Trial of ex-FirstEnergy executives charged in $60M Ohio bribery scheme begins

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The $4.3 million payment that Ohio-based FirstEnergy made to veteran lawyer and lobbyist Sam Randazzo in 2019, shortly before he was appointed as the state’s top utility regulator, is at the center of the latest criminal trial to get underway in a sweeping $60 million bribery scandal.

Prosecutors allege that then-FirstEnergy Corp. CEO Chuck Jones and then-FirstEnergy Services Corp. Senior Vice President Michael Dowling played roles in orchestrating the hefty payout to Randazzo in exchange for regulatory and legislative favors he would later deliver to the company. Both men have pleaded not guilty to felony corruption charges, denying all wrongdoing and arguing that the money was a lump sum settling Randazzo's long-running consulting agreement with the company.

Opening statements kicked off Tuesday in Akron. Special Assistant Attorney General Matthew Meyer told jurors they need not to be overwhelmed by the complexities of utility regulation that they'll encounter over what is expected to be an eight-week trial. He said that the two executives were smart men who knew exactly what they were doing.

“Chuck Jones and Mike Dowling went to Mr. Randazzo repeatedly, secretly and they rigged the game,” he said. “That's what this is about, and that's why it's simple. This game got rigged and the game is not boring.”

Defense attorney Steve Grimes countered by repeatedly telling jurors that "details matter.” He predicted that prosecutors would try to gloss over or omit the complexities behind Jones' and Dowling's actions in order to tell a good story.

“In our daily lives, we might be able to get away with that sort of shortcut from time to time," he said. “But that's not how it works in a court of law. You can't skip the details. You can't miss critical facts when somebody's liberty is at stake. Not in here.”

The two defendants were among executives FirstEnergy fired in the wake of the 2020 arrests of then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four associates. Federal prosecutors alleged that the speaker and the others carried out an elaborate bribery plot funded by FirstEnergy that allowed Householder to win the speakership, elect his allies, pass a $1 billion nuclear plant bailout and then foil a proposed effort to repeal the legislation, known as House Bill 6.

FirstEnergy admitted in 2021 to using dark money groups to fund the plot, and a jury convicted Householder of racketeering in 2023. He is serving 20 years in federal prison, a sentence he continues to fight in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Randazzo is no longer here to tell his side of the story at the long-anticipated trial — as the defense painted him as “a thief” and “a con man” who bore sole responsibility for the misuse of FirstEnergy money. The respected energy attorney died by suicide in 2024, after pleading not guilty to dozens of state and federal charges.

Jones and Dowling have alerted Summit County Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross to a list of 58 potential witnesses they may call in their defense.

The highest-profile of those are Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who appointed Randazzo to the powerful Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, and his former lieutenant governor, Jon Husted, who DeWine appointed a U.S. senator last year. Husted is making a closely watched bid to retain his seat this fall, likely against Democrat Sherrod Brown. Neither DeWine nor Husted has ever been accused of wrongdoing in the case.

Grimes said that Jones had ready access to Husted, who could speak to FirstEnergy's interest in seeing a different person than Randazzo tapped as PUCO chair.

Various court filings show that the two Republicans dined with Jones, Dowling and Josh Rubin on Dec. 18, 2018, at the storied Athletic Club of Columbus. Earlier in the day, Rubin — a FirstEnergy lobbyist and adviser to the 2018 DeWine-Husted campaign — had provided advice to the executives on how to lobby DeWine, then the governor-elect, in favor of the company's preferences to chair the PUCO, according to a text contained in the criminal complaint.

Rubin cautioned the executives not to mention to DeWine that they would be meeting Randazzo at his residence after the dinner. Later in the day, Randazzo texted Dowling a list of figures for the years 2019 through 2024: “Total 4,333,333.” “Got it, Sam,” Dowling replied. “Good seeing you as well. Thanks for the hospitality. Cool condo.”

The next day, Jones also texted Randazzo. “We’re going to get this handled this year, paid in full, no discount,” he wrote. “Don’t forget about us or Hurricane Chuck may show up on your doorstep! Of course, no guarantee he won’t show up sometime anyway.”

Randazzo replied, “Made me laugh — you guys are welcome anytime and anywhere I can open the door. Let me know how you want me to structure the invoices. Thanks.”

Jones' defense attorney, Carole Rendon, showed jurors a series of additional communications from this critical 17-hour period, laying out what she said was clear evidence that the $4.3 million constituted a settlement agreement intended for Randazzo's clients. She said the payout was all aboveboard and handled through normal corporate channels.

