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Bonanno. Colombo. Gambino. Genovese. Lucchese. The names of these five Italian “families” will forever be ingrained in the minds of those familiar with the New York City Mafia, a criminal enterprise that had controlled key industries within the city since the days of Prohibition. Chertoff, Savarese, and Childers are names that aren’t as easily recognizable, but perhaps they should be, because they’re the prosecutors who successfully brought down the mob using the then arcane Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia, Netflix’s new three-part documentary, tells the tale of how it happened.
Time and time again, federal authorities investigating the New York Mafia in the 1970s and 1980s found themselves unsatisfied with prosecuting low-level foot soldiers, unable to find a way to make crime stick or even connect it to the bosses in charge. All that changed when the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, led at the time by Rudy Giuliani, decided to use RICO to prosecute “the Commission” — a secret sect of the five families’ leaders — as a single criminal organization whose members were all involved in the same conspiracy.
“This was an opportunity to tell a panoramic tale of New York, from the wiseguys on the streets all the way up to the lawmakers in City Hall, at the most dramatic point in its history,” Fear City director Sam Hobkinson tells Above the Law. The series includes previously unheard surveillance recordings and archival material alongside new interviews and reenactments that paint a shocking portrait of the time when New York was under mob rule. “All the agents, prosecutors, and even the mobsters were really proud of what they achieved during this period — they were excited and enthusiastic to discuss it with us, and to go in front of the camera to tell their story.”
(Image via Netflix)
With interviews from the agents who played crucial roles in the investigation as well as from Giuliani and Michael Chertoff, John Savarese, and Gil Childers — the three young lawyers who were tasked with handling the Commission trial, lawyers who had never done anything like this before — Fear City provides a fascinating inside look at exactly what it took to put New York’s most notorious crime families out of business.
“Could I have ended up a wiseguy? Sure, I could have, but in the 70s I became a U.S. attorney.” — Rudy Giuliani
Giuliani got much of the publicity from the veritable media circus that the Commission trial created, and the lawyers on the case acknowledged this in the series. “Rudy did rather love being in front of the cameras. Did we tease him a little bit? Sure,” Savarese said. “It was a running joke among all the assistant U.S. attorneys. Being the ‘mob buster’ was a big part of his persona.”
“For me, coming from an Italian-American heritage, the dark side of that immigrant history that the Mafia represents was a horrible stain,” Savarese said in the series. “It was definitely part of my own personal motivation for wanting to work on this case.”
“This clearly was the biggest thing I would ever do professionally. So there was a certain amount of pressure. I had just turned 29. John had also just turned 29. Mike was 30,” Childers said. “I’m sure in some quarters there were people questioning, ‘Really? These three kids are going to try this case?’”
Savarese echoed those thoughts, noting, “None of us had ever tried a case of this magnitude before. When you think about it, it’s a little crazy, right? The United States is entrusting essentially three novices with this momentous case.”
Jury deliberations in the case took a little longer than expected, and everyone started to get nervous about what could be going on behind closed doors — even Giuliani. “I was 100 percent confident when it started,” he said. “By the fifth day, I was less sure of the verdict. If we fail at this, oof, it’ll set us back 30 years.”
As the prosecutors awaited a verdict, Chertoff recalled being told he needed to write two statements for the press, one if there was a conviction and one if there was an acquittal. He remembers saying, “I can’t do that. I’m going to jinx myself.” Childers, anxious about the pending verdict, commented, “You don’t want to screw this up. You don’t want to be the guy who’s known as the person who let the mob bosses off.”
And then a landmark verdict was reached.
“And it was guilty, guilty, guilty. My god, we did it. After all this work, all those sleepless nights, all those ruined weekends, we were finally getting what we had fought for.” — John Savarese
The Commission trial led to eight convictions of top mob figures, including the bosses of three families (Anthony Salerno of the Genovese family, Antonio Corallo of the Lucchese family, and Carmine Persico of the Colombo family). Gambino family boss Paul Castellano was murdered before he could face justice through the court system.
