The attorney general played an important role in the defeat of an attempted repeal of the corrupt bailout. And there were claims that he believed that the bailout was a bad law, but kept his mouth shut out of loyalty to one of the conspirators — and to the law’s major beneficiary.

“It’s just laughable,” David 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.'”

The previously unreported gift linked to Lt. Gov. Jon Husted’s 2017 primary bid was revealed as part of a raft of documents obtained under Ohio’s public records law by a coalition of news organizations, including Floodlight, Energy News Network and the Ohio Capital Journal. Among the documents are company emails describing behind-the-scenes efforts by Husted to persuade DeWine to support House Bill 6, the utility-backed legislation at the heart of the state’s ongoing $60 million public bribery scandal, that was co-sponsored by then State Reps. Jamie Callender, R-Lake County, and Shane Wilkin, R-Hillsboro.

A Public Utilities Commission of Ohio investigation into FirstEnergy’s actions surrounding the largest public corruption scandal in state history is back on after a 19-month delay.

“Oh, look, if I knew what I know now, if I knew that — I certainly would not have appointed Sam Randazzo to that position,” Gov. DeWine said. DeWine said he was the best person for the job, claiming that he wasn’t aware that Randazzo was FirstEnergy’s handpicked man.

Two Ohio lawmakers want to pay students to go to school and to graduate, calling chronic absenteeism an education emergency.

Plaintiffs in a civil suit related to a massive bribery and money-laundering scandal have subpoenaed documents from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and they’re scheduling a sworn deposition with Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.

Our politicians draw their strength from the division between us. They take the 10%-20% disagreement between us and turn it into the main thing, because that’s what gives them a mandate to “represent” us, to fight in our name. They do it at the expense of our security, our welfare, our taxes and our freedom.

House Bill 6 wasn’t only a bad law because it involved $61 million in bribes in exchange for a $1.3 billion utility bailout. Most of the bailout payments have been repealed, but somehow the law — the product of perhaps the biggest corruption scandal in Ohio history — remains on the books.

Critics have called the charges a bailout and have tried multiple times to repeal the coal plant provisions of House Bill 6, the 2019 law at the heart of Ohio’s ongoing corruption scandal. 

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

Judges denied two delays in recent days that would have been key to a bribery and money laundering scandal that took place in Ohio between 2017 to 2020. Lawyers in one suit called it “one of the largest corruption and bribery schemes in U.S. history.” Denial of a delay in one court case means that a player will still be sentenced late next month. 

Lawyers for former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and lobbyist Matt Borges said they would file post-verdict motions by April 24 in the federal government’s House Bill 6 criminal case. Jurors found both men guilty last month after seven weeks of trial.

Senior PUCO figures were deeply involved in bailout legislation that last month resulted in the racketeering convictions of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges. Both played roles in a scheme in which more than $60 million in dark money from Ohio utilities funded a $1.3 billion utility bailout.

Lobbyists and other wired-in parties on Capitol Square knew that as the battle heated up over the 2019 bailout measure — House Bill 6 — a geyser of cash was financing the effort to pass and protect it from repeal. It was logical to suspect that the money was coming from a utility industry that stood to benefit. But there was no way to be sure because it was coming through 501(c)(4) dark money groups that don’t have to disclose their donors.