The ideas expressed in City club forums are those of the speakers and not of the City Club of Cleveland Ideastream Public Media or their sponsors.

Production and distribution of City Club forums and ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fond of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, June 20th.

And I'm Lee Friedman, a proud member of the City Club Board of directors.

It is my privilege today to introduce this forum, the annual Richard and Sally Hollington Endowed Forum, and welcome our speaker, Ohio Attorney General David Yost.

Now, in full transparency, our invitation to Mr. Yost was originally intended for him to join as a candidate for Ohio governor.

It was part of our programing leading up to the 2026 gubernatorial election.

And as you may know, he has suspended his campaign just last month.

And while Dave will no longer be speaking as a candidate, we welcome the opportunity for civic civil dialog with those who serve our state.

We are pleased that Dave remained committed to speaking with all of you here as Ohio's 51st Attorney General, and we are grateful for your service during the start of his term back in January 2019.

Mr. Yost join the City Club to discuss his goals and priorities.

He spoke extensively about how Ohio's efforts to tackle the opioid epidemic, which included a comprehensive approach of prevention, education, scientific and legal actions.

He has also answered questions from the audience and the state's protections of the LGBTQ plus community and public school funding since then and now into his second term.

Our Attorney General has remained committed to conservative principles on abortion, economic development and federal overreach.

His work has also seen bipartisan support on human trafficking and continued efforts to curb Ohio's opioid crisis.

Last month, Mr. Year also released a memoir called Stand An Ohio Life, which chronicles his personal journey to Ohio's attorney general.

It provides insight into his perspective on public policy, the future of our state, and what it means to lead in public service today.

A quick heads up.

Mr. Yost will first offer introductory remarks before moving into a conversational format led by Ideastream Public Media as Mike McIntyre.

If you have questions during the Q&A portion of the forum, you can text them to 33054179579 for I apologize.

I must say that again 3305415794 And the City Club staff will try to work it into the program now.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland please join me in welcoming our Attorney General Dave Yost.

Well, good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you so much for having me here again.

And I want to announce that I've decided to get back in the governor's office.

But it's an honor to be here again at the historic City club.

I know your history and this is an organization to be preserved and protected.

I want to extend a special thanks to Lee and the rest of the board of directors of volunteer to keep this special institution alive and thriving.

I did offer to withdraw today after as speaker, but I guess it was too late to find someone more interesting.

But that left me with a dilemma about the topic because there's few things that are less interesting than the platform of a former candidate.

I started my career as a journalist and practiced law in the private sector before entering public service, and the common thread through it all has been the observation and often proximity to power.

Its abuse, its use, its waste.

And so today, with this group of leading citizens from a great American city, I'd like to talk to you about power.

Lord Acton Dahlberg said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Why do you all know that?

Because it's so obviously true in history and in our own experience.

Lord Acton was writing to Bishop Creighton at the time about the Divine right of Kings.

He went on to add this Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence rather than authority.

Still more when you super add the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority, there is no worse heresy than the office justifies the holder of it.

That's true for public power and private power from whatever source power tends toward corruption, whether it's the power of money, the power of government, the power of fame, or controlling the flow of information, power corrupts the power of violence, the power of the mob.

All of it works the same way.

Now, power itself is morally neutral, capable of good or evil, like electricity.

It can save your life or kill you.

The wind can drive a windmill or blow a town off the map.

Americans distrust power for good reason.

It's dangerous and so frequently used for evil.

If you must use a dangerous thing, whether it's a chainsaw or a government, it's wise to take the first step of understanding why it is dangerous.

Only then are you able to design safeguards to use that dangerous thing safely.

We've seen it right here in Ohio.

Former City Councilman Ken Johnson here in Cleveland billed for services that he didn't do over $100,000, cheated on his taxes, steered contracts for the benefit of his kids.

We've seen council members convicted in Cincinnati and Toledo and plenty of others.

And, of course, there's the biggest abuse of power, the biggest corruption in Ohio's record.

The House Bill six scandal that sent House Speaker Larry Householder to prison for his scheme to get billions of dollars out of firstenergy's ratepayers to pay for campaign money.

My office has indicted the private funders of that corruption before state court, too, because money is the oxygen that feeds the rust.

Want to tell you a story about.

Early in my career, a county auditor runs something called the County Automated Data Center.

It's really kind of out of kind of archaic.

But this group that the county auditor runs controls in 86 of Ohio's counties.

The information technology purchase of software and computers.

And when I became county auditor in 1999, Delaware County was mostly on a microsoft platform.