“There was nothing secret or hidden about this payment,” she said.

DeWine has said that Randazzo did not disclose — and that the governor did not know of — the consulting arrangement with FirstEnergy until it was reported in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Assistant Ohio Attorney General Matthew Meyer presents his opening statement at the trial of defendant Michael Dowling, a former FirstEnergy Services Corp. Senior Vice President, and defendant Chuck Jones, a former FirstEnergy Corp. CEO, in Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross's courtroom, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Akron, Ohio. (Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, Pool)

Defendant Chuck Jones, a former FirstEnergy Corp. CEO, listens to his attorney Carole Rendon as she gives her opening statement in his and fellow defendant Michael Dowling's trial in Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross's courtroom, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Akron, Ohio. (Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, Pool)

Defendant Michael Dowling, a former FirstEnergy Services Corp. Senior Vice President, listens to Carole Rendon, attorney for fellow defendant Chuck Jones as she gives her opening statement in the their trial in Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross's courtroom, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Akron, Ohio. (Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, Pool)

Defendants Michael Dowling, left, and Chuck Jones, right, talk with Attorney Matthew Durkin, center, as they wait for the start of their trial in Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross's courtroom on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Akron, Ohio. (Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, Pool)

Defendant Chuck Jones, left, listens to Attorney Noah Munyer, right, in Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross's courtroom on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Akron, Ohio. (Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, Pool)

Michael Dowling, left, talks with his attorney, Dan Webb, before the start of his trial in Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross's courtroom on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Akron, Ohio. (Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, Pool)

Defendants Michael Dowling and Chuck Jones wait for the start of their trial in Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross's courtroom on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Akron, Ohio. (Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, Pool)

Defendants Michael Dowling, left, and Chuck Jones wait for the start of their trial in Summit County Court of Common Pleas Judge Susan Baker Ross's courtroom on Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Akron, Ohio. (Mike Cardew/Akron Beacon Journal via AP, Pool)

FILE – Plumes of steam drift from the cooling tower of FirstEnergy Corp.'s Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Oak Harbor, Ohio, April 4, 2017. (AP Photo/Ron Schwane, File)

BEIRUT (AP) — When the Israel- Hezbollah war broke out in early March, Hussein Shuman fled the heavy bombardment of the southern suburbs of Beirut, but he didn’t bother trying to rent an apartment elsewhere.

In areas deemed “safe” because the Lebanese militant group has no presence, he feels that Shiite Muslims like him are not welcome. Residents regard them with suspicion as potential Hezbollah members, and landlords charge exorbitant prices to rent to displaced families.

Instead, the 35-year-old, who works at a perfume company, headed to central Beirut where he set up a small tent where he has been staying, along with his wife, 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter.

Shuman even rejected an offer from a friend who invited him to bring his family to the Christian mountain town of Zgharta. He preferred to remain in his tent, even though it has flooded twice in the past two weeks.

“By staying here I have my dignity and respect,” Shuman said, sitting on a chair near his tent as a barber gave him an open-air hair cut. “We will not stay in a place where we are going to be humiliated.”

In a country full of suspicion, the more than 1 million people — most of them Shiite — displaced as a result of Israel’s evacuation orders and airstrikes have limited options.

Some landlords in Christian areas refuse to rent to Shiites. Others demand inflated rents and deposits that few can afford. Fatima Zahra, 42, from Beirut’s southern suburbs, said she and her sister sold their finest jewelry to pay the $5,000 the landlord charged up front for two months’ rent.

In some Beirut neighborhoods, displaced people who can afford to pay high rents are only allowed to take the apartment after landlords inform the security agencies to check on whether the family has any links to Hezbollah.

Sectarian tensions are a sensitive issue in Lebanon because the country fought a 15-year civil war ending in 1990 that largely broke down along sectarian lines.

Social frictions have worsened since Israel’s targeted airstrikes killed Hezbollah officials or members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in predominantly Christian, Sunni and Druze areas, raising fears among the hosts that Hezbollah members are mingling within the civilian population.

The Lebanese are deeply divided over Hezbollah’s wars with Israel, with many in the small nation blaming the Iran-backed group for dragging the country into a deadly conflict that has so far left more than 1,300 people dead and over 4,000 wounded. Hezbollah fired missiles into Israel two days after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, triggering the ongoing Middle East war.

