A year-long fight between Dennis Kucinich and his hometown media just kicked up a notch. Today's court filing by Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer asks a judge to toss the former mayor and congressman’s libel lawsuit, arguing that newly produced records show deeper consulting and financial ties between Kucinich, a local businessman, and FirstEnergy executives. The outlets say those connections sit at the heart of their reporting on Kucinich’s links to the utility’s HB 6 scandal and want the judge to treat the new documents as the case ending.
According to the court filing says ties run deep, the defendants point to invoices, emails, and meeting notes that connect Kucinich to restaurateur Tony George and to FirstEnergy officials, including former senior vice president Dennis Chack. They argue those records undercut key parts of Kucinich’s libel claim and urge the judge to dismiss the suit on the ground that Kucinich has not shown the “actual malice” required to win a defamation case as a public figure.
Documents and invoices at the center
Documents hosted on DocumentCloud and related reporting show invoices submitted to FirstEnergy in 2018 from a company called Jobob, Inc. The filing says those invoices were tied to consulting work for Kucinich. It also claims Kucinich pitched a multimillion-dollar SkyMining carbon capture and cryptocurrency proposal to FirstEnergy and advised company officials on traffic safety devices, citing emails and internal messages among executives as support.
Kucinich first sued The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com in 2022, accusing the outlets of falsely tying him to the HB 6 scandal and seeking damages. His original complaint and exhibits, posted online by his attorneys, lay out the core dispute over whether local coverage wrongly suggested he took money connected to FirstEnergy interests while he was weighing political campaigns.
Legal stakes and the actual malice standard
Because Kucinich is a public figure, the case is governed by the New York Times "actual malice" standard, which requires a plaintiff to show with convincing evidence that a publisher knew a statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. The Legal Information Institute notes that this burden is high, and the news outlets argue in their filing that Kucinich has offered no evidence that clears that bar. The filing also says Kucinich admitted he suffered no damages from the articles at issue, a point the defendants say further weakens what is left of the lawsuit.
Where this fits in the HB 6 fallout
The new motion lands as the broader HB 6 investigations and regulatory hearings continue to unfold and as former FirstEnergy officials tied to the scandal are pressed for testimony. State reporting has noted that Dennis Chack was fired by FirstEnergy during the company’s internal probe and later granted immunity so he could testify in related proceedings. The Ohio Capital Journal and other outlets have tracked how emails, texts, and payout records have emerged as evidence in multiple civil and regulatory matters tied to HB 6.
The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com are asking the court to shut the case down at this stage. Kucinich’s lawyers are expected to respond with their own filings that challenge the new factual assertions and defend their client’s claims about the coverage. It will be up to the judge to decide whether these latest materials justify ending the lawsuit now or whether the fight moves on to deeper fact-finding.
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