Government Mike DeWine (Photo by Graham Stokes for the Ohio Capital Journal / Republish photo with original story only)
No matter how I view Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s role in the largest public corruption scandal in Ohio history, I am forced to conclude that he is either knee deep in corruption or so grossly incompetent that he it allows. it all happens right under his nose without suspecting anything.
To catch you up, former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for felony racketeering as a result of accepting $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy, which were funneled through multiple dark money groups to secure elections for himself and win over his allies. , installs himself as speaker and approves a $1.3 billion bailout package, dubbed House Bill 6, for FirstEnergy’s nuclear power plants and a pair of Ohio Valley Electric Corporation’s coal plants, one of which is in Indiana. The legislation also gutted Ohio’s renewable energy portfolio.
Former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges has been sentenced to five years in prison for his efforts to thwart a citizen’s repeal of the legislation. One lobbyist, also charged by U.S. attorneys, later died by suicide. Two other former FirstEnergy lobbyists have pleaded guilty, cooperated and are awaiting sentencing. One of the dark money groups called Generation Now admitted guilt in the scheme.
FirstEnergy admitted as much in a deferred prosecution agreement, in which they also admitted to bribing DeWine’s appointment as chairman of the state’s public utilities watchdog to the tune of $4.3 million. That man, Sam Randazzo, a former FirstEnergy lobbyist, was indicted by the FBI in December and by prosecutors in February, and died by suicide in April.
The former CEO of FirstEnergy was also charged by prosecutors in February Chuck Jones and former FirstEnergy Senior Vice President Michael Dowling, both of whom have pleaded not guilty.
New revelations from the DeWine administration
This week we’ve had some major new revelations about DeWine himself, showing that he texted Jones just before the November 2018 election.
“Cuck. Please call me?” DeWine wrote on October 13, 2018 – less than a month before he faced Democrat Rich Cordray in the race for governor. “OEA deposited a million for Cordray yesterday.”
“Okay,” Jones replied. “I’ll call at 2:30.”
In another text message, Dowling says: “Chuck – go ahead and call Mike DeWine about the $500,000. It goes to RGA’s C(4) called state solutions. All done.”
Jones responds, “Okay. I’ll call him around five o’clock.’
These exchanges shed more light on dark money data recently uncovered in a joint request from partner news organizations including the Capital Journal, Floodlight, the USA Today Network and Energy News Network.
Those records showed that in 2017, FirstEnergy donated $1 million to a dark money group called Freedom Frontier, which supported Jon Husted when he made a primary bid for the Republican Party for the nomination to run for governor. The group then endorsed DeWine after Husted dropped out of the primary race to become his running mate.
They also revealed that in 2018, FirstEnergy donated $2.5 million to a Republican Governors Association-affiliated dark money group called State Solutions, which supported DeWine for governor. In 2019, they gave $300,000 to another dark money group called Securing Ohio’s Future, for a total of nearly $4 million in dark money in support of DeWine/Husted.
Shortly after winning the 2018 race for governor, on December 18, 2018, DeWine, Husted, Jones and Dowling met at the Columbus Athletic Club. That same evening, Jones and Dowling went from that dinner to the German Village apartment in Randazzo, where they appear to have negotiated the $4.3 million payment that FirstEnergy has admitted was a bribe.
In January 2019, when Randazzo was being vetted by the DeWine administration to chair the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, he told Laurel Dawson, DeWine’s then-chief of staff, about the $4.3 million payment. Dawson, married to Mike Dawson, another FirstEnergy lobbyist, reportedly never bothered to tell the governor about it before Randazzo’s appointment.
Another former aide gave DeWine a 198-page dossier on Jan. 28, 2019, reporting murky financial connections between Randazzo and FirstEnergy, but again, the government says, Dawson did not share that with DeWine. DeWine nominated Randazzo as president of the PUCO on February 4, 2019.
According to the state’s indictment, Randazzo spent the rest of the year helping draft and openly lobbying for the corrupt bailout plan. The bailout was approved and signed by DeWine the same day, in July 2019.
At the time, DeWine’s director of legislative affairs was a man named Dan McCarthy, who, before joining the administration, was also a lobbyist for FirstEnergy, and the director of another dark money group called Partners for Progress, which was used by FirstEnergy and Generation Now. as yet another organization passing dark money into the bailout and bribery system.
