Requiem for our sweet, sweet boy
The truth is, an Ohio man wanted a backyard deck on his Florida vacation home, and things got out of hand...
Give disgraced, one-time Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder this much: It’s peak Ohio Man to do the RICO partly because you wanted to add a backyard deck to your decrepit vacation home in Naples, Florida.
As you might have heard, a federal judge sentenced our sweet, sweet boy to likely die in federal prison yesterday by slapping him with a 20-year sentence for his role in the largest bribery scheme in state history (that the FBI knows about, anyway).
One veteran Statehouse reporter said watching Householder being handcuffed from the Cincinnati courtroom was “jaw-dropping.”
Householder never saw his day of reckoning coming. He thought his “aw, shucks” country charm would bail it out like this was another show election in his gerrymandered district. He can’t say I didn’t warn him; his destiny became apparent on the first day of his trial.
His arrogance made him take his case to trial, where the federal government has a 99% conviction rate. His arrogance led him to the horrible idea of taking the stand in his defense, and once there, he couldn’t resist lying his ass off and inevitably adding a few more years to his sentence.
Even yesterday, with the road to prison opening before his eyes, he never apologized for his actions or showcased any remorse. Instead, he painted himself as the victim (always the victim) and pleaded for the judge to take mercy on his wife, children and grandkids.
And the judge rightfully reminded Householder of his words when he was at the height of his power, which the prosecutor used to hang Householder in the cross-examination portion of his testimony.
From Kevin Koeninger of courthousenews.org:
In perhaps the most damning portion of Glatfelter's cross-examination, the prosecutor asked Householder about his reasons for returning to government service and, specifically, putting an end to divisiveness in the statehouse and among Republicans in particular.
Householder agreed it was a motivating factor, and Glatfelter cued up a recorded conversation between Householder and advisor Neil Clark discussing Republican representatives Scott Lipps and Dave Greenspan.
"We like war," Householder said on the call. "Do you think we should make a movement on Lipps and Greenspan and just say, 'if you're going to fuck with me, I'm going to fuck with your kids?'"
It’s like I wrote on Monday about the type of men who always envision going to the extreme to defend their family—like using their murder machines to slaughter a would-be burglar or rapist in defense of their homes—but won’t do the simple things like their children’s laundry to protect them from airborne germs or refuse to participate in a billion-dollar bribery scheme that puts them at risk of dying in federal custody like The Unabomber.
When I was younger, I would have classified anyone that owns a $300,000 vacation home in Florida as “rich.” But as I’ve gotten older, I realized that an entire class of “wealthy” Americans live as opulent serfs to America’s major credit card companies.
That was Larry Householder, who, despite a generous government salary twice the median salary of the state he represents for a part-time job, couldn’t pay off $20,000 in credit card debt without illicit money he earned from the bribery scheme.
Householder, according to original charging documents, also foresaw using his windfall to add a new deck to his dumpy Florida vacation home. How do I know it’s dumpy? Because that’s always the case when there are no interior pictures on the Zillow listing.
Householder associate Jeff Longstrength, who turned state’s evidence days after being charged for his role in the scheme, estimated during Householder’s trial that the big man put $158,000 into the house for a new air conditioning unit, fixing a moldy ceiling and paying off property taxes that local authorities were hounding his ass over—among other house owner upkeep.
From Randy Ludlow of dispatch.com in July 2020:
By early last year, the Collier County tax assessor was after Householder, threatening to seize and sell his house to pay off a tax lien. Householder had not paid property taxes and penalties on his home totaling $9,412 from the 2016 and 2017 tax years.
On April 11, 2019, Householder paid off his overdue taxes, according to Collier County records, while also paying his current 2018 tax bill of $4,356 for a three-year taxes-paid total of $13,768.
[…]
Householder, though, is again being cited for delinquent taxes, this time for failing to pay his 2019 property taxes and penalties of $4,299 due on June 1, records show.
On Feb. 12, 2019, Collier County zoning code authorities cited Householder with violations involving a moldy roof with missing or damaged tiles, broken and boarded windows and failure to enclose the swimming pool with an approved barrier.
Longstreth estimated that it was only worth a little north of $300,000 after sinking low six figures into the house. That would have been less than the $365,000 Householder paid for the property in 2009.
