COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, R-Ohio, is expanding his civil racketeering lawsuit in the House Bill 6 scandal to include three new defendants.
Yost added former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones, former FirstEnergy Senior Vice President Michael Dowling and former Public Utility Commission of Ohio Chairman Sam Randazzo and several entities connected to Randazzo to his lawsuit Thursday.
Yost is asking for Sam Randazzo to pay back what Yost described as a $4.3 million bribe FirstEnergy admitted it paid to Randazzo to help guide and craft House Bill 6 while serving as Ohio’s top utilities regulator.
“We want the money back,” said Yost. “We’re also asking the court to make them forfeit the public salary they received during that period of time because he clearly wasn’t working for the people of Ohio. He was working for the people who already paid him $4.3 million illegally.”
The lawsuit says the three men engaged in extortion, money laundering, coercion, intimidation and an attempted cover-up by a politically-connected group trying to enrich themselves.
“All of these people including FirstEnergy and all the people who were originally named including Larry Householder all engaged in a corrupt enterprise with the end of making Larry Householder speaker and getting House Bill 6 passed for the benefit of FirstEnergy,” Yost said.
Yost originally filed the lawsuit in September and it has already resulted in stopping FirstEnergy from keeping its $1 billion-plus nuclear plant subsidy and the “decoupling” provisions that guaranteed the corporation a certain amount of money regardless of consumer usage.
None of the three new defendants have been charged with a crime.
“It’s not place to recommend to the DOJ but I will say this — corruption of public officials doesn’t happen without somebody willing to write the check in the private sector,” said Yost. “We need to have both sides of this equation held accountable and that includes the people who abused the public trust and the people that wrote the checks for their own gain.”
Randazzo was appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine to his position at the PUCO. When asked if he had any reason to believe DeWine or anyone in his administration knew about what was going on, Yost responded no.
”I have no information that would suggest that Mike DeWine had any knowledge of this and candidly would have a difficult time believing that,” said Yost. “Obviously, we go where the evidence leads us and right now it doesn’t lead us to the governor.”
A spokesperson for DeWine said, “We do not have comment on the lawsuit. The governor nor the governor’s office is not a party to it.”
The lawsuit also calls for an eight-year ban on lobbying or holding public office for anyone involved and asks former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder to give back his salary as well.
Attempts to reach Jones, Dowling and Randazzo were unsuccessful.