More details emerged this week show that Dowling texted Jones and explained that DeWine was making bids in the background for the company to get lawmakers to pass HB 6 in 2019.
“We know DeWine called the Senate President to voice his support for HB 6,” Dowling texted on June 4, 2019.
Then-Senate President Larry Obhof was not immediately sold on the proposal, the texts seem to suggest.
“Eileen Mikkelsen and I have been quietly working with the administrator (at their request) on an amendment to HB 6 that DeWine can use as a way to get Obhof moving something good for everyone by the end of the month,” Dowling texted on June 6, 2019. “The admin knows they have to make a deal between the House of Representatives and the Senate.”
Other texts between Jones and Dowling say DeWine also received a playbook from FirstEnergy on how to “talk” about a negative financial report on the impact of HB 6.
“How much recovery of that API report is still needed. He says some lady in the government office is still concerned about the report? Jones texted Dowling.
‘Mike Dawson is going to ask his wife tonight where we stand. He thinks we’re doing well. But he will let us know. That lady is not a big player. Mike Dawson thinks her job is to make sure the DeWine team knows how to talk about the API report,” Dowling responded, referring to lobbyist Mike Dawson and his wife, DeWine assistant Laurel Dawson.
On the day HB 6 was sent to the governor’s desk, July 23, 2019, Householder ally and coal company executive Matt Evans texted Jones.
“I just talked to DeWine. He will sign the bill in an hour,” Evans texted.
In text messages between McCarthy and Dowling in August of that year, the legislative director tells the executive he is sending him a pen that DeWine used to sign HB 6 into law.
“You’re the best!” Dowling responds.
On Thursday, we learned that Dowling has listed DeWine and Husted as potential defense witnesses in his criminal bribery and money laundering case.
Best
Add this all up. DeWine was chatting with FirstEnergy executives at an RGA fundraiser just before the 2018 election and then texted them about his opponent getting money just before FirstEnergy executives received an injection of had set up $500,000 of dark money in the DeWine campaign.
DeWine then met with those same executives after the election, the night they bribed the man DeWine would install as the state’s top utility watchdog. DeWine surrounded himself with former FirstEnergy lobbyists and people adjacent to FirstEnergy lobbyists, then ignored all warnings to appoint a former FirstEnergy lobbyist as the company’s top regulator.
DeWine’s Lt. Gov. Jon Husted conducted “battlefield triage” to save the bailout in the Legislature; his chief of staff helped coach the administration on talking points FirstEnergy had suggested for the bailout; his chief supervisor was bribed and worked diligently to push through the bailout plan; and his former FirstEnergy lobbyist director of legislative affairs, who previously headed a FirstEnergy dark money conduit group, lobbied lawmakers for the bailout on behalf of the government and then made sure a now-indicted First Energy executive got the pen that DeWine used to sign it.
Now DeWine claims he doesn’t remember what he talked about with FirstEnergy executives during their phone calls. He doesn’t remember what he talked about with FirstEnergy executives during their dinner meeting. He says he was unaware of the dark money flowing into FirstEnergy to support his campaign. He says he was never told about the $4.3 million in bribes his utility regulator received from FirstEnergy. He says he never received the 198-page filing warning about his chosen utility regulator.
DeWine also says he supported the bailout simply because he thought it was good law. So he thought it was a good law to undermine Ohio’s renewable energy portfolio and turn Ohio from a renewable energy leader to a non-competitor. He thinks it’s a good law that Ohioans are still paying hundreds of millions of dollars to keep failing coal-fired power plants, one of which isn’t even in Ohio, afloat. He thought it was good law to authorize a $1 billion bailout for FirstEnergy’s nuclear power plants, which may not have been all that necessary since that part of the law has been repealed and FirstEnergy is still in business.
Summarizing all this again, I can really only conclude one of two things: either DeWine was far more aware of the corruption racket behind this bailout scandal than he can “remember” anymore, or – he was as generous as I can be – that he is so grossly incompetent, so easily led astray by bad actors with nefarious intentions, so naive and aloof and incurious about the machinations of corporate interests trying to rob the citizens of Ohio of $1 billion, that he is able was every screeching alarm bell and bright red flag along the way to defraud Ohioans on behalf of corrupt special interests and lobbyists, whom he happily surrounded himself with without ever asking questions.
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The message Phenomenally corrupt or insanely incompetent? What’s Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s deal? first appeared on Ohio Capital Journal.
