Rooster in Review: Disgraced FirstEnergy lobbyist donated to judge who oversaw FirstEnergy corruption trial
Public records show that former FirstEnergy lobbyist Joel D. Bailey, who testified in the corruption trial with immunity, donated to Summit County Judge Susan Baker in 2018.
As you might have read on The Rooster earlier in the week, two corrupt FirstEnergy shitbags on trial in Summit County got a reprieve with a hung jury verdict.
Attorney General Dave Yost, who already signed a non-prosecution agreement with FirstEnergy in exchange for $20 million, has already vowed to retry former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and its former Vice President of Bribes, Michael Dowling.
The Rooster report included a nugget of information from a reporter who covered the trial:
One reporter who covered the case relayed that Judge Baker “clearly hate[d]” Ohio Special Assistant Attorney General Matthew Meyer despite his noble pursuit of trying to imprison two corrupt white-collar shitbags who flaunted their criminality over unencrypted text messages.
We’ll have more on Mr. Meyer, who never should have been in a position to lead the prosecution in the first place, at a later date.
The Rooster also relayed a common thread from observers of the trial: Summit County Judge Susan Baker, an ostensible Democrat, was out of her depth. But maybe that was by design!
Eagle-eyed freelance reporter Ky A. Hoga caught an alarming bit of news while sluething campaign finance records in Northeastern Ohio.
In 2018, Judge Baker accepted political donations from Joel D. Bailey, a since-fired FirstEnergy lobbyist whom Baker granted immunity to testify in the trial, and from another woman (wife? daughter?) tied to the same Akron address.
The total amount of $300 is a small part of the story.
It’s more about the open line of communication that Bailey, who curiously listed his occupation as “attorney” rather than “FirstEnergy,” probably had an open line of communication to the judge, as evidenced by Kaitlin Bailey also receiving a reimbursement for $160 in “printing” expenses for Judge Baker’s campaign:
According to the Toledo Blade, Bailey testified with immunity that “two employees under his direction” orchestrated a $5 million wire transfer to Partners in Progress, one of the myriad of dark money groups controlled by then-House Speaker Larry Householder in the largest bribery scheme in state history (that we know about).
First Energy “cut back on its lobbyist ranks” in March 2021 by firing Bailey, Ty Pine and Justin Blitz—three former employees, who, coincidentally, were in the mud with HB-6.
First Energy went on to bankroll the legal defense of Jones and Dowling, the allegedly disgraced former employees, with a team of lawyers four times the size of the prosecution.
But this shows the problem with making judges into politicians. They have to raise money like everyone else.
It also shows the problem with trying to hold powerful companies to account in their home turf—it’s hard to grasp the full web of their political spending, which can appear at the most inconvenient times.
The Rooster will have more as this story develops.
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This week in Ohio Woman…
I recently suggested to Hilltop Husband that we should visit Buckeye Lake for a weekend.
“If I wanted to hang out with people from Grove City, I’d just go to Grove City,” she said.
I spent an afternoon biking around Buckeye Lake in 2024. I enjoyed my time!
But I probably could have guessed Buckeye Lake as the locale of a news story involving bong water poisoning a two-year-old.
From Mike Harris of wtrf.com:
Buckeye Lake, OH (WTRF) — A woman has been charged after a toddler was hospitalized and tested positive for THC, according to the Licking County Sheriff’s Office.
Detectives say they were notified on March 31, 2026, after a two-year-old child was admitted to an Ohio hospital and tested positive for THC.
An investigation found that the child ingested liquid from a marijuana device known as a bong. Authorities say the incident happened in the 100 block of Cliff Street in Buckeye Lake.
This is the kind of stuff that drug war dinosaurs love to talk about. And frankly? It’s hard to blame them.
Personally, I think it’d be rather easy to prevent a two-year-old from digesting water from a “marijuana device known as ‘a bong.’” But I have to assume alcohol was also involved, which is the drug that the dinosaurs never seem to have the same energy for.
This week in The Rooster…
It was another brisk week of business at Rooster Worldwide LLC, right down to the wire with breaking some news on the way out the door for a bikeride in “The Glen,” whatever the Hell neighborhood that is.
Here’s what you may have missed, especially if you’re a freeloading hog in the parking lot:
Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein’s vision is alive and well in Columbus. The Columbus Partnership is behind another “public-private partnership” astroturf campaign to put $50 million in the pocket of Republican billionaire Jimmy Haslam.
Well, at least the Randazzler is dead. The hung jury in the FirstEnergy corruption trial was debilitating, but it wasn’t surprising given the facts that the prosecution, for some reason, agreed not to mention during the trial.
Why I’m voting for a leukemia doctor as Ohio’s next Secretary of State. Why I hope you’ll join me in voting for Dr. Bryan Hambley (and his full head of hair) in the Democratic primary on May 5.
They do things differently in Cuyahoga County. Cleveland-based writer Ky A. Hoga returns to sift through the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party’s money machine and what that means for democracy and voter turnout in Ohio’s most critical Democratic city. Plus, a Nazi-supported YouTuber threatens a low-rent lawsuit against The Rooster.
We’ll do it at the same time and place next week.
Until then… stay frosty, my friends!
THOSE WMDs. In the U.S. market for human bodies, anyone can sell the donated dead… He heard voices telling him to kill his father; after they passed, he spent years tracing the path of his delusions… 10 years after the Panama Papers, enablers and tax cheats are still being brought to justice… I knew about North Korean hackers—they still tricked me and got into my computer… How to commit insurance fraud.
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These complicit & corrupt democrats are really pissing me off! That’s why I feel like good journalists like you SHOULD be endorsing for the primaries. Lazy voters need to hear why a candidate is good or not good. The days of just voting for whoever the county democrats endorse needs to end. (And I agree with you, Hambley for SOS 100%!)