, I get complete say. When we are working on stuff, if he says ‘I’m busy,’ everyone knows, Neil has the final say, not Jeff. Jeff is his implementer.

Householder used the cash in Generation Now to build his political base, doling it out to other Republican candidates and preaching the good word of dirty energy, and in January 2019, he regained the speakership. Three months later, Householder introduced HB6, a $1.3 billion bailout for FirstEnergy, at which point the cash flowing from the company to Generation Now and GOP state reps kicked into overdrive. Between July and October of 2019, FirstEnergy sent $38 million to Generation Now.
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Sure, Householder used some of that money to pay his campaign staff, and allegedly pocketed about $400,000 in personal benefits “to settle a personal lawsuit, to pay for costs associated with his residence in Florida, and to pay off thousands of dollars of credit card debt.” Plus he’s alleged to have “paid $15,000 to an individual to provide insider information about the ballot initiative and offered to pay signature collectors for the ballot initiative $2,500 cash and plane fare to stop gathering signatures.” Because Householder provided good service for his clients, and he made sure that a ballot initiative to repeal the bill never saw the light of day.

But that doesn’t add up to anything like $60 million. The complaint details transfers of about $20 million to Householder’s co-conspirators, but unless $40 million of that money is still sitting there in Generation Now’s account, it had to go somewhere.

https://abovethelaw.com/2020/07/ohio-house-speaker-arrested-in-massive-61-million-bribery-scheme/?rf=1

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