Two former FirstEnergy Corp. executives are once again asking to see secret grand jury testimony from an agent with Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation whom the executives said may have provided “materially false or misleading” testimony in their case.
In a Monday afternoon filing in Summit County Court of Common Pleas, ex-FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones and former Senior Vice President Michael Dowling asked the court to review all grand jury testimony from the BCI agent who they say was the primary investigator on their case. The pair are accused of paying a $4.3 million bribe to the state’s top public utilities official in exchange for favorable regulatory treatment.
The agent, Eric Lehnhart, is the subject of an ongoing internal investigation by the Ohio Attorney General’s office, the filing said. It asks Summit County Judge Susan Baker Ross to examine the grand jury testimony in chambers — away from the public and the press — and disclose to the defendants transcripts reflecting the agent’s testimony, including those that summarize witness interviews.
The filing claims that because the internal investigation showed Lehnhart entered inaccurate and false facts in investigatory reports in another case, “there is a serious risk” that he also “provided materially false or misleading grand jury testimony” in this case.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Ohio Attorney General’s office said, “The investigation into Lehnhart’s potential wrongdoing did not jeopardize the [FirstEnergy] case in anyway.”
Do ‘typical reasons’ for grand jury secrecy apply?
The executives’ request, the filing said, would include grand jury proceedings that returned the initial indictment against Jones and Dowling in February of 2024 as well as the supplemental indictment in September of 2024.
The men are asking for an expedited review because their trial — which is due to begin next month — “is rapidly approaching” and they “have very limited time to follow up and conduct their own investigation into the Case Agent’s misconduct.”
This is the third time the defendants have asked Ross to grant them access to different elements of the typically secretive grand jury proceedings. As Ross has noted in past rulings, grand jury proceedings are generally kept secret absent a compelling reason. The defense attorneys, she said, “have failed to establish the particularized need.”
The state made the defendants aware that Lehnhart was under investigation Oct. 10, the most recent filing said, and removed him as a trial witness. But attorneys did not tell Jones and Dowling whether Lehnhart testified before the grand jury, citing secrecy requirements.
The latest filing is an attempt to learn that information — and to review any testimony Lehnhart did give “for the presence of materially false statements made by the Case Agent to the grand jury and, similarly, for the presence of exculpatory evidence,” or evidence that would point to Jones’ and Dowling’s innocence.
In their filing, Jones and Dowling claim there is “grave risk of injustice” if they are not able to review the evidence. In fact, they said, “because there is no danger of interference with ongoing grand jury proceedings or witness intimidation, the typical reasons for maintaining grand jury secrecy do not apply here.”
What was Lehnhart’s involvement in the case?
Lehnhart participated in at least 31 witness interviews and signed and served subpoenas in the FirstEnergy case, the filing said, as well as conducted the search and seizure of documents from one of the properties of Sam Randazzo, the former chair of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, whom FirstEnergy executives allegedly bribed. Randazzo died by suicide in April of 2024.
The internal investigation was related to a single case in September of 2025, a period Jones’ and Dowling’s attorneys noted overlapped with the time Lehnhart was working on the FirstEnergy case.
“The Case Agent’s reaction to the stresses of this investigation was to fabricate evidence, draft a false investigative report, and to lie to his superior in another case,” the Monday filing states. “Given that the Case Agent’s stress was apparently rooted in this case, it is likely he also committed misconduct in this case, including by providing false and misleading information to the grand juries in this matter.”
In court Dec. 12, when attorneys for the state made the investigation report available to Jones’ and Dowling’s attorneys, they said Lehnhart never conducted an interview alone.
When asked for a copy of the report at the end of that day’s proceedings, the attorneys did not make the state’s investigatory report available to the press. It has not been filed publicly in the case, and a records request to receive it — filed the day it was mentioned in court — has not yet produced the report, which was completed Nov. 17.
A summary of the report included in Monday’s filing said Lehnhart violated numerous BCI policies at the same time he was investigating the FirstEnergy case.
“The misconduct directly implicates the Case Agent’s honesty and the integrity of his investigations,” the filing said. “The findings note the Case Agent knowingly submitted reports with materially false statements and repeatedly misrepresented actions that never occurred. In fact, the Report found that the Case Agent ‘engaged in several separate instances of misrepresentation’ in connection with his purported interviews of a witness in an official criminal investigation by completely fabricating conversations and communications with a witness.”
‘Did he fabricate statements’?
Jones and Dowling, who have repeatedly asked the judge to stifle testimony in the case from several witnesses, said in the filing they have “grave concerns” about what Lehnhart told the grand jury.
“Did he fabricate statements about what witnesses actually said?” the attorneys asked in the filing. “Did he tell them he interviewed people he never spoke with? Did he lie about documents? Did he violate BCI policies?
“We now know the Case Agent’s investigatory work in this case caused him to be overworked to such a point that he committed the serious misconduct described in the Report. There is a direct connection between the Case Agent’s fabrication of evidence in the other case and his work investigating the instant case.”
Letting the attorneys review the grand jury testimony, the filing said, will allow Lehnhart’s testimony to be compared to actual witness statements and evidence.
Lehnhart was “extensively involved in pursuing this case against Jones and Dowling,” the filing said, meaning the state cannot distance themselves from his work.
Therefore, the defendants said, they need to see Lehnhart’s testimony in order for justice to be served.
“Jones’s and Dowling’s fair trial rights are substantially impaired without access to this grand jury testimony,” the filing said.