How FirstEnergy, one of America’s most corrupt utilities, secretly spent millions of dollars as it pursued a multi-billion-dollar federal bailout for its coal and nuclear plants during Donald Trump’s presidency, a bailout Trump promised, but failed to deliver.
Records obtained via subpoena now identify previously unnamed individuals and entities that FirstEnergy admitted in a 2021 agreement with prosecutors were involved in the utility’s bid to secure a bailout from then-President Donald Trump
In 2017 and 2018, FirstEnergy Corp. attempted to seek relief for its nuclear power generation facilities through a federal solution for its energy generation business. To further a federal solution, certain FirstEnergy Corp. executives met with federal officials and hired consultants with close connections to federal officials to lobby and assist in securing official action to subsidize the nuclear and coal plants through DOE action and the FERC rulemaking process. FirstEnergy Service also approved a $5,000,000 wire to a 501(c)(4) entity connected to federal official(s), on or about May 1, 2017, shortly after hiring a consultant with close connections to those federal officials(s).
The agreement between FirstEnergy and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Ohio did not name the federal officials, consultants, or the 501(c)(4) entity.
The Energy and Policy Institute (EPI) obtained copies of the records through Open Records Law requests filed with the OCC and PUCO. The records were among the hundreds of thousands of pages of FirstEnergy communications and documents released to EPI and reporters this year, leading to new revelations about how FirstEnergy secretly spent millions of dollars to support Republican elected officials in Ohio, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, and Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman.
In this report, EPI highlights key records that detail FirstEnergy’s secret efforts to influence then-President Donald Trump and secure a multi-billion dollar public bailout for coal and nuclear plants during Trump’s first term in the White House. A collection of the emails, text messages, and documents cited in this blog post is available on DocumentCloud.
The federal criminal investigation of FirstEnergy and the PUCO inquiries spurred by that investigation have focused on bribes the utility paid to Ohio’s former Republican House Speaker Larry Householder and PUCO Chairman Samuel Randazzo. In 2019, Householder and Randazzo helped FirstEnergy secure a since-repealed $1 billion ratepayer bailout for several coal and nuclear plants owned by a bankrupt subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions, via Ohio’s House Bill 6. State lawmakers have not repealed other provisions of H.B. 6, including a rollback of Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards for electric utilities, and a ratepayer bailout of two Ohio Electric Valley Electric Corporation coal plants that has primarily benefited other utilities like AEP, AES, and Duke Energy.
The deferred prosecution agreement described how FirstEnergy also deployed Householder to ask Trump about the status of the federal bailout at a 2018 roundtable event in Ohio.
Householder and lobbyist Matt Borges were convicted last year in a racketeering case in which a 501(c)(4) entity called Generation Now, which pleaded guilty in the case, was used to conceal $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy. Householder political aide Jeffrey Longstreth and FirstEnergy Solutions lobbyist Juan Cespedes also pleaded guilty. Lobbyist Neil Clark committed suicide after he was charged.
Randazzo also committed suicide after he was separately indicted on state and federal criminal charges centered on a secret $4.3 million payment FirstEnergy made to Randazzo’s consulting firm shortly before his 2019 appointment by DeWine as Ohio’s top utility regulator.
In 2021, FirstEnergy was charged with a federal crime for the Householder and Randazzo bribes. The utility agreed to pay a $230 million legal penalty to avoid prosecution and admitted it paid the bribes.
FirstEnergy fired its CEO Charles Jones and top lobbyist Michael Dowling in 2020. Earlier this year, Jones and Dowling were indicted on state criminal charges centered on FirstEnergy’s payments to Randazzo.
No one else has been charged in the state and federal criminal investigations involving FirstEnergy.
The Trump administration initially attempted to deliver the bailout sought by FirstEnergy through a controversial 2017 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) by Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, a proposal that was rejected by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in early 2018.
In June 2018, a leaked memo revealed that the Trump administration was considering using the Department of Energy’s emergency powers under the Defense Production Act and Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to prop up coal and nuclear plants. Trump then publicly ordered Perry to bail out the plants. FirstEnergy Solutions had petitioned and lobbied the Department of Energy to use Section 202(c) to support the plants earlier that year, shortly before it filed for bankruptcy.
In 2019, Perry shifted focus and called on states to provide financial support to coal and nuclear plants. In Ohio that year, a Trump campaign advisor named Bob Paduchik made phone calls to state lawmakers urging them to support H.B. 6. FirstEnergy later agreed to pay Paduchik $12,500 per month under a 2020 consulting agreement.
