COLUMBUS — Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former state Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges will be sentenced in late June for their federal racketeering convictions related to a $61 million bribery scheme.
U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black has set sentencing for June 29 and 30, respectively, in Cincinnati. Both face up to 20 years in federal prison.
Householder and Borges were convicted in early March after a nearly seven-week trial for their roles in a convoluted scheme largely bankrolled by utility giant FirstEnergy Corp. It was designed to return Householder as House speaker in 2019 so that he could usher through the passage of a $1 billion bailout of two struggling nuclear power plants then owned by subsidiary FirstEnergy Solutions.
The prosecution presented Householder as the scheme's leader while Borges' primary role occurred late in the process when the focus shifted to killing a subsequent effort to ask voters to repeal House Bill 6, the newly passed bailout law.
Two other individuals are awaiting sentencing dates.
Political consultant and Householder ally Jeff Longstreth and former FirstEnergy Solutions lobbyist Juan Cespedes both pleaded guilty to racketeering and testified for the prosecution in hopes of facing little or no prison time.
To date, no one affiliated with FirstEnergy has been criminally charged. The company paid a $230 million fine as part of a deferred prosecution agreement in which it admitted to being the scheme's primary funding source.
First Published May 12, 2023, 4:54 p.m.
