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COLUMBUS, Ohio — The speaker of the Ohio House and four other people were arrested Tuesday in a $60 million federal bribery investigation, a person briefed on the matter said, as the FBI raided the legislative leader’s rural farm.
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Speaker Larry Householder, a Republican, was one of the driving forces behind a roughly $1 billion financial rescue for Ohio’s two nuclear power plants, which appeared to be tied to several targets of the investigation. The legislation added a new fee to every electricity bill in the state and directed over $150 million a year through 2026 to the plants near Cleveland and Toledo.
Also arrested were Householder adviser Jeffrey Longstreth, longtime Statehouse lobbyist Neil Clark, former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matthew Borges and Juan Cespedes, co-founder of The Oxley Group, a Columbus-based consulting firm, the person told The Associated Press. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
Authorities were also seeking a sixth suspect, the person said.
Previous attempts to bail out the nuclear plants had stalled in the Legislature before Householder became speaker. Months after taking over, he rolled out a new plan to subsidize the plants and eliminate renewable energy incentives. The proposal was approved a year ago despite opposition from many business leaders and the manufacturing industry.
FirstEnergy Corp., whose former subsidiaries owned the plants, donated heavily to Householder’s campaigns and his backers in the Ohio House. The utility’s political action committee contributed $25,000 to Householder’s campaign in 2018, according to an analysis by Common Cause Ohio, a government watchdog.
Hours ahead of the news conference, FBI agents were at Householder’s farm in Glenford in rural Perry County. FBI spokesman Todd Lindgren said only that they were carrying out “law enforcement activity.”
Clark is a lobbyist, representing clients from the pharmaceutical, gambling and alcoholic beverage industries, among others.
Cespedes is a former investment officer with the Ohio Treasurer’s Offic.
Householder is a veteran state lawmaker who’s in his second stint as speaker. He held the same position from 2001 to 2004. He left state politics more than a decade ago because of term limits and returned in 2016 and took up a contentious fight to win back the chamber’s top job.
At the time he left office, he and several top advisers were under federal investigation for alleged money laundering and irregular campaign practices. The government closed the case without filing charges.
—AP stories contributed to this report.
