Jury begins deliberating on Householder and Borges case
After seven weeks of trial, a dozen jurors in a massive public corruption case began deliberating on Wednesday morning.
“Keep as long as you want,” U.S. District Court Judge Timothy S. Black told them.
More:The prosecutor says Householder ran the pay-per-play scheme; the defense calls it “nothing burger”
He said he would fire them around 4:30 pm today if they didn’t come to a verdict.
The 12-member jury consists of eight white men, two white women, one black man and one black woman.
Federal prosecutors are charging former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder of orchestrating a pay-to-play scheme in which nearly $61 million in Akron-based FirstEnergy donations were sold for legislation: $1.3 billion in aid for two nuclear power plants called House Bill 6. A chunk of that money funded efforts to defend House Bill 6 from a referendum to block it.
Former Ohio Republican Party chairman Matt Borges is accused of engaging in criminal activity and paying a bribe to obtain insider information about the referendum campaign.
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More:As a witness, Householder argues with a federal prosecutor.
This article originally appeared in The Columbus Dispatch: Jury deliberations begin in the case of Larry Householder and Matt Borges.
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