In the prosecution’s telling, FirstEnergy’s ex-CEO and an ex-senior vice president paid a straightforward, $4.3 million bribe to Sam Randazzo, a lawyer who would soon be named a senior state regulator, whose official actions would in turn juice the company’s stock price and make the two executives rich.
“The evidence will be simple,” said Assistant Attorney General Matt Meyer. “And the excuses will be complicated.”
But CEO Chuck Jones and top company lobbyist Mike Dowling never bribed anyone, their lawyers said at the start of a historic public corruption trial in Summit County. They paid the money in January 2019 to cash out on five years remaining of what they believed to be a legitimate settlement agreement from 2015 of a legal conflict between FirstEnergy and Randazzo’s client.
Randazzo, a legendary energy lawyer in Ohio, stole that money from his client, the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio, capping a sophisticated skimming operation he waged in secret for more than a decade, the defense lawyers said. In other words, he was supposed to give the $4.3 million to the Industrial Energy Users of Ohio, but pocketed it instead.
This “dark secret,” the defense lawyers said, is what destroyed the lives of top figures in Ohio’s business and political worlds and dragged the entire crowd into a small courtroom in Akron.
“The outside world saw Sam as a guru.” said Steven Grimes, an attorney for Dowling. “But he was also a conman and a thief.”
Opening statements began Tuesday in court
Opening statements from both sides began Tuesday in what’s perhaps the most significant white collar prosecution in state history. Prosecutors say Jones and Dowling bribed Randazzo a few weeks before Gov. Mike DeWine appointed him to serve as chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. Randazzo held the job from early 2019 to late 2020. He resigned months after the FBI accused the company of waging a bribery scheme that would eventually send ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder to prison on a 20-year sentence, and days after agents were seen raiding his Columbus residence.
The nearly two hours of remarks from Grimes and nearly 75 minutes from Carole Rendon, on behalf of Jones, represent their most comprehensive explanation of innocence since the two defendants were indirectly implicated in the scheme in July 2020. They were directly accused by the state of dozens of charges including racketeering, forgery, wire fraud, money laundering, and tampering with government records in February 2024.
The claims from the defense would greatly undermine the claims from both the state and the federal government, which accused the two men of an even broader set of corruption-related charges.
If the defendants believed the $4.3 million would flow to Randazzo’s client, and not Randazzo, personally, this would suggest they never intended the money to corruptly influence Randazzo’s decision making as he led the PUCO, which set the kinds of prices FirstEnergy could charge its customers.
However, Randazzo will not have the chance to defend himself. He died by suicide in April 2024 while facing now-dropped state and federal corruption charges – Judge Susan Baker Ross previously ruled that the jury can hear evidence that Randazzo died, but not the details of how. An attorney who represented Randazzo didn’t respond to an inquiry about the defense’s depiction of Randazzo.
The defense lawyers made other arguments as well, insisting that FirstEnergy had another candidate they preferred DeWine to appoint instead of Randazzo; that FirstEnergy’s senior lawyers and accountants green-lit the $4.3 million payment; and that Jones made a sound business decision.
There are plenty of reasons to doubt the legitimacy of the 2015 settlement agreement, Meyer, the prosecutor, told the jury. The settlement agreement doesn’t even mention the number of the PUCO case it supposedly settles. It exists as an amendment to a 2013 consulting agreement between the company and Randazzo – an unusual place to explain a truce in a PUCO dispute. He said the settlement exists as a crude legal fiction to conceal payments to Randazzo.
“This document was designed to confuse and conceal,” he said. “It was a corporate cover story.”
While $4.3 million was remaining on that agreement in 2019, Meyer said that a senior company attorney advised that FirstEnergy “shouldn’t pay the money” because it didn’t need to. That attorney, Ebony Yeboah-Amankwah, is set to testify in the trial. FirstEnergy, as a corporate entity, said the same in 2021 when it admitted to Jones and Dowling bribing Householder and cooperated with federal prosecutors. Meyer questioned the defense claim that FirstEnergy paid out the full contract early, just before Randazzo’s appointment, to get ahead on pre-payable debt during a good year. And he said FirstEnergy “panicked” when a blogger nearly unspooled the financial ties between FirstEnergy and Randazzo during his confirmation process.
The motive is simple, Meyer said. Money. For Jones, 85% of his compensation was tied to the company’s stock price. Increases to that stock price amounted to millions in gains when he eventually sold those shares.
“A government agency became captured by personal and corporate greed,” he said.
The trial is expected to last for weeks, if not months (technically, juror selection began Jan. 27). Ross adjourned the hearing early Tuesday, saving the first witnesses for Wednesday morning.
Company lawyers, executives, and insiders, plus politicians, PUCO commissioners and staff, and others are expected to testify.