Trump’s attempts to deliver the bailout sought by FirstEnergy ultimately collapsed amid broad public opposition and concerns raised by White House insiders. In one 2018 email, Dowling shared intel that Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow was worried “that a lot of people think it’s a bailout.”
Earlier this year, Trump said he plans to deliver the “#1 lowest cost” electricity on earth if elected to a second term as president. A Brattle report estimated the cost to the public of the Trump Administration’s bailout plan outlined in the 2018 leaked memo could have reached as high as $17 billion per year, and earlier estimates pegged the potential cost of Perry’s 2017 NOPR at over $10 billion.
FirstEnergy paid more than $12 million to dark money groups to “influence issues of key importance to FirstEnergy in 2017, such as saving our baseload generation” – including $5 million to Trump-aligned America First Policies
“On May 1, 2017, FirstEnergy made a $5 million payment to America First Policies, Inc.,” according to a legal document prepared by FirstEnergy’s lawyers for the deposition of Joseph Storsin, the utility’s Vice President of Strategy.
“America First Policies, Inc. is a 501(c)(4) associated with supporters of former President Trump,” the document from Storsin’s deposition said.
America First Policies was founded by Trump campaign aides, including Nick Ayers, David Bossie, Marty Obst, Katrina Pierson, and Brad Parscale.
Storsin was deposed on FirstEnergy’s deferred prosecution agreement in a civil lawsuit filed by company shareholders in response to the federal criminal investigation. A two-volumetranscript and exhibits from the deposition were among the FirstEnergy records released this year.
FirstEnergy contributed over $12 million to 501(c)(4)s in 2017, according to a draft 2018 presentation by Dowling to FirstEnergy’s Corporate Governance Committee on the company’s political spending.
“This is strictly money spent to influence issues of key importance to FirstEnergy in 2017, such as saving our baseload generation or to gain support for the Pleasants transaction,” said speaker notes that accompanied Dowling’s draft presentation.
The “Pleasants transaction” was a proposal by FirstEnergy to transfer ownership of a West Virginia coal plant from one of its competitive power subsidiaries to Mon Power, a regulated monopoly utility owned by FirstEnergy. The proposal was later rejected by FERC, which found the transfer would unfairly force captive ratepayers of Mon Power to pay to cross-subsidize FirstEnergy’s competitive subsidiary.
The Akron Beacon Journal and E&E News first started to piece together the money trail from FirstEnergy to America First Policies in 2022, based on information from the deferred prosecution agreement, records FirstEnergy turned over in a Maryland Public Service Commission investigation, and federal tax records. It wasn’t until this year that documents from FirstEnergy lawyers that confirmed America First Policies as the unnamed 501(c)(4) described in FirstEnergy’s agreement with prosecutors became available.
Company records show FirstEnergy hired Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski to lobby for the bailout and was invoiced for $300,000 in 2017 by Lewandowski’s consulting firms, while Lewandowski maintains that he “never lobbied for or was paid by First Energy.”
“In April 2017, FirstEnergy engaged Avenue Strategies LLC to lobby for federal relief for nuclear and coal-fired plants,” according to the same document from Storsin’s deposition that confirmed the $5 million FirstEnergy payment to America First Policies.
“FirstEnergy engaged Avenue Strategies LLC for the purpose of ‘seek[ing] the DOE to submit a rule to FERC’ and ‘an emergency stop gap measure issued by the Secretary of Energy under the Federal Power Act,’” the document said.
“Through its engagement with Avenue Strategies LLC, FirstEnergy hired Corey Lewandowski, a close advisor to then-President Trump, to further the federal solution effort,” the document continued.
“FirstEnergy does not admit that its engagement with Avenue Strategies LLC or Lewandowski, or any lobbying performed by Avenue Strategies LLC or Lewandowski, was illegal or improper,” the exhibit said.
Avenue Strategy does not appear to have registered to lobby for FirstEnergy, based on a search of federal lobbying reports filed by the lobbying firm and FirstEnergy in 2017.
Avenue Strategies invoiced FirstEnergy for $150,000 in April 2017, according to a spreadsheet that an employee in FirstEnergy’s financial services department emailed to Dowling’s executive assistant Kristina Housely in early 2018. On April 14, Perry ordered a controversial grid study that paved the way for his NOPR later that year.
