Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder (R.) and anti-Trump Republican Matt Borges were arrested Tuesday morning in connection to a $60 million bribery case.
In 2016, the virulently anti-Trump Republican and former governor, John Kasich, threw his support behind Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges. President-elect Trump refused to back the Kasich backed candidate Matt Borges, and instead, announced that he was throwing his support behind Jane Timken to become head of the Ohio Republican Party. The Trump-supported Timkin succeeded in unseating Borges and became the Ohio Republican Party’s new chair. Since his defeat, the Kasich supported Borges has since been on a mission to help Democrats defeat President Trump in 2020.
The disgruntled former Trump communications director Anthony Scaramucci, joined Matt Borges to launch the Right Side PAC as a way to help to unseat Presdient Trump by targeting key swing states, such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. Axios first reported on the super PAC.
Borges cited Trump’s lack of decorum as a reason he started the anti-Trump PAC.
Canton Rep reports- The Republican House Speaker, Householder is one of the biggest names in Ohio politics and has been a major player for years in the state’s Republican Party. He’s known as an aggressive fundraiser who doesn’t shy away from hardball tactics on the campaign trail or in the statehouse.
He first served as Ohio’s House speaker from 2001 to 2004. The FBI launched an investigation in 2004 into allegations that Householder and his aides took kickbacks from vendors and traded legislation for campaign contributions. The investigation ended in 2006 with no charges filed.
A term-limited Householder left Columbus in 2004 during the investigation.
After returning to the House a few years ago, Householder staged a comeback, with help from Democrats, when he took advantage of GOP infighting and returned to the speaker’s post.
“When everyone else is in complete disarray is usually when I’m at my best,” Householder told The Enquirer in 2019.
WFB – A spokeswoman for David DeVillers, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, described the case as a “public corruption racketeering conspiracy case involving $60 million.” Borges, co-founder of Right Side PAC—a Republican group pushing disaffected GOP voters in battleground states to vote for Joe Biden in November—was formerly the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party. Householder’s adviser Jeffrey Longstreth and others allegedly connected to the scheme were also arrested Tuesday.
The charges could be related to Ohio House Bill 6—legislation Householder pushed last year, which gave a $1 billion bailout to two nuclear power plants. DeVillers and the FBI will officially announce the charges in a press conference at 2:30 p.m.
Householder has led the Ohio House of Representatives since January 2019 and held the speakership once before, from 2001 to 2004.
On Monday, a separate federal investigation implicated Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D.) in a bribery scheme. Madigan has ties to ComEd, a utility company that faces a $200 million fine for giving kickbacks to “various associates of a high-level elected official for the state of Illinois.”