Chertoff was confirmed to the Third Circuit in 2003, before leaving the bench in 2005 to become the Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. He is currently senior of counsel at Covington & Burling. Savarese joined Wachtell Lipton after his stint at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where he’s worked for 25 years as a partner in the firm’s litigation department. Childers worked in the Southern District for about a decade, and then joined Orrick as counsel. Since 2000, he’s worked as associate general counsel at Goldman Sachs. Giuliani went on to become the mayor of New York City, and currently has a role as President Donald Trump’s personal attorney.
Executive producer Jon Liebman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Brillstein Entertainment, is a graduate of Yale Law School who clerked for Judge Leonard B. Sand (S.D.N.Y.) and later worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District before being appointed as Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division. “I was fortunate to work with incredible people, including some of the prosecutors in the case,” Liebman told Above the Law. “Gil Childers and John Savarese were colleagues of mine at the time. Some of the cases I got involved in were a number of organized crime “clean up” cases after the Commission case.” He continued:
What interested me was to be able to tell the inside story of how a complex criminal prosecution like this gets put together. The intensity of it, the bravery of it, the challenges of it, and ultimately the architecture of it, so that people could see how these cases and trials are built. What I wanted people to see is the pressure that the FBI agents and the prosecutors endured as they mounted this investigation and this case.
What fascinated me when I was a young lawyer is understanding how the house gets built and what people go through in in building these kind of complex cases. It was great to be able to participate in helping get that across.
The Mafia’s stranglehold on New York City significantly dissipated after the Commission trial, but it wasn’t completely wiped out. John Gotti, the mobster who ordered Castellano’s killing, is seen at the end of the third episode of the series, and his subsequent reign and conviction would make for a wonderful sequel.
“When you see the outcome of a trial, sometimes it looks easy. And, of course, the job of the prosecutors is to make it look a little bit easy,” Liebman said. “But as you can see from Fear City, constructing this case and mounting it was not easy at all.”
Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia begins streaming on Netflix today.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Among the many services provided by Fix the Court is the annual recusal report that digs into Supreme Court recusals to figure out what’s caused the justices to sit out big cases throughout the year. Or, more troublingly, what cases they didn’t sit out that they absolutely should have.
Before getting rolling on this though, this is a good time to remind everyone that this project that Fix the Court undertakes every year doesn’t have to be the guessing game that it is:
Three leading U.S. House members introduced a bill in February that would require the court to “publish timely notice of [a justice’s] disqualification on the website of the court, with a brief explanation of each reason for the disqualification.” But until recusal explanations are signed into law, we’ll try to let you know why the 140-240 annual SCOTUS step-asides are occurring.
So hopefully we’ll one day have an official report.
The good news in this report is that, unlike in the past, Fix the Court couldn’t find any instances where a justice failed to recuse themselves when they clearly should have. The one quasi-exception to this was Justice Sotomayor’s participation in the faithless elector case Secretary of State v. Baca through the cert stage where her friend, Polly Baca, was a named party. Though interestingly, Polly Baca wasn’t the Baca of the caption, which was Michael Baca. In any event, Justice Sotomayor formally recused herself before the merits stage, but this is the closest Fix the Court estimates we came to a clearly missed recusal, which is pretty good.
One gray area case involved a lawsuit against Penguin Random House. Breyer recused himself for owning stock in a company founded by his wife’s family that used to own Penguin. Sotomayor and Gorsuch did not recuse themselves even though both published their books through the publisher and receive royalties. It’s a less clear-cut question for the two justices because their contractual relationship with the company doesn’t give them a direct financial stake by any means, but Fix the Court’s position is that receiving significant payouts from a single source should warrant recusal.
Another iffy conflict arose from a Tenth Circuit death penalty appeal that Justice Gorsuch dutifully sat out based on his old job. But the appeal was eventually resolved based on the result of McGirt v. Oklahoma, which Gorsuch wrote. So, indirectly, he did participate in the case. That may be a bit of 3D Recusal Chess — in this specific instance it would be a bit extreme for Gorsuch to never address these issues because it might implicate another former matter — but it’s a circumstance the justices should be mindful of since the whole point of this exercise is to avoid even the slightest appearance of impropriety.
