Trump’s top campaign money bundler connected to Ohio’s largest public corruption scandal

FirstEnergy was the company behind the largest political bailout and bribery scandal in Ohio history, which funneled $61 million in dark money bribes to Ohio lawmakers in order to pass a $1.3 billion nuclear and coal bailout at the expense of every Ohio family that pays utility bills.

This week, Sludge reported that Donald Trump’s top known campaign money bundler advised FirstEnergy on its contributions to a dark money group that pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in Ohio’s House Bill 6 bailout scandal.

FirstEnergy pleaded guilty in a deferred prosecution agreement. So did the aforementioned dark money group used to funnel the bribes, Generation Now. Former Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder is serving 20 years in federal prison on racketeering charges, and former Ohio Republican Party chair and FirstEnergy lobbyist Matt Borges is serving five years for his role.

One former Ohio lobbyist charged in the scandal died by suicide, as did Ohio’s former top utility regulator while he was under state and federal indictments. FirstEnergy admitted bribing him $4.3 million. Two other former FirstEnergy lobbyists cooperated and are awaiting sentencing. Two former FirstEnergy executives have been charged by the state of Ohio on charges alleging they spearheaded the bribery scheme. They’ve pleaded not guilty.

Trump’s top money bundler is named Geoff Verhoff. As Sludge reported, Verhoff is a “senior adviser at public affairs firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, has bundled more than $3.6 million this year for Trump 47 Committee, according to a new filing with the Federal Election Commission.”

Verhoff also pleaded the Fifth when called to testify at Householder’s trial last March on his role in FirstEnergy’s Ohio bribery scheme.

From Sludge: “Verhoff was one of four individuals who was present at an October 2018 meeting where a FirstEnergy lobbyist paid a bribe to former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. According to the testimony of the government’s cooperating witness, former FirstEnergy lobbyist Juan Cespedes, during the meeting lobbyist Robert Klaffky slid an envelope containing a $400,000 check under the hand of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. In response to the check, Cespedes said, Householder, gave ‘very strong verbals and nonverbals that he would introduce’ the FirstEnergy bailout legislation. The check was written out to Generation Now, a dark money nonprofit controlled by Householder that later pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in the matter.”

The article is full of details and is worth getting a subscription to read in full. Sludge reports on money in politics — that dark toxin poisoning our body politic alongside gerrymandering, as we’ve discussed previously.

Verhoff is just one of two FirstEnergy-connected lobbyist bundlers working to gather money for Trump to be reelected, according to the article. Verhoff also served as vice-chair of the RNC finance committee from 2017-2021. The Akin group Verhoff is part of got $68 million for their FirstEnergy work, Sludge reported, and Verhoff got $675 an hour from FirstEnergy.

With the FirstEnergy former executives’ trials still to come, and with Ohioans still paying hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up two failing coal plants, and with questions still outstanding about FirstEnergy dark money connected to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, this scandal is not over for us.

Ohioans deserve answers and accountability, and public servants who serve the public instead of themselves. But I fear that the pattern of elected officials serving themselves at the expense of the public appears to be standard operating procedure among some politicians.

Some politicians try to soothe their conscience that giving aways billions of dollars worth of public money and resources in exchange for millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions is just business as usual and everybody does it and it’s just fine. They’re lying to themselves.

They’re selling themselves out and shamelessly ripping off working families in the process. They’re failing their most basic responsibility to protect the public welfare. This is not normal and it is not acceptable.

But prominent politicians are getting increasingly brazen.

Just this May, Trump promised 20 oil executives at a Mar-a-Lago dinner to roll back alternative energy programs, while asking them for $1 billion to fund his campaign. And Ohio U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance is connected to a network of influential right wing tech billionaires.

No matter any specific special favors, the Trump/Vance ticket is promising to lavish these billionaires and their companies with massive tax giveaways. Meanwhile, his 2017 tax cuts are already adding trillions to U.S. debt.

And this comes after Trump has already presided over a staggeringly corrupt administration.

Trump had a cabinet full of lobbyists and more than 200 companies, special-interest groups, and foreign governments funneled millions of dollars into Trump’s properties to curry favor with his administration during his tenure. The non-partisan watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics documented more than 3,400 conflicts of interest in Trump’s four-year term.

There were cases of self-dealing, ethics violations, cronyism, and public corruption in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, his State Department, his Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, his Department of the Interior, his Treasury Department, his Commerce Department, his Environmental Protection Agency, his Department of Labor, his Department of Education, his Department of Energy, his Department of Agriculture, his Department of Health and Human Services, his Department of Housing and Urban Development, his Department of Transportation, and his Department of Justice.

There was so much public corruption during the Trump administration that it would take thousands of words just to even try to briefly summarize it.

In Ohio, we’ve seen what happens when special interests capture state government and use it as their personal piggy bank.

Trump’s promises to oil tycoons would risk $1 trillion in clean energy investment, according to a May analysis.

Millions in donations for billions worth of public resources is quite bad enough.

Trump asked for a billion-dollar donation. And him repaying it would cost the public a trillion.

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