The Gospel of Larry Householder
Larry Householder is going a church and plotting a return to politics, according to one pardoned January 6th participant who served time with the convicted Speaker in FCI Elkton.
Convicted former Speaker Larry Householder, currently serving a 20-year prison sentence in Northeast Ohio for racketeering, is attending church, playing softball, and plotting a political comeback, according to one recently pardoned participant in January 6 who served hard time with him.
The Rooster spoke to Brad Smith, who pleaded guilty in June 2022 for his role in the fracas. Federal prosecutors say Smith and a friend giddily coordinated with each other about the possibility of chaos before the event.
“We literally chased them into hiding,” Smith texted his co-defendant shortly after the incident.
Unfortunately for Smith and his friend, who brought a spiked club named “the Commie Knocker” to Capitol Hill, they conspired over Facebook Messenger in a way that didn’t look good for them when the federal government obtained a transcript via subpoena.
Smith contends he never entered the Capitol grounds, and that he was never convicted of assaulting anyone. He was charged with being in the vicinity of assaults.
We had to agree to disagree on January 6th to get to the heart of the matter, his friendship with Householder while in prison.
Smith met Householder through Householder’s cellmate. “I hung out with him almost every day,” Smith said.
Householder is apparently in high spirits, given his humble circumstances, going to church and playing a “really good” game of pool.
“He got me going to church, too, for the first time,” Smith said. “He convinced me to finally go to church in prison because I didn't want to for a while, but he convinced me to go to church.”
Householder gets a modicum of privilege among guards do to his former status as arguably the state’s most powerful politician at the height of his powers, that only goes so far with guards who are disinterested at best and intentionally petty and antagonistic at worst.
“Just because you're a somebody in there doesn't mean you're going to get treated well by everybody,” Smith said. “Some of those guards are really bad people.”
I asked Smith why he thinks President Business Deals hasn’t pardoned Householder, who was one of his original and most prominent supporters in Ohio during the death throes of former governor John Kasich’s tyranny.
Smith contended that Householder doesn’t want a pardon at this stage; that Householder wants to let the appeals process play out, because vindication is better than “being forgiven by the president.”
He also believes that we haven’t seen the last of Householder in the political arena, as it’s something he actively plots despite his current 20-year sentence.
“Larry doesn't want to be pardoned yet,” Smith said. “Because Larry wants to run again. … Let's just say, I kind of know some stuff. Larry wants to run again.
“He [doesn’t] really want to be pardoned, because if you're pardoned, it doesn't necessarily mean you are innocent. It means you were forgiven.”
Even if Trump were to pardon Householder, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has already said he’ll proceed with pending state charges against against the disgraced politician.
But should Trump actually pardon Householder, maybe the Golden God of the Republican Party would lean on state officials to make that case disappear. Current State Auditor Keith Faber, who is a heavy favorite to be the next Attorney General, has yet to comment on the state charges against Householder and if he has interest in completing the investigation and prosecution if Yost runs out of time.
Householder could still be waiting awhile, even if he were interested in a pardon.
Unlike former Cincinnati city council president P.G. Sittenfeld, Householder lacks a weird rich couple to bankroll the legal appeals to his public corruption conviction and (allegedly) pay the Trump Administration in crypto for a get-out-of-jail-free card.
You can listen to the raw, unedited audio of The Rooster’s conversation with Larry Householder’s former fellow inmate Brad Smith below:
Some other, lightly edited-for-syntax highlights from our conversation…
On how he justifies the unfounded claim that Joe Biden “stole” the 2020 election…
Left and right throughout all of American history, I think there is slight fraud, little bits on both sides. I believe that.
But what I think was wrong was that a lot of the major swing states use the judicial branch of government to change election laws at the very last minute, and they claimed it was a COVID emergency.
And I didn't like what they did with that. They used the judges to change election laws when that's constant federally and statewide everywhere. That's only to be done by the legislative branch, and I don't think they should have focused on that, but they didn't.
That's the problem.
I didn't like that, but when it comes to stuffing ballot boxes and stuff, Venezuelan communists taking over the voting machines and stuff.
I don't like that. I just don't think that's winnable.
“Oh, they had everything:” On not wanting to rumble with the federal government at trial
“We talked a lot of shit [after Jan. 6], but that's kind of par for the course.”
When did you get arrested? Did they put out a warrant for you?
Eight months later.
Damn. And they had your group chats and everything?
Oh, they had everything. It was all on Facebook Messenger.
On getting pinched by the FBI
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