Beyond that everything mostly went as expected. Justices sat out cases involving stock ownership, their own prior work, and relationships with named institutions named. Breyer continues to recuse from cases coming from his brother’s courtroom. The report flags future Facebook litigation as an area to watch because one of Kavanaugh’s bros is Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global public policy. And if you have any idea why Breyer recused in Erin Capron et al., v. Massachusetts Attorney General, let Fix the Court know because that’s the only recusal they can’t pin down.
A few weeks ago, I published an article about why The Paper Chase television series should be on every lawyer’s quarantine watch list. The piece got a lot of positive feedback, so I started to think about other television shows people in the legal industry should watch, and Better Call Saul immediately came to mind. As many people already know, Better Call Saul is a spinoff of the extremely popular television series Breaking Bad. Although Better Call Saul includes many characters from Breaking Bad, it focuses on the character of criminal lawyer Saul Goodman (also known as Jimmy McGill, but I’ll just stick to calling him Saul). Although the show has a ton of amazing qualities, one aspect that lawyers will truly appreciate about the series is that it is probably the most accurate legal show on television.
Don’t get me wrong, when the show depicts Saul Goodman conducting highly unethical or criminal behavior, this does not accurately reflect the lives of most lawyers. In addition, Better Call Saul often has to be flexible with how it depicts the legal profession for entertainment value and to fit story lines into a concise time slot. However, the way that the show depicts the legal profession is usually very accurate. In addition, the conversations, scenarios, and procedures shown in the series will be very familiar to many lawyers and others within the legal industry.
For instance, the show regularly depicts the wheeling and dealing that occurs between attorneys in courthouses and beyond. Indeed, the show regularly shows montages of Saul chasing down adversaries in court, making deals, and pleading for better offers on behalf of his clients. Although I don’t practice criminal law, these scenes depicted in the show are very similar to what I witnessed while interning for a criminal judge.
In addition, even attorneys who focus on civil matters will be able to relate to these experiences in the show. For all the New York City attorneys out there, the depictions are really reminiscent of what was experienced in Brooklyn JCP or CCP before the pandemic on a regular basis. In these parts and others, I and other attorneys would conference matters in the hallways in a free-wheeling manner, and hunt down adversaries to conduct negotiations about cases all the time. In addition, the way that Better Call Saul depicts the fluorescent lighting and other aspects of courthouses is extremely convincing. Indeed, I can almost smell the lemon-scented cleaner used by most government buildings when I look at the depictions! Furthermore, Better Call Saul often accurately shows timeframes related to litigation and other matters depicted in the show. Many people criticize Law and Order and similar series for seemingly showing that cases come to trial at lighting speed to make everything wrap up neatly in one episode. Not Better Call Saul. In fact, a class action that was initiated in BCS during the first season still hasn’t been disposed of several seasons later, and this is very accurate considering how litigation drags.
Furthermore, although Better Call Saul exaggerates some topics for entertainment value, the story lines are still usually accurate and believable. For instance, most lawyers are familiar with spoliation, a doctrine which holds that if a party intentionally or negligently destroys relevant evidence after knowing about a claim, they can be sanctioned. I am a huge practitioner of spoliation motions, and I try to make a spoliation argument in most of the lawsuits I handle.
In any case, spoliation plays a huge roll in Better Call Saul when Saul visits a nursing home that he is planning on suing. During the visit, Saul hears and sees that employees are shredding documents, and he immediately asks to use the bathroom. Then, Saul writes out a quick spoliation letter (partially on toilet paper) notifying the establishment that they have a duty to preserve documents and must stop the shredding or face consequences. This is a brilliant move to put the potential defendant on notice of a possible claim and inform them that destruction of documents may constitute spoliation. Any good lawyer would have done exactly what Saul did, and this scene made for some good entertainment.