The renewed war has caused widespread destruction and paralyzed the economy at a time when Lebanon is still in the throes of a historic economic crisis that broke out in late 2019. The country has not yet recovered from the last Israel-Hezbollah war in 2024.

In mid-March, an Israeli airstrike on an apartment in the town of Aramoun killed three people, prompting some local residents to call for the displaced to leave the area.

Days later, an airstrike on the nearby town of Bchamoun also killed three people, including a four-year-old girl, who were displaced from Beirut’s southern suburbs, where Hezbollah has a strong presence.

In neither case did Israel announce the intended target of the strikes, but neighbors assumed that someone in the targeted apartments was a Hezbollah member.

“Had we known that they were linked to Hezbollah, we would have kicked them out,” an angry man who owns an apartment in the building in Bchamoun said at the scene.

In late March, a missile exploded over the predominantly Christian Keserwan region north of Beirut, with debris falling on different areas. Although the Lebanese army later said that it was an Iranian missile passing over Lebanon that fell, many initially assumed that it was an Israeli airstrike targeting displaced people.

No one was was hurt by the missile debris, but a group of young men attacked displaced Shiites in the district of Haret Sakher near the coastal city of Jounieh, calling for their eviction, before local officials intervened.

“We don’t want them here,” shouted a Haret Sakher resident shortly after the strike. He said that some of the displaced refer to their hosts as “Zionists,” accusing them of being aligned with Israel because they criticize Hezbollah for dragging the country into the conflict. He added: “We don’t want national coexistence.”

George Saadeh, a member of Jounieh’s municipal council, told The Associated Press that he had called on Haret Sakher residents to avoid any reaction “so that we can preserve civil peace.”

In a predominantly Christian area just north of Beirut, plans to house displaced people in an abandoned warehouse near the port were suspended last week after drawing backlash from lawmakers and residents.

“The Israeli targeting campaign has created a lot of paranoia,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center. “If you see a displaced person, maybe you wonder, ‘What if this person is a target?’”

Fearing the tension could slip out of control, the army has beefed up its presence on the streets.

Last week, army commander Gen. Rudolphe Haikal toured Beirut and the southern city of Sidon and told troops that they should be “firm in the face of any attempt to undermine internal stability,” the army said in a statement.

Police forces, including a SWAT unit, were deployed at major intersections in the capital to preserve peace and prevent any friction between the displaced and locals. Police patrols pass through the tent city by Beirut’s coast where Shuman and his family are staying.

An official at the municipality of the predominantly Sunni town of Naameh, just south of Beirut, said that they have received thousands of people displaced from southern Lebanon.

The official said that in order to avoid tensions, they opened a school in one district for displaced Shiites and another in a different neighborhood for people displaced from Sunni border villages.

“There are concerns among people,” that conflict could break out said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

With the Israeli airstrikes and ground invasion mainly targeting Shiite areas, U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa, a Lebanese-American, was criticized for stoking sectarianism. He told reporters in late March that the U.S. had asked Israel for a commitment that Christian villages in southern Lebanon will not be attacked.

“We have asked the Israelis to leave Christian villages in the south alone and they told us that they will not touch Christian villages,” Issa said. However, he added, “They (Israelis) said that they cannot guarantee” that the villages would be left alone “if there is infiltration into these villages” by Hezbollah members.

Several Christian villages in southern Lebanon have asked displaced Shiites who were sheltering there to leave, fearing that their presence might trigger Israeli attacks.

Legislator Taymour Joumblatt who is the leader of the Progressive Socialist Party, the largest Druze-led political group in the country, said that the biggest concern in the country now is “strife.”

“The most important thing is to reduce sectarian pressures on the ground,” Joumblatt said. “Our Shiites brothers are part of this country and our humanitarian duty is to help them.”

———

Associated Press writer Isabel DeBre contributed to this report from Beirut.

FILE — A displaced woman who fled Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon, carries her belonging as she moves to a better spot to shelter from the rain, past an Arabic anti-war poster that reads, "Sacrificing for whom? Lebanon does not need war," in Beirut, Saturday, March 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

Special forces police officers deployed amid tensions between people displaced by Israeli strikes and local residents in Beirut neighborhoods, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

FILE — A child walks past tents sheltering people displaced by Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Dahiyeh, Beirut's southern suburbs, along the Beirut waterfront in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, March 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)

Special forces police officers deployed amid tensions between people displaced by Israeli strikes and local residents in Beirut neighborhoods, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

File — Smoke rises from Israeli airstrikes in Dahiyeh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)