The exception was this judge who had his own very expensive, custom made proprietary software that was always breaking down.

Nobody knew how to work on it except this one company.

And on top of that, he loved Apple Computers.

And I was very bothered by this.

It was inefficient.

And so he wanted to buy some more Apple computers and to do some upgrades to his archaic software.

And I said, no, you get with the program or you use what you got, but we're not putting any more money into that.

Well, a few months later I saw him at the Bar Association and we had a it was the summer picnic, and we had both had a couple of beers at that point.

Candid, he looked at me with great disgust on his face and he said, It's sickening what happens when somebody gets a little power.

And I looked at him and still being a member of the bar and recognizing that he was a judge.

I said, I'm sorry you feel that way, Your Honor.

He said, No, I don't think you are.

And, you know, and he was right on both counts.

I he wasn't playing well in the sandbox, but I was exercising power because I could and I wanted to.

And that moment wasn't very sorry about it.

It's not about how good you are.

I don't know if anybody is good enough to come and stay pure on their own.

Even Tolkien's good hearted Frodo Baggins finally succumbed to the lure of the one ring of power at the end of his journey and was only saved by his faithful.

Sam Samwise, his friend.

Plato's philosopher king is at best an exception, certainly not the rule.

And remember his work?

The Republic is a work of fiction.

Let me turn to a related work of fiction, Ulysses and The Odyssey.

Ulysses.

Great general hero, coming back successfully from war.

And he's warned.

Don't go by the island of the of the sirens on the way home, because everybody that goes by there is so entranced by the song that they sing that they crash and they die.

Everybody don't go that way.

Well, it was the quickest way home.

And after all, he's Ulysses.

So he decided to go ahead.

Here's a key point.

He didn't think that he was better than everybody else, that everybody else would fail, but he would succeed.

So he put wax in the ears of all of the crew members that were rowing his boat and whatnot, but not in his own.

But he told his crew to tie him up to the mast of the ship so he couldn't move.

And he said, no matter what happens, we could buy this island.

Don't move.

Don't go off course.

Don't take any orders from me.

And so by that, that action he sailed on became the first mortal to hear the sound of the song of the Sirens and not shipwreck and die.

So how does one use possess power and not become corrupted?

Is it even possible the corrosive nature of power is minimized by restraint?

Ulysses voluntarily accepted restraints on his exercise of power by being tied to the mast, having complete freedom and authority.

He agreed to be bound.

There are important lessons here for how an individual leader thinks and acts, and I've spoken about them in other venues in the past and don't have the time to go into them detail here.

But in summary, surround yourself with those who can speak candidly.

Know what belongs in your heart, and keep out the things that don't like a love of applause and have an objective external standard for your behavior, including absolute no go zones.

These things are hard.

I have stories illustrate each of these lessons and I'll deal with them in greater detail in my next book.

But let me share one personal story to illustrate what I'm talking about.

On a personal level, because I want to be very clear.

I am not holding myself out as some paragon of virtue.

I've merely thought about this problem and watched this problem unfold.

I was a prosecuting attorney in Delaware County, and one of the things that the prosecuting attorney can do is a confidential investigation using a grand jury.

A story, my friend Force Thompson is here, a Medina County prosecutor.

It's very important that this be kept confidential.

And by law it's supposed to be kept confidential, although there's ways that hints and innuendo get out.

If one is so inclined, it's important because if you're being investigated and it turns out there's nothing to it, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

You can't unring the bell.

If it's publicly known you were investigated.

Nobody will believe that you were innocent, even if the investigation turned up nothing.

Well, I was undertaking public corruption investigation in my home county, and it was going very slowly because we were doing it by the book, keeping it quiet.

And the targets of the investigation were aware that I was conducting the investigation, that they were doing lots of little political things to try to make my life difficult and were succeeding.

And one day I'd had enough.

I was tired.

I had been working too much and I was just tired.

And now I'm playing fair and they're not and they're going after me personally.

So I walked into my first assistance office and I said, Put a witness list together, put the subpoenas out, were lining them all up next Tuesday in the hall on the second floor of the courtroom outside the grand jury room.

And we're going to run them through and we're just going to do this.

Let the grand jury vote.

I'm done.

Of course, everybody sitting in the second floor of a public courtroom outside the grand jury, they go, oh, wonderful.

He is here for which would even though that would be perfectly legal, would be unethical, because I'm violating the principle that we keep these things confidential.

My first assistant looked at me, Bill, and he said, Dave, I'll do that if you want.

You're the prosecutor.

Your name is on the door.

But it's not why I came to work for you.