It’s hard to relate all of the instances in which the show accurately depicts the practice of law. However, the understanding of firm life — including the monotony of doc review and the struggles of solo practice — are pretty accurate. In addition, many conversations between characters are replete with discussions of actual legal concepts like Rule 11 and summary judgment, and all of the references seem correct. The only slip up I ever noticed was when Saul tells someone to “Shephardize” cases in Westlaw when Westlaw has Keycite, but hey, Saul could have been using the term in a generic sense! Of course, Saul’s alma mater (University of American Samoa Law School, go Land Crabs!) is fake, but I have to say that I love how Saul’s older brother (who is depicted as an esteemed lawyer) is said to have attended Georgetown Law, my alma mater!
In the end, accuracy is not necessarily important for viewers to enjoy legal drama. Indeed, I loved watching the show Goliath on Amazon Prime, even though the series is almost laughably inaccurate about the legal profession. However, lawyers might appreciate how Better Call Saul has accurate depictions of the legal profession, and this is one more reason to watch this award-winning show. Also, as a shameless plug, if anyone ever wants advice on how to make legal films or television series more accurate, feel free to give me a shout! As Better Call Saul demonstrates, entertainment value does not always need to suffer from accurately depicting legal procedures and concepts.
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.
Last week, we discussed an arbitration panel’s blistering ruling that Bridgewater Associates, as part of a bad-faith attempt to destroy a couple of former employees’ new hedge fund, backed up its allegations of theft of trade secrets and violations of all sorts of agreements with evidence made up, or not submitted. At the time, we hadn’t actually seen the arbitrators’ report, since it wouldn’t be publicly filed for another two days, but we knew enough—specifically, the above and that Bridgewater had been ordered to pay its ex-charges’ legal fees—to know it was bad. Worse than losing a fifth of your clients’ money and allegedly trying to stiff your former co-CEO because she’s a woman combined.
Let’s take the decision to file the complaint in the first place. What, exactly, made Bridgewater think Lawrence Minicone and Zachary Squire had absconded with the secret sauce, held onto it for three years and then put it to their own uses? Why, a leaked marketing deck that looked nothing like its own.
Claimant was emphatic that its only basis for alleging misappropriation of its trade secrets was its review of TCM’s marketing materials (“deck”). Jensen stated, “I don’t have any other evidence. I don’t need any other evidence….” Jensen admitted allegations of misappropriation and disclosure of confidential information were based on a guess, “…without seeing the literal code, obviously just an educated guess that it was a process that he had exposure to here….” Bridgewater refused to produce a copy of its marketing materials – its deck – but Jensen testified that TCM’s deck was “generally not the same” as Bridgewater’s.
Hmm. That’s not very convincing. Surely, Bridgewater had something more. After all, employees’ persons and devices are rather tightly monitored, as we all know and as Minicone and Squire helpfully pointed out.
As is widely-recognized, Bridgewater’s offices are extremely secure facilities, requiring employees such as Squire and Minicone to place their cell-phones into signal-proof lockers upon entry, recording all employee movements by video, recording phone calls and internet communication, logging all computer access, requiring any files or attachments sent externally via email to be explicitly approved on a case-by-case basis, and maintaining restricted zones within Bridgewater’s offices. In short, if Squire or Minicone had actually ‘misappropriated’ any trade secrets, Bridgewater would have evidence of it.
And, indeed, Bridgewater did have such evidence. Unfortunately for Ray Dalio & co., it wasn’t particularly helpful evidence.
Brennan, the person responsible for the security of Claimant’s intellectual property in connection with departing employees, testified that he knew at least as early in February, 2017 that Squire did not have access to the five alleged trade secrets…. Bridgewater’s own internal records showed Squire had zero exposure to trade secrets, and showed Minicone’s exposure as 2%.
That brings us to the meat of this bad-faith sandwich, in which Bridgewater chooses binding arbitration, laboriously negotiates a protective order to keep its precious secrets a secret during said arbitration, declines to provide any evidence—including its marketing deck—as part of the proceedings it chose, except for one piece of evidence it made up that directly contradicts the above facts it must have known it would be questioned about under cross-examination.
