Editor's Newsletter

Power. Politics. Greed. Bribery. Regulatory capture. The buying and selling of government. Robbing the people blind.

In the wretched hustle of public corruption, modern Ohio Republican state politicians make the notorious “Ohio Gang” of the Teapot Dome scandal look like rank amateurs.

Consider the latest: Three-and-a-half years after news of the largest bribery scandal in Ohio history broke, citizens are seeing fresh indictments with damning new details about the breadth and depth of the depravity, including how the entire operation reached into the orbit and actions of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.

Let’s marshal our facts.

What we know

The latest indictments concern 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 Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former state GOP Chairman Matt Borges are serving federal prison sentences for their roles. Two other lobbyists cooperated and are awaiting sentencing, while a third died by suicide wearing a “DeWine for governor” t-shirt.

In December, the feds charged Sam Randazzo with 11 felony counts. Randazzo is a lawyer and longtime energy consultant whom DeWine nominated to chair the state’s top utility regulator, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced state felony charges against Randazzo and former First Energy CEO Chuck Jones and former Vice President Michael Dowling for their alleged roles. The three were arraigned in Akron on Tuesday and each pleaded not guilty.

Among the new allegations was that Randazzo had a corrupt relationship with the FirstEnergy executives stretching back to 2010, allegedly serving as general counsel to the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio while secretly being paid as a consultant for FirstEnergy: Randazzo settled disputes over electricity rates on terms acceptable to the energy companies, then channeled the settlement money through shell companies where he skimmed off a portion, the indictment said.

The indictment said the money was really intended to be a cash payment to the industrial users so they would drop their opposition to a rate hike FirstEnergy was seeking. Through that “side deal,” a powerful utility paid off powerful industries to make way for a rate hike on all FirstEnergy customers, if the allegations are true.

Between 2016 and 2019, FirstEnergy paid $13 million into Randazzo’s shell companies, the indictment said. Of that, Randazzo passed $7.75 million to the industrial users and pocketed the rest, it said.

DeWine’s chief of staff, Laurel Dawson, was married to a man who had been a paid lobbyist for FirstEnergy — and who had received a $10,000 loan from Randazzo in 2016, the indictment said.

DeWine’s legislative affairs director, Dan McCarthy, had also been a FirstEnergy lobbyist. When he was, McCarthy founded Partners for Progress, a 501(c)(4) dark money group that FirstEnergy admitted was used to funnel tens of millions of the corporation’s dollars into the effort to make Householder speaker and pass and protect the bailout. Once in the administration, McCarthy helped pass the bailout legislation.

On Dec. 18, 2018 — just before DeWine and Husted took office — they met at the Columbus Athletic Club with Jones and Dowling, the then-top executives for FirstEnergy. Among the topics was whether Randazzo would be acceptable to regulate the executives’ company, the indictment said.

Whether he would be acceptable to the companies to regulate the companies.

According to the state indictment, Jones and Dowling went from that dinner to Randazzo’s German Village condo, where they seem to have negotiated a payment that FirstEnergy later characterized as a bribe.

The next day, Randazzo sent the executives a text message requesting $4.3 million over a period of years, according to copies filed as part of Randazzo’s indictments. Jones responded by saying it would be paid in a lump sum, the messages said.

In January 2019, as Randazzo was being vetted to chair the PUCO, he told Dawson, DeWine’s chief of staff, about the $4.3 million payment, but he did not tell her about the other millions he had received from FirstEnergy, the state indictment said. Randazzo didn’t report any of the payments to the Ohio Ethics Commission, it added.

A former aide gave DeWine a dossier reporting shady financial connections between Randazzo and FirstEnergy on Jan. 28, 2019. But the governor’s office says that Dawson never told the governor about the $4.3 million payment before DeWine nominated Randazzo to chair the PUCO on Feb. 4, 2019.

According to the state indictment, Randazzo spent the rest of the year and part of the next helping to draft and openly lobby for the corrupt bailout.

Householder and four others were arrested in July 2020. But it wasn’t until the following November — when the FBI searched Randazzo’s condo — that Dawson told the governor about the $4.3 million payout.

DeWine has staunchly defended Dawson, just as he defended McCarthy, the former aide and FirstEnergy lobbyist with the dark money bribery pass-through group.

In texts disclosed in court documents, Dowling credits DeWine and Husted with performing “battlefield triage” to save Randazzo’s appointment before a key vote.

In November 2021, Dowling and Jones pointed to Husted as “likely to have discoverable information” in an ongoing shareholder lawsuit against FirstEnergy — which both DeWine and Husted have now been subpoenaed in.

Responding to that allegation from the executives when it was first reported, Husted was asked to describe his role in the passage of HB 6 and he said, “None.”

But the FirstEnergy executive texts indicate not only that Husted played a significant role, but an executive says explicitly Husted worked to extend the length of the bailout.