In May 2017, Public Citizen called for an investigation into whether Lewandowski had violated the Lobbying Disclosure Act by not registering as a federal lobbyist. He left Avenue Strategies later that month.
Public Citizen did not specifically mention FirstEnergy, whose relationship with Lewandowski was first reported by Politico that August. Lewandowski denied that he worked for FirstEnergy, as Politico reported.
Lewandowski Strategic Advisors invoiced FirstEnergy for $150,000 in July 2017, according to the same FirstEnergy spreadsheet that listed the Avenue Strategies invoice. A consulting agreement, signed by Lewandowski and Dowling, was dated June 28, 2017. The consulting agreement between FirstEnergy and Lewandowski Strategic Advisors was first reported by the Washington Post this summer after Lewandowski rejoined the Trump campaign as a senior advisor.
An exhibit in the June 2017 consulting agreement delineating the services to be provided noted that Lewandowski’s new firm “cannot and will not engage in any lobbying or advocacy services (as defined by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, (2 U.S.C. § 1601 et seq., as amended) under the terms of this Agreement.”
“Your information is inaccurate,” Lewandowski told the Energy and Policy Institute via email when asked about the new information found in the FirstEnergy records released this year. “I never lobbied for or was paid by First Energy.”
On June 1, 2018, Paduchik emailed the breaking news that Trump had publicly ordered Perry to “prepare immediate steps” to prevent the closure of coal and nuclear plants.
“Well done, Bob and Corey. We had to respond fast and we did, thanks to you both!” Dowling emailed back.
“The WH did the right thing on this … with a little encouragement from us,” Lewandowski said.
“A little encouragement??” Jones chimed in. “This can’t be the articulate suave Corey Lewandowski I’ve been watching on TV the last year and a half. We need to find out where Fitz is working for our celebration cocktail.”
A photo of Lewandowski from a 2019 text message exchange between Lewandowski, Jones, Paduchik, and Boich Companies President Matt Evans
FirstEnergy’s indicted former CEO secretly met with Trump at Trump Tower days after Trump became the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2016
Jones met with Trump at Trump Tower on July 28, 2016, nine days after Trump officially became the Republican nominee for president at the GOP convention in Cleveland. Jones later described the meeting in communications and documents made public here for the first time. FirstEnergy had contributed $1.25 million to the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee that organized the GOP convention.
“Tony and I attended a group meeting with about 20-25 other thought leaders from a number of industries,” Jones said in the email. “Mr. Trump used the meeting to solicit advice on how to take his success from to [sic] Republican Primary Victory to actually make it to the White House.”
“When it was over, he invited me into his office for about 20 minutes of private conversation on energy issues – renewables, coal, nuclear, fuel mix, etc.,” Jones said. “Tony and I then brought Nick Nardi and and [sic] Geoffrey Hoffa, son of Teamsters International President James Hoffa into meet with Mr. Trump and then left.”
“I then attended a fundraising dinner in Canton Ohio [sic] few weeks later where we chatted again,” Jones also said. “I did explain to Mr. Trump that while I was working behind the scenes to help his campaign, because of a $400M/year rate case in Ohio I could not be out front and he completely understood that.”
At the time, FirstEnergy was seeking PUCO’s approval of a proposal to charge its Ohio customers to bail out several of the company’s coal-fired and nuclear plants. FirstEnergy estimated the plan would cost ratepayers $400 million, while consumer advocates pegged the plan’s longer-term cost at $3.9 billion.
“I’ve been on a mission from then candidate Donald J Trump that was given to me in his Trump Tower office on July 28, 2016,” an unsigned letter to Kudlow later said.
The text of the unsigned letter makes clear it was from “the CEO of FirstEnergy,” which was Jones, and was written shortly after FirstEnergy Solutions filed for bankruptcy in 2018.
“When I get elected, help me deliver on my promise to save coal jobs,” Trump told Jones during that meeting, the letter to Kudlow stated.
“Coal/Electricity Talking Points” Jones provided to Lewandowski in 2017 show FirstEnergy and its coal industry allies seized the opportunity to pursue a federal bailout:
Mr. Jones began a process of putting a team in place at his Company and hired two different Washington DC law firms to research possible solutions to the ongoing power plant closures. The research pointed to the Federal Power Act Section 202C as the only feasible solutions that could arrest the decline of coal burning power facilities and as such the decline of the coal industry. That effort was joined by Mr. Bob Murray and Mr. Joe Craft in January.