The only evidence Claimant presented in support of Respondents’ access to trade secrets were lists created for purposes of the litigation by a Bridgewater employee who was hired two years after Respondents left the company, and he did not testify. Respondents’ counsel challenged the accuracy of the lists, pointing out that they included persons listed as having access during the period of Respondents’ employment who were not employed at Bridgewater during that period and excluded persons who did have access.
Why? Why would Bridgewater bring these claims it clearly had no intention of actually backing up beyond arrogance (“I don’t need any other evidence”) and intimidation, and why did it continue with them after it became clear that Minicone and Squire were not going to be intimidated and would instead make it put up or humiliate itself before its own arbitration panel? Well, in a few words, hurt feelings and bad faith.
Both Jensen’s and Rotenberg’s testimony conveyed a sense that Bridgewater expects employees at Respondents’ level to remain with Bridgewater for their entire careers and regards leaving as a betrayal. Rotenberg’s demeanor indicated an undercurrent of anger that one or both Respondents had left Bridgewater; his answers to straightforward questions on cross-examination were lengthy and evasive regarding specifics….
We further conclude that the claims of misappropriation were brought and/or maintained in bad faith for the purposes of causing Respondents’ needless expenditures of money and time in order to defend themselves against the claims…. Claimant’s actions in continuing to press its claims constitute further evidence that its intentions were not to prove misappropriation, but rather, were to adversely affect Respondents’ ability to conduct a competitive business.
Now that is some slimy weasel shit. And rather a catalogue of laziness and inattention to detail that certainly throws some doubt onto Bridgewater’s vaunted Principles and processes. About that,
The testimony of Claimant’s fact witnesses attempting to establish a unique “Bridgewater logic” or “Bridgewater approach” described a well-known and widely used process in economics and other disciplines…. Bateson described Leibowitz’s description of Bridgewater’s “investment pipeline” as “very generic. All systematic funds will do this process.” Bateson also noted that Bridgewater’s SBGE (as described) is more highly correlated to a third-party estimate whose methodology is publicly available – Goldman Sachs’ – than to TCM’s growth measure. Bridgewater’s own employee acknowledged that Goldman Sachs’ statistics-based growth estimating methodology is very different from Bridgewater’s SBGE. Lewis testified regarding Claimant’s Short-Rate technology, that he was unable to identify anything “unique or even unusual…”
Mmm, worth every basis point of that two-and-20, I’m sure you and all of Bridgewater’s clients will agree.
* If you have an older iPhone, you may be entitled to $25, since Apple is accused of intentionally slowing down the performance of outdated phones without notifying customers. Just don’t spend your $25 all in one place… [NBC News]
* Counsel for Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell are asking for a gag order over attorneys involved with her criminal case. [Seattle Times]
* Several Fox News hosts are accused of sexual misconduct in a new lawsuit. [Vulture]
* Authorities are investigating whether the anti-feminist lawyer accused of killing the son of federal judge Esther Salas was also involved in the killing of a mens’ rights lawyer in California earlier this month. [AP]
* Burger King has successfully moved to dismiss a lawsuit claiming that the fast food chain deceived customers into thinking it used different cooking surfaces for its vegan offerings. If they claimed the food was kosher, there might have been a different result… [Reuters]
Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.
According to data collected by Law.com, which Biglaw firm tops their Pro Bono Scorecard which ranks Am Law 200 firms based on their pro bono work performed by U.S.-based lawyers?
Hint: At this firm, the average number of pro bono hours per lawyer in 2019 was 175.4.
We Bar Examiners would like to remind you lazy students, who did not have to walk uphill, in the snow (both ways), that you are perhaps The Worst Generation Ever. Instead of studying for the bar with razor-like focus, you perpetually worry about whether you are going to die of COVID-19. How does that help your client? You aren’t going to die of COVID-19! You’re going to be worked to death, if you’re lucky! Look at us! Do we look happy? No. And that’s why we are here to make you miserable. We had to go through the same thing. And so can you!