Thankfully for Householder, Longstreth wasn’t Householder’s realtor. Householder sold the property for $690,000 to Naples Holdings LLC on April 25th, 2020. Naples Holdings LLC is a subsidiary of Molnar Holdings in Shelby Township, Michigan.
Molnar Holdings is owned by Michael Molnar, a Michigan man who lists his occupation as “business owner” of Tech Seven Company in the Detroit metro area.
Molnar recently took the Belville Blvd. property off the market, probably realizing that Householder would soon be sentenced. Who wants to buy the former Florida pussy palace of a sleazy Ohio politician, after all?
My guess is the proceeds from the sale went directly into paying his cartel of clown lawyers in the failed bid to keep his pasty ass out of prison. But it’s just that, a guess.
Make no mistake: Larry Householder dying in federal prison is hilarious. It’s rare in Ohio politics that any shitbird gets their comeuppance. You don’t have to feel bad for laughing at him, even if you’re a prison abolitionist. Householder did nothing to improve our state’s broken carceral system while in power; if prison is to exist such as it does in Ohio, then let it exist for losers like Larry.
Still, it’s hard to feel that any of this is justice in life's big game. Governor Mike DeWine, who is guilty as hell and deeply connected to the passage of HB-6 from the start to the passage of the law, remains uncharged.
Sam Randazzo, the corrupt former chairman of the Public Utilities Commission that DeWine hand-selected despite warnings from ethics watchdogs about Randazzo’s deep ties to the utility companies he would be charged with regulating on behalf of Ohio customers, has yet to be criminally charged for accepting a $4.3 million bribe that First Energy already admitted to paying days before Randazzo took the appointment.
The Ohio Supreme Court could soon unfreeze his $8 million in assets that he earned in a career where he consistently fucked over the average person on behalf of multibillion-dollar energy conglomerates.
First Energy, the company that admitted to having a Vice President of Political Bribes, has yet to see any of its former executives charged.
Prosecutors yesterday in Cincinnati alleged that Householder’s conviction was only Phase 1 of their investigation. Still, over the last 40 years, the Justice Department has largely declined to prosecute the wealthy, primarily white individuals usually found in America’s boardrooms.
You can read more about the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute corporate criminals in a book aptly titled, The Chickenshit Club.
Nothing has changed in our laws to prevent the next Householder, who will undoubtedly be smarter and not as cartoonishly corrupt.
The worst aspects of HB-6 are still on the books. House leadership recently nixed the idea of repealing the subsidies we’re forking over to decrepit nuclear and coal power plants, with one being in Indiana.
The FBI, for its part, stumbled ass-backward into the investigation in the first place, which is hard to believe considering Householder’s first reign as House Speaker ended in the cloud of an FBI investigation and everybody on the street—including me, a first-time political candidate in 2018—saw some corrupt power playing coming with all the Big Energy hobgoblins aligning behind Householder’s return to power. They weren’t handing out that kind of money out of the charity of their heart.
But that investigation only came to fruition because the FBI first investigated Neil Clark, the corrupt supper lobbyist who was also charged in the scheme and died by suicide while wearing a “Mike DeWine for governor” shirt next to a retention pond near his Florida vacation home. (In retrospect, maybe Ohio political players purchasing a Florida vacation home should automatically trigger an IRS audit.)
Through that lens, Householder starts to feel like small potatoes. An avaricious country bumpkin who flew too close to the sun and became one of the few politicians to suffer any consequences in what’s been labeled the most corrupt state in the country. Judging from his Google Reviews, it’s not like we were dealing with a Rhodes Scholar in the first place.
Householder dying in prison, though it’s a fate he deserves, will do nothing to right our political culture. Maybe that will change if Randazzo, a former First Energy executive, or Governor DeWine ever gets sentenced to prison alongside him.
But it’s hard to believe any of that will stop the next Householder from attempting a similar scheme when it inevitably comes to our Statehouse that will be controlled by one party’s supermajority for the rest of our lives.
This is Ohio—corrupt political schemes run in our blood. The sad part about Householder is there was nothing original or interesting about him. He is just another sad, broken man that will be completely forgotten within a generation.
THOSE WMDs. Chatting with Will Sennett, the king of absurdist sports humor… The free soloist who fell to Earth… Taylor Sheridan does whatever he wants… How scammers use psychology to create the most convincing internet cons… Life in a state legislature’s superminority.
I am part of the LJS Secret Society.