The Prosecution of Larry Householder
How did the feds scoop the two most powerful prosecutors in the state?
I don’t rock with prosecutors unless they’re talking about their plan to arrest violent federal agents who invade their city. I resigned to the fact the job will always exist in my lifetime.
But most prosecutors spend their day leveraging the brutality of the American carceral complex over the heads of suspects and signing plea agreements. Most of them are clowns in court if ever gets to that point.
Consider the ostensibly most powerful attorney in Ohio, Dave Yost, under whom’s watch Larry Householder would have pulled off the biggest scam in state history if the FBI hadn’t been listening since the beginning of the plot.
Maybe Yost has never heard about Householder. Maybe Householder was clean all until one day he realized his Florida house needed renovations and on a whim he decided to commit $60 million fraud. Yost could chalk that up as a, “Who could have possibly seen that coming from ol’ Mr. Rogers over there?”
After all, no prosecutor can prosecute every criminal under their jurisdiction.
Or maybe — and I’m just spitballing here — perhaps the Republican Party ruling Ohio for 25 or the 27 last years has created what the experts like to call a “culture of corruption.”
Maybe Householder was masterminding a $60 million bribery scheme over phone and unencrypted text messaging because he had been a crook his entire adult life and the only consequences he faced with the FBI running him out of the Lincoln Chair nearly 20 years ago under a cloud of investigation that never led to a prosecution.
From Michaela Sumner of newarkadvocate.com:
On Wednesday, Village Councilman Jeff Ours, who has owned Jeff's Automotive Service since 1985, didn't hold back in his criticism of Householder. He noted that he felt Householder had personally cheated him out of money in the late 1980s and only wasn't punished because he was connected to the power brokers in New Lexington.
Householder's district includes Perry County, Coshocton County and a portion of Licking County. The Village of New Lexington, with a population of less than 5,000, is the county seat in Perry.
Asked his reaction to learning Householder had been arrested by federal officials, Ours said: "Good. Great. What took them so long?"
According to Ours, Householder had gone to his old automotive repair shop a couple times, but doesn't frequent local businesses lately.
Indeed.. what did take them so long? Well, Yost, the guy who loves to talk about delivering “truckloads of justice” on social media let a career criminal operate under his nose in broad daylight.
That normally pisses law enforcement off. This asshole thinks he’s so smart? He’s about to find out just how wrong that notion is. That’s their usual reaction. But not for Householder, why?
Because Yost has his own skeletons. He was literally the state auditor when the now second-biggest scandal, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow swindle. Ohio voters promoted him the next election. I’m sure Yost thought he got away with it. Until now.
The ECOT case is still active as we’re still trying to claw back the $1 billion it threw at what amounted to an organized cybercrime syndicate that inflated enrollment.
Yost is a towering dumb-ass who routinely gets laughed out of federal court. Yet even he could see bringing down Householder and shining a light on Statehouse corruption is a bad idea for a person who has also participated in and profited from that same pay-to-play racket.
Householder knew the state’s top law enforcement official would look the other way. And was just about the only guy in the state who could have stopped Householder.
Just about.
RON O’BRIEN LOVES TWO THINGS: SUCKING COP DICK AND TRYING (BUT FAILING) TO MURDER BLACK TEENS
Meet Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, the most powerful county prosecutor in the state due to the location of the Statehouse. He has served this office since 1997.
Ron wields this power to defend the Columbus Department of Police from facing consequences for police brutality and cold-blooded killings. None of his peers rival him in the amount of death penalty cases. Thankfully for society and despite the enthusiasm, O’Brien is bad at arguing why the state should get to execute someone.
Earlier this year, Householder floated the idea of changing who was responsible for prosecuting corrupt Statehouse legislators. Instead of Franklin County, he proposed allowing the prosecution to happen back home in the pol’s home county, where they would undoubtedly have connections to the power brokers of their community.
Why? Because Ron O’Brien is finally (hopefully) going to lose his job at the ballot box this fall.
The man has been in office for 23 years and to my knowledge has never prosecuted a single corrupt Republican. In that time the Statehouse devolved to the point of degeneracy that a self-styled country bumpkin came to town and thought he could beat the FBI twice.
Scandal after scandal and what did he do? Nothing. He had signaled long ago he would never prosecute a fellow Republican. Again, Householder knew he had not only the state’s attorney but also the county’s attorney in his back pocket.
From Randy Ludlow of dispatch.com:
In a Jan. 10, 2018, phone call with Clark recorded by the FBI, Householder(who was not yet speaker) said: “So we are looking at payday lenders. And we are expecting big things in [Generation Now] money from payday lenders.
“So far, I think we are, what, 50 [thousand dollars]? I think,” Householder said.
Clark replied, according to the affidavit: “You should have gotten 25 or 50 [thousand dollars] from [owner of firm], correct?” Householder answered: “Yes” before confirming with someone in the room it was only $25,000.
Householder, with the help of ambitious and/or naive Democrats, won a Republican Civil War for the Speaker’s gavel on January 7th, 2018 when a majority of his colleagues decided that a career crook should become the third most powerful politician in the state. (I love living in Ohio!)
Three days later, and we know now with the FBI already listening, he began concocting schemes to enrich himself using the shady industry that bribed the last non-interim Speaker, Cliff Rosenberg, who to this day is still under active FBI investigation to this day.
Three days. That’s all it took for Householder to begin to play his favorite game. He thought he could get away with it because he’s an egomaniacal, avaricious asshole. But he also knew he had diplomatic unity with the two most powerful prosecutors in the state.
As for the FBI? I’m sure Householder’s gang thought they had learned a thing or two for their first rodeo. Plus, Ohio’s campaign financing laws had softened and the Citizens United had unleashed a flood of dark, unaccountable money into our political system.
Of course Householder thought he would get away with doing federal crimes on his phone and unencrypted apps. Why wouldn’t he? It probably felt like a layup to him.
HB-6 is just the beginning, and it involves a lot more moving parts than Householder and his four stooges. Consider… Governor Mike DeWine said that HB-6, the worst energy law of the 21st century and passed entirely through the act of corruption and with criminal money, should remain on the books because it’s “good policy.”
If it’s that good of a policy then undo the law and repass it without the power of a criminal conspiracy and unaccountable corporate money behind it. Wait… what’s this I am hearing?
Ah, things are starting to look a little clearer.
I should also probably note that DeWine is a former prosecutor who served as the attorney general of the state during the ECOT scandal. He too missed some pretty big crimes from people in his political circle. Again, maybe it was just a coincidence…
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