In any event, having fully considered in the course of five minutes whether there should be a live Bar Exam (of course there should be, you lazy nitwits!), we have turned our attention to cheating. Please pay close attention to the rules for the bar exam, as things have changed depending on your jurisdiction.
Online Bar Exam Takers
A proctor will move in with you three weeks before the exam. This is to assure the proctor has sufficient time to search your domicile for places you might stash answers as you take the test. Please clean your laundry before the proctor arrives. The point of the proctor is not to go through your dirty laundry. THAT is the point of the character and fitness portion of the program!
Please download our bar exam software (SpySoft) three weeks before the bar exam. Remember that your camera must be on at all times, and we will have access to your financial data and everything on your computer. Please refrain from picking your nose for three weeks, as that disgusts us.
Please take your laptop into the bathroom with you so we know you won’t cheat and have stuff written on the toilet paper in there. Oh, don’t whine. You know perfectly well some of you have already done this during Zoom classes.
If your internet crashes, we will assume you are cheating and flunk you.
If you do not have internet you should have thought about that before complaining about COVID-19 now, shouldn’t you?
In Person/”Live” Bar Exam Takers
After much argument from LadyLawyerDiaries, we have agreed to let you use your own tampons and pads. That isn’t true for some bars, but this bar is kind and compassionate. Instead, we will stand watch over you as you change your tampon to assure there are no answers written. To avoid being considered sexist, we will inspect “johnsons,” too. Men, we know some of you might have to write smaller than others, so your proctors will bring magnifying glasses.
We’ve decided to combine proctoring of the bar exam with character and fitness. Thus, our proctors will be collecting urine samples during the bar exam. Please avoid poppy seed dressings and bagels for three weeks before the exam. If you are bladder shy, our proctors are authorized to sing “Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty.”
This is probably a bad time to mention rectal exams. But(t), we are very concerned about your cheating. Much more so than we are about COVID-19. So, your proctor will become your proctologist. You may protest, saying we never had to undergo such invasive searches. We counter that we could NOT possibly cheat like that because THAT is where we keep our heads.
Some of you have made the poor choice to be new mothers around the time of the bar exam. Babies are such a gift. But not for us! This is NOT a choice we as predominantly septuagenarian males would have made. You made a bad (nonmale) choice. But now you want accommodations. Thus, we have a couch in the testing lobby to assure that you can either breast feed or pump as you deem necessary. Your baby/breast pump will be inspected to assure that no answers are written on anything. Blue light will be used on your breast to assure the answers aren’t written in invisible ink as your baby latched on because of whatever magical fairy lipstick you put on your baby prior to nursing.
If you speak to ANYONE during any restroom break, our proctors are authorized (and you agree with the 20 waivers we made you sign) to kick you in your nether regions. That will be your first warning. Second warning is expulsion from the exam and a second kick. Don’t even think about saying “Excuse me” or “Hello” or “Gesundheit.”
Okay, that should be it for the changes in the ground rules to the exam. It is important that you understand that you are about to become part of a profession. Once you are in the profession, we’ll expect you to conduct yourself appropriately, without much oversight. Unless you steal client funds, we’ll barely notice! But for right now, we don’t trust you at all. You might even be the head of a state bar and make racist statements! And we might not care at all! Once you pass the exam.
Some of you might think our rules above run contrary to the whole notions of “fairness, integrity, and best practices in admission to the legal profession for the benefit and protection of the public” that one might find on the NCBEX website. You might think some of these requirements are sexist and contrary to a “competent, ethical, and diverse legal profession.” See, that’s the NCBEX vision, which is not necessarily our vision as we serve on state boards! Our vision is that we MUST have a bar exam free of cheating. And no matter how absurd and crazy the world gets, the test of competence is the bar exam.
Should you pass the draconian hurdles we set up before you for no other reason than our lack of innovation and cruel spirit, remember: Once you enter the bar, we will become VERY concerned about your mental health. Just not now.
Good luck. And stop thinking about cheating.
Your friendly neighborhood bar examiners.