That's not what we've worked so hard to build here.

It is that moment I realized, in spite of my commitment to justice, to acting ethically, that in a moment of provocation, of personal risk and fatigue, I had allowed the lure of easy power to cause me to do something retributive.

It was wrong.

It was evil.

It was corrupt.

Now, thanks to Bill, we didn't do that thing.

We didn't go there.

And I was pleased that I was surrounded by people who knew my heart and who would speak candidly to me.

And that's what I mean when I say it's important to be able to have an individual leader who knows about the corrosive nature of power, but because power not only corrupts individuals, but corrupts society.

I'd like to think about other external restraints for a moment on power.

And of course, there's important structures in American law that represent some of these restraints, the separation of powers at the federal level and at the state level, the vertical separation of power between the federal government and the state criminal laws and regulatory laws with their attendant enforcement mechanisms are all necessary External restraints.

But there's another one that I would like to talk about, and that's our institutions.

It's become kind of cliche to bemoan the deterioration in trust in our institutions, but like most cliches, there's a lot of truth in it.

The American government that defeated both fascism and communism now competes for the bottom of the credibility pile with a church that once led the fight to abolish human slavery and to establish civil rights.

They they compete in turn for a last place, place of trust with the news media.

It was once the authoritative voice on what was true around the world.

Institutions once created important restraints on the exercise of power as a trivial example.

A CEO of a hospital might love cigars, but would never be seen smoking a cigar because it misaligned with the mission of the institution that he leads.

And it would undermine the credibility of that institution.

It creates a restraint on him from its leaders.

A church would demand moral virtue.

The military would demand courage.

A bank would demand financial probity.

The institution and its mission would restrain the freedom of its leadership.

A news editor or a publisher or a producer would simply not utter certain opinions because the credibility of the institution was more important than even a correct opinion.

Yet today, powerful news figures host no holds barred podcasts in which the people they cover are routinely mocked in terms that would make a gangster blush.

It's hard to imagine Firstenergy's CEO Chuck Jones gloating.

Screw anyone who aid us.

If he were actually thinking about his company and his customers and shareholders, can you imagine putting your own face on Mt.

Rushmore?

He was drunk on power.

Look forward.

As an aside to seeing his face on the Ohio Department of Corrections website, Yuval Levin argues convincingly that the deterioration of our institutions is directly tied to this idea that leadership of an institution is simply platforming.

The institution amplifies the individual leader, not the mission of the institution.

From promotion to institutional power no longer imposes restraints.

It removes them.

This phenomenon is partly due to the changes ignited by social media and substantially by the age old cult of personality.

But I think maybe we also the baby boomer vibe the 1970s were named nicknamed the Meme Decade because of the self-centeredness of the boomers as they came of age.

Their slogan was, If it feels good, do it.

The common question was, What's in it for me?

Restraint was something to be thrown away.

There is no system, of course, of external restraints that will prevent corruption of an unrestrained heart, nor will any internal strength be always effective in the absence of external restraints.

Both are necessary, but insufficient conditions.

The problem is ancient.

It's not going to be resolved.

It will simply ebb and flow.

Unfortunately, we are in a time where it is flowing and not having it.

But we ought to choose public and private leaders who have considered and recognize the lure of the siren song and accept that they themselves are at risk.

Leaders who have at least thought about how to protect their hearts, to find a place of restraint, and to try to handle power safely for themselves, for the rest of us.

Thank you for letting me share these thoughts with you.

Thanks for the job.

Lower body.

Those in the audience can say hello back.

Hello, everybody.

Okay at home?

If you said hello back then people are looking at you funny.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

I'm the executive editor of Ideastream Public Media, and I'm here to talk with Attorney General Yost a little bit about his career and actually a little bit about his book as well.

Appreciate that speech.

We are going to have a Q&A.

This is an unusual format, about 20 minutes of his speech, about 20 minutes of this conversation.

And then all of you here in the audience and those at home via text can feel free to ask your questions as well.

Is this the time where I can routinely mock you?

Yes.

Okay.

That's what I thought, because you mentioned I signed up for it.

Okay.

I, I do want to begin by asking about your your opposition to abortion, which is well known.

And your conviction about that is obviously well known in 2023, 57% of Ohio voters elected to enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution.

And before that vote, you warned that it would invalidate the six week abortion ban that you asked a judge to reinstate after the fall of Roe v Wade.

You said it would invalidate the 24 hour waiting period as well.

But you and your team are now arguing in court that those things should stand.