Jones and Murray met with Trump multiple times. Murray Energy contributed $1 million to the Trump Super PAC America First Action in 2018.
“We’re doing it, period,” Jones said Trump told him at the event in a series of text messages with Lewandowski, Dowling, and Rubino.
“I’m well aware of the memo, it’s coming, we’re on it,” Trump told Jones, according to the texts.
Jones claimed that he “in an indirect fashion” helped Trump win in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia in 2016, according to talking points Jones provided to Corey Lewandowski
“During the campaign both Bob Murray, CEO of Murray Energy in a direct fashion and Chuck Jones, CEO of FirstEnergy in an indirect fashion helped the President be successful in the key States of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and WV,” the talking points Jones texted to Lewandowski in 2017 said about the 2016 election.
An internal company report that detailed FirstEnergy’s outside payments for external affairs in 2016 in a spreadsheet (in the tabs “St Leg Aff” and “Data – 8+4 actuals) revealed FirstEnergy contributed money to several 501(c)(4)s that supported Republican candidates in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia that year, including:
FirstEnergy’s PAC did not directly contribute money to the campaigns of Donald Trump or his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, when the PAC spent more than $2 million. FEC data shows the utility’s PAC did target Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia with campaign cash in 2015-2016. Around 80 percent of the federal campaign contributions from the utility’s PAC went to Republicans that election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.
Jones also dined with Vice President Mike Pence and met with high-ranking members of Trump’s cabinet and White House staff
On September 18, 2018, Jones emailed a photo of himself seated at a table with hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer and Vice President Mike Pence next to several executives at FirstEnergy.
“Talked to VP today,” Jones texted to Paduchik the following day. “We’ll fill you in tomorrow.”
Singer’s hedge fund, Elliott Management, made what FirstEnergy dubbed a “transformational” investment in the utility company earlier that year.
Jones’ email to Joblow, letters to Kelly and Kudlow, and talking points provided to Lewandowski listed other key members of Trump’s administration and White House staff with whom Jones met. The list included EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, Trump’s Chief of Staff Rick Dearborn, Chief Strategist Steven Bannon, White House Counsel Don McGahn, Energy and Environmental Policy Advisor Mike Catanzaro, and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Deputy Director Jeremy Katz.
A “Rick Perry gathering” at the W Hotel Bar in Washington, D.C., was listed on a FirstEnergy travel itinerary for a two-hour window on January 18, 2017, two days before Trump’s inauguration. The travel itinerary was presented as evidence by prosecutors at Householder’s racketeering trial. Householder had flown to D.C. for the inauguration aboard FirstEnergy’s corporate jet.
During Householder’s trial, FBI agent Blane Wetzel and Longstreth, who appeared as a prosecution witness after he pleaded guilty in the case, were asked to testify about a photo of Longstreth (pictured on left), posing with Perry at an Inaugural event. Longstreth testified under cross-examination by Householder’s defense lawyer that Dowling wanted an introduction to Perry, who was expected to become Trump’s Secretary of Energy. Longstreth said he was friends with Joe Whatley (pictured on right), whom he described as Perry’s relative.
Whatley has no other known ties to FirstEnergy.
Jones met with Perry a few months later in March 2017. Perry called Jones that August and Jones met later that month with “DOE and White House representatives,” according to an email from Dowling.
Jones and Dowling also “spent many hours” with Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouilette on September 5, 2017, Dowling’s email said.
“I don’t know what Dan can do to help at this point – but I can tell you this, he’s a big fan of using 202(c) for our situation and he’s attending the meeting with [sic] have on September 27 with Secretary Perry,” the email said.
Jones met again with DOE officials in late September of 2017, according to the FirstEnergy legal document from Storsin’s deposition:
On September 28, 2017, Matt Evans (Boich Companies President) texted Jones and Dowling shortly before Jones was scheduled to meet with the DOE, “Don’t **** this up Chuck.” Per Jones, “Should be somewhere it [sic] out today. We have to evaluate it but could be as good as 202C.”
The same day, the Secretary of the DOE, Rick Perry, sent a NOPR to FERC that would have subsidized nuclear and coal plants in order to ensure grid reliability.
“I don’t think the DOE initiative has anything to do with FirstEnergy, despite what’s been reported in some of the media,” Jones said publicly in November 2017 after Perry issued the NOPR.