LawProfBlawgis an anonymous professor at a top 100 law school. He hates the Bar Exam. His thoughts are his and his alone. You can see more of his musings here. He is way funnier on social media, he claims. Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.
Is it normal to have a 501(c)(4) controlled by a politician which transacts no business other than cashing $250,000 quarterly checks from an energy company looking for a billion-dollar government bailout? Asking for Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder, who was arrested this morning and charged in massive, $61 million racketeering, bribery, and public corruption case.
And if you’re counting on your fingers to figure out how many quarters it would take to suck up $61 million in quarter million dollar tranches, he had a lot of help. Rest assured that a whole boatload of Buckeyes are on the phone with their lawyers right this very minute.
The case arises out of an Ohio law passed last year which zeroed out subsidies for wind and solar while bailing out two coal plants belonging to the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation and a nuclear power facility owned by FirstEnergy Solutions. Householder, who had served as his chamber’s speaker between 2001 and 2004, had recently won his old seat back and wanted help returning to the speakership. And FirstEnergy wanted to help him do it, according to the criminal complaint.
Following his January 2017 trip on Company A’s [i.e. FirstEnergy’s] private jet, in March 2017, Householder began receiving quarterly $250,000 payments from Company A into a bank account in the name of a 501(c)(4) entity secretly controlled by Householder called Generation Now.
Nothing to see here!
Arrested along with Householder were his longtime aide, Jeff Longstreth, who helped him set up Generation Now, former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges, and FirstEnergy lobbyists Neil Clark and Juan Cespedes. Apparently, they were a chatty bunch.
In 2019, Clark described himself on recorded communications as Householders “hitman” who will do the “dirty shit.” Clark stated, “When Householder’s busy, I get complete say. When we are working on stuff, if he says ‘I’m busy,’ everyone knows, Neil has the final say, not Jeff. Jeff is his implementer.
Testing, testing! Is this thing on? I would like to describe the structure of our criminal enterprise now.
Householder used the cash in Generation Now to build his political base, doling it out to other Republican candidates and preaching the good word of dirty energy, and in January 2019, he regained the speakership. Three months later, Householder introduced HB6, a $1.3 billion bailout for FirstEnergy, at which point the cash flowing from the company to Generation Now and GOP state reps kicked into overdrive. Between July and October of 2019, FirstEnergy sent $38 million to Generation Now.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio, “When asked how much money was in Generation Now, Clark said, ‘it’s unlimited.’” Borges referred to it as “Monopoly money.”
Which is a sh*t ton of cash in one state congressman’s little secret account.
Sure, Householder used some of that money to pay his campaign staff, and allegedly pocketed about $400,000 in personal benefits “to settle a personal lawsuit, to pay for costs associated with his residence in Florida, and to pay off thousands of dollars of credit card debt.” Plus he’s alleged to have “paid $15,000 to an individual to provide insider information about the ballot initiative and offered to pay signature collectors for the ballot initiative $2,500 cash and plane fare to stop gathering signatures.” Because Householder provided good service for his clients, and he made sure that a ballot initiative to repeal the bill never saw the light of day.
But that doesn’t add up to anything like $60 million. The complaint details transfers of about $20 million to Householder’s co-conspirators, but unless $40 million of that money is still sitting there in Generation Now’s account, it had to go somewhere.
Which brings us to David DeVillers, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, who promised in this afternoon’s press conference that “We are not done with this case.”
JUST IN: U.S. Attorney David M. DeVillers announces the arrest of Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder “for racketeering in likely the largest bribery, money-laundering scheme against the people of the state of Ohio.”
DeVillers promised the investigation would broaden now that the indictment has been unsealed and is no longer covert. Which sounds like a full employment plan for white collar criminal lawyers in the great state of Ohio. See, Householder really did protect jobs after all — just maybe not the way he planned to.
US v. Borges [Criminal Complaint, No. 1:20-MJ-00526 (S.D. Ohio Jul 21, 2020)]
Elizabeth Dye (@5DollarFeminist) lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.
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