COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The Republican speaker of the Ohio House and four other people were arrested Tuesday in a $60 million federal bribery investigation, a person briefed on the matter said, as the FBI raided the legislative leader’s rural farm.

Watch Live: U.S. Attorney David DeVillers' press conference on the arrests

Speaker Larry Householder was one of the driving forces behind a roughly $1 billion financial rescue for Ohio’s two nuclear power plants, which appeared to be tied to several targets of the investigation. The legislation added a new fee to every electricity bill in the state and directed over $150 million a year through 2026 to the plants near Cleveland and Toledo.

Prosecutors would not discuss details of the case. U.S. Attorney David DeVillers’ office planned to hold a news conference later in the day.

Also arrested were Householder adviser Jeffrey Longstreth, longtime Statehouse lobbyist Neil Clark, former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matthew Borges and Juan Cespedes, co-founder of The Oxley Group, a Columbus-based consulting firm.

Authorities were also seeking a sixth suspect, the person said.

Previous attempts to bail out the nuclear plants had stalled in the Legislature before Householder became speaker. Months after taking over, he rolled out a new plan to subsidize the plants and eliminate renewable energy incentives. The proposal was approved a year ago despite opposition from many business leaders and the manufacturing industry.

FirstEnergy Corp., whose former subsidiaries owned the plants, donated heavily to Householder’s campaigns and his backers in the Ohio House. The utility’s political action committee contributed $25,000 to Householder’s campaign in 2018, according to an analysis by Common Cause Ohio, a government watchdog.

Hours ahead of the news conference, FBI agents were at Householder’s farm in Glenford in rural Perry County. FBI spokesman Todd Lindgren said only that they were carrying out “law enforcement activity.” The Perry County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that it was assisting.

Borges has increasingly been on the outs with the Ohio Republican Party establishment since it was taken over by devotees of President Donald Trump. He was recently censured by the party’s central committee, including for helping launch a PAC in June to turn out GOP voters for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The PAC is backed by a group of prominent Republican operatives that include a former White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci.

Clark is one of Ohio’s best connected lobbyists, representing a high-powered stable of clients from the pharmaceutical, gambling and alcoholic beverage industries, among others.

Cespedes is a former investment officer with the Ohio Treasurer’s Office who was appointed by then-Gov. John Kasich as commissioner for the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, where he oversees a team effort to stop discrimination in the state. His term ends on July 29.

Attempts to reach Householder, Borges and Clark were unsuccessful. A message seeking comment was also left with the House communications office.

Householder is a veteran state lawmaker who’s in his second stint as speaker. He held the same position from 2001 to 2004. He left state politics more than a decade ago because of term limits and returned in 2016 and took up a contentious fight to win back the chamber’s top job.

At the time he left office, he and several top advisers were under federal investigation for alleged money laundering and irregular campaign practices. The government closed the case without filing charges.

Householder is the second Ohio House speaker to come under investigation in just over two years.

Former Republican Speaker Cliff Rosenberger was investigated in 2018 amid an FBI inquiry into his travel, lavish lifestyle and a condo he rented from a wealthy GOP donor. Rosenberger, who has maintained he broke no laws, has not been charged, but the investigation remains open.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A federal judge has scheduled the guilty plea hearing for a nonprofit that authorities say was used as part of a $60 million bribery scheme.

Federal investigators say former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and others used the nonprofit Generation Now Inc. as a conduit for $60 million secretly provided by Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp. The money was allegedly used to gain legislative approval for a $1 billion bailout of two nuclear power plants operated by a FirstEnergy subsidiary.

Federal Judge Timothy Black set the hearing for Feb. 19. An agreement filed last week calls for Generation Now Inc. to plead guilty to one count of racketeering, the seizure of nearly $1.5 million from two bank accounts and a sentence of five years’ probation.

Generation Now, Householder and four of his associates were indicted in July of last year on racketeering charges. Two men have pleaded guilty. Householder, who was stripped of his leadership post but remains a state representative, has pleaded not guilty and awaits trial.

Generation Now attorney Robert Krapenc has declined to comment ahead of the hearing.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — An energy company that gave the money in an alleged $60 million bribery scheme in Ohio and a man accused of spending a large chunk of it are now arguing in separate proceedings that their actions were legal.

Neither asserts the money didn’t flow.

Akron-based FirstEnergyCorp. argues that political donations are protected by the First Amendment and a federal criminal complaint failed to provide evidence that money was exchanged for official favors, according to a motion filed by company attorneys seeking dismissal of shareholder lawsuits.

Matt Borges, a former state Republican Party chair and lobbyist, called violations of campaign finance law leveled against him by the state elections chief, based off the federal complaint, “absurd and without merit,” according to a recent affidavit submitted to the Ohio Elections Commission. He doesn’t deny he paid $15,000 in dark money funneled through a private bank account to another person, only the details of their arrangement.

As FirstEnergy and Borges lay out their defenses, campaign finance experts say their tacit acknowledgement is notable.

“We’ve been in a place with money in politics for awhile where the scandal isn’t a paper bag of money in a dark alleyway, but the scandal is what’s legal,” said Ian Vandewalker, senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program.

Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, said her organization is watching the sweeping federal racketeering case in Ohio to see if it clarifies the law around dark money organizations: “It may be legal. We shall see.”

The latest FirstEnergy and Borges filings appear against the backdrop of what federal prosecutors described in July as, not everyday political giving, but an elaborate secret scheme orchestrated by then-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder to gain the speaker’s chair, elect political allies, pass a $1 billion nuclear bailout law and crush a ballot effort aimed at repealing it.

Householder, who fellow Republicans have demoted but not unseated from the House, also maintains that he is innocent and expects to be vindicated. Federal prosecutors charge that FirstEnergy funneled millions through a network of private businesses, bank accounts and dark money groups controlled by Householder, who, along with four associates including Borges, spent it on candidates, campaigns, influence peddling and personal expenses.

Both Householder and Borges have pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges. Two others charged in the probe have pleaded guilty and a third died by suicide in March.

In his affidavit, Borges said recordings of conversations between him and Tyler Fehrman, who wore a wire for the FBI while working for the repeal effort, were “selectively edited to make those discussions appear as bad as possible.” Fehrman declined comment, referring a reporter to details in the criminal complaint. A preliminary review of Borges’ elections case is scheduled for June 24.

FirstEnergy’s filing said there was no explicit agreement between the company and Householder and his associates “to commit an unlawful act.”

Its attorneys referred to FirstEnergy spending on the effort to pass the nuclear bailout bill, House Bill 6, as not bribes but contributions and to nonprofits implicated in the alleged scheme as not dark money groups but as “social welfare organizations.”

Krumholz said social welfare is often far from these groups’ main mission.

“These are not your average Girls and Boys Clubs,” she said.

She said if the scheme fails to produce convictions, Ohioans will be worse off — but they will have learned something about politics as usual.

“The bottom line is this leaves Ohioans in the dark about how money is used to influence the laws that their representatives pass and that will govern their lives,” she said. “And that’s why it’s called dark money. It leaves us in the dark.”

Vandewalker said, “Of course, the people who are receiving the money know exactly where it’s coming from and what those people want.”

Generation Now, the dark money group also indicted in July alongside Householder and the others, pleaded guilty in February.

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Gillispie reported from Cleveland. AP reporter Andrew Welsh-Huggins contributed to this report.