Tennessee state senator charged with stealing federal funds

GOP Ohio House speaker arrested in connection to $60 million bribery scheme

Months after he was elected as speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives last year, Larry Householder began an aggressive campaign to bail out two of the state’s nuclear power plants.

The $1.3 billion initiative was controversial and jammed through at the last minute, but Householder amassed just enough support among a bipartisan group of colleagues to save the facilities. When a referendum effort threatened to overturn the law, the 61-year-old GOP legislator allegedly organized a massive effort to quash the petition.

Prosecutors now say his push for the bailout — as well as his rise to one of the state’s most powerful political offices — was the result of a sprawling, $60 million bribery scheme that prompted many of Ohio’s top Republicans to call for Householder’s resignation into Wednesday morning.