Name: Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, aides in company of mobsters as they face racketeering charge
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Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, aides in company of mobsters as they face racketeering charge

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NEW!1,954sharesCLEVELAND, Ohio — Prosecutors going after Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and his aides are using one of the mightiest federal laws to do so, one the government previously used to take down the Mafia.By using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in southern Ohio signaled that it believes it can show that Householder, aide Jeff Longstreth and lobbyists Neil Clark, Matt Borges and Juan Cespedes committed crime after crime over time with money from FirstEnergy Corp.That, generally, is all the government needs to prove, though carrying out such a prosecution is more complicated. Still, people in the legal community have acknowledged that the case appears strong based on what the government has released so far. Beneath all the colorful quotes and salacious details of political bullying contained in an FBI agent’s affidavit lay the references to what could be the actual crimes.“The affidavit sets out a compelling case for proving that Householder sold his political power to FirstEnergy,” Ann Rowland, a former federal prosecutor in Cleveland, said in a statement.The FBI on Tuesday arrested the quintet on a racketeering conspiracy charge. The same day, a court unsealed a criminal complaint that said the men, along with dark money group Generation Now, had worked together since 2018 to funnel more than $60 million from FirstEnergy to what the feds are calling “Householder’s Enterprise.”Generation Now is set up as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, overseen by the IRS as a social welfare organization. Federal law expressly prohibits the organization from coordinating with political campaigns, but at the same time, it doesn’t have to disclose its donors.The group controlled Generation Now, though, and used the money to bankroll a Householder-backed piece of legislation to bail out two FirstEnergy-owned nuclear power plants in northern Ohio, as well as to ensure voters didn’t have a chance to overturn it, according to agents. The money also went toward supporting Householder’s bid to regain the speaker position and some money made it into the pockets of the members, officials said.Many of the actions laid out are tied to very public activities, such as a campaign to pressure lawmakers to pass the bailout to messing with people gathering signatures for a ballot measure to overturn it. But even with so much in plain sight, the engine behind it all remained hidden until the feds started poking around.RICOHouseholder and his aides now join the ranks of drug traffickers and mobsters as people the feds pursued as racketeers.Lawmakers passed what is commonly known as the RICO Act so prosecutors could use to take down organized crime. The Justice Department used it to weaken and mostly wipe out the Mafia in New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Ohio, among other states.Over the decades, prosecutors started using it in white-collar and political cases. Rowland, prosecuted members of La Cosa Nostra in Cleveland and worked on the most high-profile corruption cases in the area, said in an interview she recalled bringing racketeering charges in a white-collar case for the first time in the early 2000s.It proved to be a powerful tool to weed out corruption. Locally, the Justice Department most notably used it to take down former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora, who used his clout to steer contracts and fix votes while at the same time personally enriching himself. Rowland was on a team that led the prosecution of Dimora and dozens of other politicians, government workers and contractors in a massive probe.Dimora, 65, is serving a 28-year prison sentence. He recently asked an appeals court to overturn his convictions, claiming the jury instructions at his 2012 trial were faulty.Later, the U.S. Attorney’s Office used the RICO Act to prosecute former MetroHealth System CEO Dr. Edward Hills and two dentists for a years-long kickbacks scheme. The trio, and a third dentist who faced non-racketeering charges, .Chris Hoffman, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s office in Cincinnati, said at a news conference Tuesday that the Householder case is the first time federal prosecutors in southern Ohio brought a racketeering charge against a public official.Rowland said the law is particularly useful because it allows prosecutors to include crimes they could not otherwise charge because the statute of limitations expired.The law has its detractors, though, especially in the criminal defense community, when it is used for white-collar offenses.“RICO was developed for organized crime,” said Richard H. Blake, a Cleveland criminal defense attorney, and former federal prosecutor. “People can say ‘this is organized crime.’ No, it’s not. They’re doing their best to cleverly squeeze the factual basis into this statute as opposed to the other way around.”What to proveAttorneys and politicos in Ohio and across the country have spent the week reading the 81-page affidavit, parsing out minor details and clues as to the specific crimes detailed in the criminal complaint. Even skeptics acknowledged the case, as presented, was impressive in its comprehensiveness and breadth.Rowland said prosecutors pursing a racketeering case usually bring additional charges through a grand jury indictment to ensure they don’t get stuck at trial with a problem proving a certain portion of the racketeering statute.Prosecutors have to present evidence of “underlying offenses,” or the specific crimes committed that made up the pattern of racketeering, she noted. The complaint in the Householder case lays out allegations of bribery, money laundering and wire fraud.Ellen Podgor, a law professor at Stetson University in Florida, said the government must also prove that the defendants are tied together with a common bond.Knowledge of wrongdoing is important to show too. For example, Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said a key thing prosecutors will have to show is that Householder had knowledge that he received and accepted bribes.Rowland, however, noted that prosecutors do not need to prove that every defendant knew everything going on in a scheme.Blake, who worked on the Organized Crime Strike Force when he was a prosecutor, noted that money is part of politics, though, and the government will have to show that this was not just how things get done.He acknowledged, though, that if some of the money went into their bank accounts for their interests, then they’ve “got some serious problems.”U.S. Attorney David DeVillers noted at the Tuesday news conference that Householder alone received $500,000 for his expenses, including money he used to settle litigation and some that he used for his house in Naples, Florida.Still, “the government is going to have to show that the people who received that money knew that what they were doing was corrupt and not the normal business of legislation that’s done every single day,” Blake said.Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.

NEW!1,954sharesCLEVELAND, Ohio — Prosecutors going after Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and his aides are using one of the mightiest federal laws to do so, one the government previously used to take down the Mafia.By using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act of 1970, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in southern Ohio signaled that it believes it can show that Householder, aide Jeff Longstreth and lobbyists Neil Clark, Matt Borges and Juan Cespedes committed crime after crime over time with money from FirstEnergy Corp.That, generally, is all the government needs to prove,...

Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, aides in company of mobsters as they face racketeering charge

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