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Shellenberger Quiet On $60 Million Bribe For $1.3 Billion Nuclear Bailout In Ohio [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-12-11  

Remember back in 2019, when Ohio decided to throw tons of money at FirstEnergy to bail out its coal and nuclear power operations? And then it turned out that the $1.3 billion bailout was clinched by a $60 million bribe ?

Well, following a 20-year sentence for the former Ohio Republican House speaker, Larry Householder, former Ohio public utilities chairman Sam Randazzo has now been indicted on 11 counts for allegedly taking $4.3 million to abuse his power on behalf of FirstEnergy's scheme to keep its nuclear plants running.

But as former Obama-era Department of Energy Special Advisor Tyler Norris pointed out on Twitter/X, selling the promises of nuclear in this case extended beyond Householder and Randazzo.

"Has the nature of [Michael] Shellenberger's entanglement in all this ever become clear?" Norris asked last week about the nuclear energy advocate and climate disinformer . "He states here that he testified in Ohio four separate times." Norris linked to a 2019 Forbes post in which Shellenberger praises the passage of the Ohio pro-nuclear bill for bringing "momentum to global nuclear expansion" and brags about having "testified before the Ohio legislature four times since 2016."

A couple days later, Norris added a screenshot of a tweet from Shellenberger "celebrating the passage of Ohio's HB6 at the heart of the corruption scandal, and claiming credit for it."

Sure enough, Shellenberger tweeted in July of 2019 that Environmental Progress (the pro- nuclear organization he spun off of the Breakthrough Institute because, in the words of his old colleague , "he just wanted to be a full-throated nuclear advocate") had "actively fought to save Ohio's nuclear plants since 2016, conducting research, sending open letters & testifying four times in the legislature.” The tweet continues, “Congratulations to the people of Ohio for their victory & thanks to all who helped! https://environmentalprogress.org/ohio ."

The "Ohio" page Shellenberger linked to is no longer active, and a search for "Ohio" on the Environmental Progress website returns no results for that page. Thankfully, the relevant page and its FirstEnergy promotional graphics are available in archival form. According to past versions of the Environmental Progress site, the Ohio page seems to have been removed some time between August 2021 and November 4, 2022 , months after news of the scandal broke.

To be perfectly clear, we don't have any evidence that Shellenberger was actually involved in the corruption scandal. We are absolutely not suggesting as much. It's far more likely that he was just a useful talking head providing the veneer of public support to cover for the more sinister backroom dealings where sixty-million-dollar bribes are negotiated, almost certainly without his knowledge or involvement.

In recent years, Shellenberger has taken to calling himself " a journalist and policy expert " who "has broken major stories,'' supposedly exposing scandals and controversies. It’s a little weird that he's said and done absolutely no journalism on a billion-dollar corruption controversy that he has unique first-hand insight into, since he played a role in promoting the ill-fated bill. And given that energy industry corruption is supposedly part of his beat, at least when it comes to attacking renewables, this Ohio bribery story seems like a perfect fit.

Surely he could have called up some of his contacts that invited him so many times to testify? Perhaps shared some documents that he had sitting around from when he was "actively" working to promote the effort? You know, done some actual journalism?

But no. Shellenberger apparently passed on the opportunity to prove that he is a legitimate investigative journalist and not a nuclear power shill chasing after Substack subscribers, who completely failed to catch a whiff of the corruption going on right under his nose in Ohio. He seemingly hasn't made a single mention of FirstEnergy or HB6 or anything about the corrupt politician in Ohio who rubber-stamped the nuclear industry bailout Shellenberger was once so proud of.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/12/11/2210990/-Shellenberger-Quiet-On-60-Million-Bribe-For-1-3-Billion-Nuclear-Bailout-In-Ohio?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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