Householder ruling echoes beyond the courtroom
The average court document can be an impenetrable thing in even the most compelling or cut-and-dried of criminal proceedings.
In a vast and complicated case like USA vs. Larry Householder, et al., the legal musings of defense, prosecution and judge can be just what the doctor ordered to cure your chronic insomnia.
But every so often, under a mountain of references to obscure case law and convoluted arguments about jury nullification or co-conspirator hearsay, someone hides a gem that sparkles with unadulterated truth.
U.S. District Judge Timothy S. Black did that in an order filed Tuesday.
Ex-ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges face trial next month in what federal investigators have called Ohio’s largest public corruption case. Prosecutors say it was a deliberate and organized criminal effort to push a $1 billion nuclear plant bailout through the legislature in exchange for bribes.
Both men have pleaded not guilty. Lobbyist Juan Cespedes and political strategist Jeff Longstreth have pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme, as has the dark-money group Generation Now. A second lobbyist, Neil Clark, was charged in the case but died by suicide before he could be brought to trial.
As the trial date for Borges and Householder draws near, lawyers on both sides have been filing all manner of arguments and counterarguments.
They have fought, for instance, over the fairness of prosecutors referring during trial to the alleged criminal racket as “Householder’s Enterprise.”
“During opening or closing statements, the Government should not use ‘Householder’s Enterprise’ as a proper noun,” the judge wrote in his recent order.
Some of those documents carry such engaging titles as “Defendant Borges’ Corrected Response in Opposition to Goverment’s Motion in limine to Preclude Argument and Evidence Supporting Jury Nullification.”
It is in that document that Borges’ attorney resurrected an argument that Borges has made publicly: that his opposition to former President Donald
Trump may have contributed to his arrest.
“It is not conjecture that the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, was politicized under President Donald Trump — it is an extraordinary fact that has been publicly confirmed by two former United States Attorneys General, a former top Trump administration official, the former President himself, as well as many others,” wrote Borges’ lawyer, Karl H. Schneider.
Trump helped to boot out Borges as chairman of the Ohio Republican Party in 2017. Two years later, Borges encouraged Republicans to support thendemocratic candidate Joe Biden over Trump in the 2020 election.
“Whether any of those issues influenced or motivated the FBI agents in their investigation of this case is relevant to their credibility,” Schneider wrote.
In the order issued Tuesday, Black swiftly and deftly shot the core of that argument down.
While the defense, of course, would be granted the usual leeway to challenge evidence and impeach witness testimony, Black wrote, “None of this permits the defense to cause confusion or to throw out irrelevant or baseless accusations.”
Just like that, a U.S. District Court judge addressing a particular set of facts in one Ohio case begins to speak directly to a divided nation where so many, and quite often those in places of great power, revel in causing confusion by throwing out irrelevant and baseless accusations.
“For instance,” the judge continues, “differing political party affiliations alone do not evidence bias nor motivation. And the court will not permit either side to suggest that party affiliation is an inherent sign of dishonesty, nor to stoke political divisions as a method of persuasion.”
If only Ohio had mountaintops from which to shout this. If only American society as a whole had to abide the rulings of one U.S. District Judge Timothy S. Black.
The judge could probably print these quotes on coffee mugs and T-shirts and make a killing on Etsy. He could donate all proceeds to Ohio public school civics programs or set some aside to further the investigation of any and all public corruption in the state.
That is a Householder Enterprise I can get behind.
Theodore Decker is the Dispatch metro columnist. tdecker@dispatch.com @Theodore_decker