With the federal trial on corruption charges related to the passage of nuclear bailout bill 133-HB6 (Callender-Wilkin) for former House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges set to get underway Friday, the former prosecutor who announced those charges said he hopes more state and federal prosecutors will look at dark money groups.

David DeVillers, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, spoke at a Columbus Metropolitan Club (CMC) panel Wednesday about so called “dark money” in politics, where certain groups do not have to disclose their donors.

DeVillers said those groups, mainly 501(c)(4) groups, are breeding grounds for money laundering.

“You are hiding the nature and source of the assets, which is the definition of money laundering,” he said.

Answering a question about the effect of the trial on dark money groups in the future, he said in the short term, it could bring more scrutiny to those groups. But in the long term, he admitted it may not have much.

He said it is hard to identify the donors to the groups unless prosecutors and law enforcement get a search warrant or subpoena, and even then, the subjects of those subpoenas may not fully comply.

DeVillers was joined by Ashley Brown, executive director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group at Harvard University and a former Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) commissioner, and Kathiann Kowalski, a journalist with Energy News Network and Eye on Ohio. The panel was moderated by Ohio Public Radio’s Jo Ingles.

Kowalski said she is afraid that if Householder and Borges are found not guilty, dark money will be more entrenched in Ohio politics. If they are convicted, there will be a higher level of scrutiny, she said.

The panel discussed the scandal surrounding the passage of 133-HB6 and specifically, the role of FirstEnergy.

Brown said that as a former commissioner, he is disappointed how the PUCO has handled the scandal. He said there are five commissioners, of which only one is the chair, yet the other four members consistently voted with former PUCO Chair Sam Randazzo without discussion. He said that if the other commissioners suspected Randazzo was only working in the best interests of FirstEnergy, they should have done something about it, including opening a show cause proceeding against the utility or opening an investigation into whether FirstEnergy breached its fiduciary responsibility.

The panel also complained that the federal prosecutor’s office had asked the PUCO to hold off its investigations in order to not interfere with the federal case. Brown said that in the meantime, utilities will be able to continue to collect the increased rates and not have to refund it even if it is found to be too high later by the commission.

DeVillers said he made similar requests of agencies when he was U.S. attorney. He added that the investigation is still ongoing and there is a possibility individuals could be fined and those funds used as restitution for consumers. He also noted that the request to delay investigations was for six months, and that time period will expire soon.

Asked if there were warning signs of the scandal, DeVillers said they had heard stories of individuals’ working to overturn HB6 getting bribed to drop their referendum efforts. He said investigators listened to those stories.

Brown said there had been warning signs about FirstEnergy going back 30-40 years, recounting aggressive lobbying tactics by the utility, which would identify for commissioners the individuals contributing to gubernatorial campaigns. He said after a rate case went against FirstEnergy when he was a commissioner, a former CEO told him that they were under the impression that all they had to do was come to Columbus, “buy a few meals,” and everything would be okay for them.

“First, you’re telling me I could be bought, and two, for a Big Mac?” Brown joked. “For the record, I never got a Big Mac.”

DeVillers stressed the importance of whistleblowers going to the FBI with concerns about public corruption, saying it is taken seriously. He said that while there have been problems with the FBI, looking into public corruption is one area it does well.

Brown said there are a number of powers PUCO could invoke to hold FirstEnergy accountable but said it has not done any oversight. He noted one instance as a commissioner where the PUCO threatened to replace the entire board of Columbia Gas, eventually getting the utility to change its leadership. He questioned how the commission could see a company pleading guilty to a crime and not do anything about it.

He also argued that the policy of 133-HB6 is not coherent other than to bailout FirstEnergy. He said there are two schools of thought when it comes to regulating utilities. The first is to have strong economic and environmental regulation around operations, and the other is to promote the free market. He said HB6 “manages to be offensive to both schools of thought.” It asks to bailout nuclear power plants that aren’t competitive in the market, going against the free market principle, and it subsidizes dirty coal plants and cuts energy efficiency requirements, going against the environmental aspect.

“You can’t explain it except for FirstEnergy’s lobbying, and lobbying is a generous term given what’s happened,” he said.