And there are critics, including the judge who struck down the six week ban who say that you're just not listening to the Ohio voters, that your actions run counter to what the voters had to say.

And I wanted to get your thoughts about that.

Well, thank you.

The fact of the matter is the voters did create that organic law in our Constitution.

It is binding.

Your short summary is incomplete and incorrect.

I'm sorry.

That's all right.

I think you were quoting the judge who was also incomplete and incorrect, that the the fairly lengthy analysis that we published prior to the election pointed out that there were some things that were certainly be for example, the ban on abortion after six weeks would be invalidated.

We are not arguing for a reinstatement of that.

We recognize that that's the operation of the Constitution about constitutional amendment.

We also said in that analysis that there were multiple other things that were perhaps implicated and then other things that were very unclear and probably were not implicated.

We're in court arguing about those other things, and people of good faith can disagree with how directly they're implicated.

And we will eventually end up with a Supreme Court decision.

I did read that analysis.

And you were specific about the six week ban being invalidated.

Your opinion was that this would invalidate a six week man that is still is that it would invalidate the 24 hour waiting period.

Even mentioned, though, that it might invalidate or call into question the viability ban that exists now the 20 weeks so there were there was a lot of analysis that you provided on that.

My question is in court, there's a number of different avenues that you have taken.

Is the goal on those things.

You said it's not to reinstate the ban, but is it to limit abortion?

It is to preserve those matters that are adjacent to abortion that were passed by our duly elected General Assembly, whether they fall within the rubric of the amendment of being directly or indirectly impacting or limiting the right to abortion is a matter that is current controversy.

I have my pleadings speak for themselves, but they're not quite as nuanced as you or that judge might have suggested.

I wonder what your thoughts are on the Ohio prenatal Equal Protection Act.

This is something that a couple of lawmakers have proposed that would overturn the constitutional amendment we talked about by claiming that the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause claiming personhood for unborn fetuses would override the Ohio Constitution.

I wanted to get your have you done any analysis of that?

Any thoughts about that?

Well, I've certainly done quite a bit of thinking and reading on this.

So the slight isn't personhood movement.

I have not reached a hard conclusion about that with regards to this particular statute that you're referencing.

If it were to pass, it would be my statutory duty under the law to defend it, regardless of whether I agreed with it or not, as I recently did.

And I defended my client agency's position in the Ames case before the Supreme Court, even though I didn't agree with their position.

So I will decline to, as I usually do, take a public opinion on matters in front of the legislature because I have neither a vote nor a veto.

Well, the guy has got to try, right?

No, there's no bad questions or only bad answers.

I really enjoyed your speech.

It was certainly unusual, as you mentioned, for a politician.

Usually you're going to get up and give what you think is good and bad in the state and those types of things.

But as you mentioned, it's not a platform speech anymore.

When you talked about the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely and you talk about a leader who doesn't seem to listen to those who disagree, one who has attacked the news media, etc..

I think people in the audience might wonder name names.

Who are you talking about?

Well, I'm not interested in naming names either with hours or days after their name.

Look, I'm going to stand accountable before the Almighty.

And so in my view, everyone else.

But even though I look for it on a regular basis, I have not yet found the invitation where the Almighty is seeking my assistance.

And those determinations actually, a chapter in your memoir, which we've heard about today, stand in Ohio story on sale here at the City Club.

A chapter in that memoir is They Make a Great Christmas Gift.

It's titled Suing Biden Back to the Constitution.

PAGE You joined many lawsuits regarding President Biden's principles.

Is there any plan to challenge the the policies of the current administration?

Is this really simply you didn't agree with Biden's rulings but you agree with ones currently, or could that be in play?

Well, certainly it could be in play.

The question is, when do I have a duty to speak that is separate.

And my Democratic colleagues did not join me, not surprisingly, in my challenges, which were frequently successful to the overreach of their party's president, what we used to call the loyal opposition takes that that role on.

Theoretically, if there were a matter that I felt offended the Constitution taken by the administration of my own party, that I would that my colleagues were not ably making the argument for, then a separate duty would rise for me to speak.

But I we have an old, old saying out in the country, don't dig your well, next the outhouse.

You've been a loyal Republican your whole life.

You've set up, it seems, run for governor your entire career and in stand the very first line is I hope to be the next governor of Ohio.

Your party, though, early on, usually endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy, who you had said quit on Ohio by moving his company to Texas and who you contrasted yourself with by saying that you have a proven track record.

He has a couple of books and some speeches.

He's a Donald Trump guy, and that appears to be what carried the day.

It's a Trump state.

I've heard people say this and I want to know your reaction to it.