While HB 6 was being considered, after the bill was repeatedly criticized during an opponent testimony hearing at the Statehouse, DeWine, Husted, Randazzo and various staffers all met up at 5 p.m. for what the governor’s calendar calls a “Nuclear Bailout Bill Discussion.”

Over the next month, DeWine’s calendars show two entries for energy policy meetings, plus a call with Householder about HB 6, and another call on the bill.

On June 9, 2019, DeWine showed signs of wavering and contacted Randazzo at PUCO.

“Sam, what do we know about whether nuclear plants need this boost?” DeWine, using his personal email, wrote to Randazzo. “One editorial suggested testimony was not conclusive.”

Dowling paid a visit to the governor’s residence the next day. Randazzo responded to DeWine’s email on June 11, casting doubt on the studies referenced in the editorials.

On July 1, Dowling texted Jones.

“Just had a long conversation with JHusted just now,” he said, going on to explain that Husted sought to extend the length of the bailout. “All is well. JH is working on the 10 years. He’s afraid it’s going to end up being 8.”

Court records contain another text from Jones stating that “State Official 2,” later confirmed to be Husted, joined with others in “fighting to the end” for a beefier bailout.

Lawmakers passed the $1.3 billion big energy bailout HB 6 on July 23, 2019. DeWine signed it into law hours later.

During an attempted repeal effort, FirstEnergy’s Dowling worked to keep the name of the senior aide to DeWine — McCarthy — off of a $10 million infusion of corporate cash into the fight. He did so even after an assistant told him it would violate IRS rules to not list McCarthy on the transaction, according to text messages presented in federal court.

FirstEnergy contributed about $1 million in total to the DeWine/Husted campaign, political organizations supporting it, and to another nonprofit supporting his daughter’s campaign for county prosecutor, according to the Dayton Daily News.

So what have we got here?

We have FirstEnergy greasing the skids for the DeWine/Husted campaign, and their executives allegedly bribing an energy lobbyist to play both sides of utility regulation for more than a decade, stuffing his and others’ pockets to rig the game. We have a FirstEnergy lobbyist named to be the governor’s top legislative aide who had been running a dark money group that FirstEnergy used to funnel political bribes for their corrupt bailout. We have the wife of another lobbyist who had worked for FirstEnergy serving as the governor’s chief of staff.

We have Lt. Gov. Jon Husted running interference to make sure FirstEnergy got the beefiest bailout possible. We have Husted and Gov. DeWine dining with FirstEnergy executives right after their election to discuss who will oversee regulation of utilities in Ohio, and then those same executives tooling across town that very night to arrange a $4.3 million bribe of that very same anticipated regulator, the same man they had been allegedly bribing for years. We have Husted performing “battlefield triage” to save the bribed regulator’s nomination.

We have DeWine ignoring a 198-page dossier warning him in extravagant detail about the chosen regulator’s ties to FirstEnergy just before his selection by DeWine, and we have DeWine’s chief of staff failing to tell the governor about a $4.3 million payment she knew FirstEnergy had made to the man DeWine was tapping for regulator of FirstEnergy.

We have DeWine signing the corrupt bailout mere hours after it was passed by the legislature. Also that same day, we have Jones sending a photo-shopped image of Mount Rushmore to the bribed utility watchdog, Randazzo.

The faces of Mount Rushmore were replaced with Randazzo, the two FirstEnergy executives, and another utility company executive, with the caption: “HB6 F— ANYBODY WHO AIN’T US.”

Where does that leave us?

Most of us regular, everyday Ohioans (who ain’t them) aren’t facing multiple-felony indictments and the prospect of spending the rest of our lives in prison, but we are still paying for portions of HB 6 propping up two 1950’s-era coal plants, one of which is in Indiana — estimated to cost us $700 million by 2030. And gerrymandered Republican supermajority lawmakers have shown zero interest in ethics reform.

So we’re left with a state government truly devoted to misrepresenting us, whether through gerrymandering or public corruption.

Whether he knew anything nefarious or not, Husted was obviously a helpful stooge for these corrupt special interests, and he’s gearing up to attempt to be our next governor in 2026.

As for DeWine, the indictment unveiled on Monday contained a message from a FirstEnergy lobbyist briefing his top bosses on how to talk to DeWine.

“Explain things like he doesn’t know anything about it — and be surprised when he does,” the lobbyist wrote. “Sometimes he knows what you’re talking about. Sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes he does and pretends he doesn’t.”

So according to this lobbyist, DeWine likes to pretend to not know things that he knows.

With that in mind, we’re compelled to conclude that when it comes to these overtly corrupt special interests and this historic bribery scandal, either DeWine was astoundingly naïve, gullible, incompetent, and intentionally, dangerously ignorant — allowing executives, lobbyists, and his chosen regulator, with the fortuitously timely assistance of his aides and lieutenant governor, to play him like a fiddle — or he knew a helluva lot more than he’s pretending. Taster’s choice.

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This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.