Former Ohio House speaker convicted in $60M bribery scheme

Former state House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges were convicted Thursday in a $60 million bribery scheme that federal prosecutors have called the largest corruption case in state history. A jury in Cincinnati found the two guilty of conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise involving bribery and money laundering.

Prosecutors alleged Householder orchestrated a scheme secretly funded by FirstEnergy Corp. to secure his power in the Legislature, elect his allies — and then to pass and defend a $1 billion nuclear power plant bailout benefiting the electric utility. They alleged that Borges, then a lobbyist, sought to bribe an operative for inside information on the referendum to overturn the bailout.

Former Trump lawyer censured for falsehoods about election

Jenna Ellis, a former attorney for Donald Trump ‘s reelection campaign and a prominent conservative media figure, has been censured by Colorado legal officials after admitting she made repeated false statements about the 2020 presidential election.

Ellis acknowledged making 10 “misrepresentations” on television and Twitter during Trump’s fight to stay in power after losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden, according to the censure from the office of attorney regulation counsel in Colorado, where Ellis is from. Ellis was one of several prominent conservative voices who, in the final weeks of 2020, echoed Trump’s lies that the election was stolen from him. Those falsehoods helped fuel the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Multiple dead in Jehovah’s Witness hall shooting

Shots were fired inside a building used by Jehovah’s Witnesses in the northern German city of Hamburg on Thursday evening, with several people killed and wounded, police said.

“We only know that several people died here; several people are wounded, they were taken to hospitals,” police spokesman Holger Vehren said.

— From news service reports