Perry later helped found a Trump-aligned 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank called the America First Policy Institute in 2021. Brouilette is now the President of the Edison Electric Institute, the industry association for the nation’s investor-owned utilities.
Trump campaign advisor Bob Paduchik made phone calls to state lawmakers to support Ohio’s House Bill 6 bailout of FirstEnergy, which later agreed to pay Paduchik $12,500 a month under a political consulting agreement
Paduchik was “Individual C” described in FirstEnergy’s deferred prosecution agreement, according to another FirstEnergy legal document from Storsin’s deposition that listed the identities of unnamed individuals and entities by pseudonyms used in the deferred prosecution agreement.
Another Storsin deposition document prepared by FirstEnergy’s lawyers focused on two 501(c)(4)s involved in the Householder scheme said:
On November 7, 2018, Jones and Householder texted regarding race results. They also discussed Householder’s request for a meeting with “Bob P” and to engage “in getting this Spkrs race worked out so the way we want it.” [DPA at 25]… FirstEnergy understands that “Bob P” is Bob Paduchik, who is a political consultant.
In January 2019, Jones, Dowling, Paduchik, and Lewandowski texted about Householder winning the race for Ohio House Speaker, according to the deposition document.
“2019 could be FE’s year,” Paduchik wrote.
At the time, FirstEnergy viewed getting Householder elected as Speaker as a key step toward securing a state bailout for FirstEnergy Solutions’ coal and nuclear plants in Ohio.
In May 2019, Bloomberg reported that Paduchik called state lawmakers and urged them to support HB 6. Paduchik told Bloomberg that he was acting as a private citizen when he made the calls.
Ohio State Rep. David Greenspan, who opposed HB 6, received text messages from a “Jeff” with the initials “JL” (Jeff Lonstreth’s initials):
I also know that if 4000 jobs are lost in an election year, you’ll get the blame. That’s why the Trump Campaign is putting on the full scale press to save the jobs. Everyone in office will get the blame. Call Bob Paduchik if you don’t believe me.
Paduchik and Dowling later signed a political consulting agreement, dated February 17, 2020, in which FirstEnergy agreed to pay Agincourt $12,500 a month. The agreement was set to continue through March 2021, “then month-to-month to be extended by mutual consent.”
“Bob is the man. You want help from DOE. He’s your guy,” Dowling texted to John Kiani, the Executive Chairman of Energy Harbor (previously known as FirstEnergy Solutions), in March of 2020.
Paduchik’s LinkedIn page says he was State Director for Ohio for the Trump campaign in 2016, a job he took after leaving a gig as Chief of Staff for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. Paduchik then served as:
Co-Chairman of the RNC from January 2017 to January 2019
Senior Advisor to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. from January 2019 to March 2021
Chairman of the Ohio Republican Party from March 2021 to January 2023
A December 2020 presentation to FirstEnergy’s board of directors listed Agincourt and Paduchik’s contract as “Suspended – Notified of Potential Termination” on a list of retainers for external affairs consultants whose contracts had been terminated, suspended, or put under review.
Trump’s campaign resumed payments to Agincourt in September of 2023, and made its latest reported payment to Paduchik’s firm this March.
Paduchik did not respond to a request for comment from the Energy and Policy Institute.
Jones and FirstEnergy lobbyists met at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. to discuss the “DOE initiative” and spent thousands of dollars on a room, meals, and cocktails
One of Jones’ travel expense reports from July of 2017 documents $13,800 in expenses Jones racked up while on a trip to D.C. to “attend Golf Cup Event w/ Congressman Bill Johnson and DOE Initiative Meetings.” Jones flew roundtrip from Ohio to D.C. and back aboard FirstEnergy’s private corporate jet.
The expenses included:
$1,421.70 for refreshments and $5,401.10 for dinner at the Trump International Hotel in D.C. with Dowling and Eckard, Lewandowski, financial consultant Jeff Loving, and Bill Sherman, an attorney at Latham & Watkins, where the DOE initiative was discussed.
$400 in caddy fees at the Trump National Golf Club in D.C. for the event with Johnson
$910.28 for hotel accommodations at the Trump hotel
Copies of some of the receipts from Jones’ expense report
There was also a $739.00 dinner with Dowling and Sherman at the Mastros restaurant and $3,764 for limo transportation.
The Energy and Policy Institute emailed FirstEnergy and attorneys for Jones and Dowling, but had not received any responses at the time this blog post was published.
