Bloomberg: Ohio’s Historic Corruption Case Tests Limits of Citizens United

Ohio’s largest-ever public corruption trial begins Friday featuring powerful lawmakers, big business, and a question that could resonate across the nation’s fraught political landscape: When do campaign donations veer from protected speech into bribery?

Federal prosecutors say they’ve got the evidence proving a $60 million pay-to-play scheme against former Republican Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former GOP Chairman Matthew Borges.

The Department of Justice lawyers are armed with guilty pleas from accomplices, implicating texts, phone recordings, bank statements, and a 49-page mea culpa from Akron-based FirstEnergy—which admitted to funding the scheme in exchange for a $1.3 billion energy bailout bill meant to support Ohio’s two struggling nuclear power plants.

The defense brings a much simpler pitch to jurors in a Cincinnati courtroom: This is legal, politics as usual, and protected by the US Supreme Court in its 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision and other precedent. Some legal observers think they could have a case.

“We’ve legalized bribery in our campaign finance system,” said Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio and a longtime Ohio advocate of campaign finance and government reform. “This case proves we’ve essentially set the stage for Ohioans to be taken advantage of. And they were.”