Former Republican Leaders Headed To Prison For Abuse Of Power

The former Republican Speaker of the Ohio Statehouse along with the former GOP chair for the state of Ohio will be headed to prison soon after being found guilty of a massive public corruption scheme. The two men - Larry Householder and Matt Borges - worked with an energy company to funnel money in exchange for powerful positions where the men would then work to repeal certain regulations on the industry. Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

Two very prominent, or at least formerly prominent Republican politicians and Republican leaders from the state of Ohio were convicted late last week on public corruption charges. The two men are former Ohio, speaker of the House, Larry Householder, and former Republican State Party Chair Matt Borges, these two men, according to, uh, what they were convicted of. Here it is, uh, from W C P O in Ohio. Prosecutors accused X G O P chair turn lobbyists, Borges, and householder, both of being part of a complex scheme to funnel nearly 61 million in dark money from Akron based first Energy Corps and its subsidiary to elect householder. As speaker solidify his power base, secure enough votes to pass a rate payer funded bailout of two nuclear plants, and ensure it survived a ballot campaign to overturn it. In other words, give us 61 million, you know, the Republican Party, which Borges was in charge of, who then became a lobbyist householder who wanted to be the speaker. Give us the money, we'll secure the votes. We'll run the public pressure campaign so it can't be overturned on the ballot, and we'll make sure that you get money in return.

Racketeering is what they got 'em on. Ricoh, which of course is usually reserved for organized crime. And in fact, uh, the prosecutors admitted basically that this was the first time throughout the country that racketeering charges have been successfully applied, secured a conviction against former elected officials. That's pretty massive. It's also gotta be pretty scary for Donald Trump because we know that the, uh, Georgia prosecutor, Fannie Willis had brought in Ricoh racketeering experts to, uh, help her craft her case. So this is sending shockwaves through the entire political world because they did something that hasn't been done before. These two men, Borges in householder, held enormous power in the state of Ohio. I mean, to the point where they believed they could do this scheme and get away with it because they thought they were untouchable. As we've seen with far too many politicians today, they weren't the jury deliberated for nine hours before coming back with the unanimous decision that these men are guilty. They now face up to 20 years of peace in prison based on the charges they were convicted of. The judge has not yet set a sentencing date for them, but he did tell them, uh, US district Judge Timothy Black, urged them to go home and quote, do

Productive things while they await sentencing from him. So you guys don't have much time to be free men. So I suggest you go home and you get productive. You know, maybe take a look at that honey-do list before I send you off to prison, possibly for two decades. Maybe. Maybe read your kids a couple stories, because your greed and your arrogance is gonna prevent you from doing that until they're grown adults, most likely. We'll see what the sentencing is. Maybe they get, you know, just a couple years. Maybe they get the maximum of 20 years. But either way, the political ramifications of this successful prosecution cannot be understated. This is a massive win for the legal system and a massive blow to any politician out there. Current, former, or hopeful that if you mess up, there's prosecutors in this country, good enough to take you down.