Company officials said they discovered the payment during an internal review prompted by the July 2020 announcement of a federal corruption probe into HB6′s passage. Prosecutors said FirstEnergy and its affiliates paid $61 million in bribes, funneled through a political group aligned with Householder, in exchange for Householder's help passing the bill, which was to have sent $1 billion to two Ohio nuclear plants owned by a former FirstEnergy subsidiary.