COLUMBUS, Ohio — “Team Householder was 21 candidates in 2018 that were running in the primaries, as well as the general election. Millions of dollars went into those candidates to attack their rivals and get them elected. It was very successful,” said U.S. District Attorney Dave DeVillers​.

What You Need To Know

  • Larry Householder served as a master puppeteer for dozens of representatives

  • 21 candidates, dubbed "Team Householder," got a collective $2 million in campaign funding from Householder and his enterprise

  • In exchange, these newly-elected representatives reinstated Householder as speaker and passed HB6

According to the federal affidavit, Householder and his political enterprise funneled nearly two million dollars backing candidates, who in turn would back him.

One of those races was between Montgomery County Commissioner Dan Foley and Republican Todd Smith.

Foley held a ten-point lead and then days before the election, a group called “Hardworking Ohioans Inc.” released an attack.

According to the affidavit, it showed "the opposing candidate taking a field sobriety test, yet only receiving a speeding ticket. The ad essentially accused the candidate of misuse of authority. Although the candidate and the police union condemned the ad, the damage was done. Media reports credited the dark money group ad with tipping the scales.”

The affidavit continues, saying that after the election, Householder took credit for the ad, boasting that he had dumped a half a million dollars into that race in its final weeks.

Todd Smith ended up winning by 137 votes.

While Smith is the most easily traceable member of Team Householder from FBI documents, campaign contributions from FirstEnergy paint a much broader picture.

According to public campaign finance records, FirstEnergy donated $12,700 to Jamie Callender's campaign in March of 2018. The Lake County Republican later went on to sponsor HB6.

The other sponsor, Shane Wilkins, received $10,000 from FirstEnergy. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

“As of this morning, there are a lot of FBI agents, knocking on a lot of doors, asking a lot of questions, serving a lot of subpoenas, executing a lot of search warrants. That's going to go on for days. There are going to be a lot of busy FBI agents in the Southern District of Ohio,” said DeVillers.