Did the Republican Party do you wrong?

Wow, that's a good question.

The Republican Party made a bad decision, in my judgment, but thank you for that.

But they the party exists to win elections and it's not a pretty game.

As somebody once said, it ain't beanbag.

So, you know, I'm used to getting bruised by the political process.

This was just a little bit bigger peruse that I'm accustomed to.

And so what does this mean for you politically here?

You're giving a speech where it's power you want.

It didn't want to get into the specifics of policy because you're not running, but your term will end as attorney general.

What's next?

Good question.

And I don't know, considering those things over the summer and will eventually make a decision, what I can tell you is I'm not prepared to go quietly down into that good night and hope to remain active and fighting for Ohio and America's future.

I'm I'm not reporting that.

I'm not reporting this fact.

I'm literally passing along perhaps rumor something I heard.

But is it true that you were offered the ambassadorship to Cyprus to drop out of this race and said no, I think it would be inappropriate to publicly discuss private conversations.

Okay, fair enough.

Last year, you charged seven people who were not citizens but were here illegally with illegally voting because they were not citizens at the time they voted.

It was many years after their alleged crimes.

One had been dead for two years here in Cuyahoga County.

Others told stories of confusion with the registration process at BMV.

And again, this is another another judge that said that you were using these folks as pawns at a particular time when nationally there was discussion about voter fraud, vast, widespread voter fraud, which you and the secretary of state have said doesn't exist in Ohio.

Were these good cases?

Yes.

Other than the dead fellow who there's not a prosecutor in this country who goes through death certificates when they indict somebody.

So it it's happened more than once.

It doesn't happen very often.

But here's why.

It was a good case, not because these people should be in prison.

In fact, I gave my staff instructions.

I don't want to see these people go to prison.

It's not a good use of an expensive prison bed, but it is important to enforce our law.

The legislature has made this what we call a strict liability offense, meaning you don't have to have any intent at all to have committed it.

All you have to do is committed and you're liable.

The legislature did that because it's judgment and because of our constitutional requirements that only citizens vote.

And so they have created this law.

A failure to enforce that law creates a prosecutor's veto over democracy.

Those of you who are I see several friends here that I know of have been concerned about what you view as threats to democracy over the last few years.

And I would suggest to you that there are few more real and present threats that a prosecutor who decides that they don't have to listen to what the legislature, your elected representatives decided was the law because.

He or she disagrees with it.

So I do think that they were legitimate.

The timing was unfortunate because Frank, frankly, sent them to me in 2024 when they were already four or five years old.

I didn't especially appreciate that.

And we had a frank conversation.

See, I did that for Frank LaRosa, so we all saw that.

So let's answer the question.

Not the most important cases in the world, but important enough to be made.

You mentioned at the very beginning here that you started your career as a journalist.

You went.

And that's something I talk about.

Well, actually, I have a Republican, lots of lots of black coffee, maybe cigarets back in the day.

I don't know.

No Cigarets okay.

Back when I started, that's what everybody was doing.

They could still smoke inside.

Back then.

You started as a journalist.

You moved on from journalism to being a lawyer and prosecutor and then into the political realm.

Which one of those aspects of your career was the most rewarding or the funnest?

I mean, which one would you would you wish you always were?

I am the most blessed, lucky man on the face of the planet because I have loved everything I've done when I've done it.

And the timing has always been right.

If you ever hear me complaining, I'm.

I am consenting to violence here.

Slap me upside the head because I have I don't even have first world problems.

Let me ask you just real quickly, for the local audience in Akron, you gave approval, your blessing to the takeover by a venture capital firm of Summa health, a purchase of that not just a takeover, but a proposal.

It's a horrible way to write a purchase and they will take over the business.

So I think that's barbarians at the gate.

Yes, that too.

What what are your thoughts on that and the concerns that people have and they see this in Warren about the idea of venture capital being in to the medical game and that not necessarily being good.

You made the argument that you thought this deal was good not only for the patients of Soma health, but also for the citizens of Akron.

Yeah.

So first of all, if you're not lucky enough to have the scale of a Cleveland Clinic, health care is a tough place to be right now.

We're seeing consolidation of the marketplace because if you don't have scale, the margins get so thin that you're not economically viable.

There's nothing is bad for as a hospital that goes out of business, as we've seen in Warren Steward Health.

If I okay, I'm going to be very careful about here.

But what they did across the country as well as here in Trump County was unconscionable.

And I'm angry about it.

That being said, the summit deal is actually going to be pretty good.

They've actually got a they're not just taking it over.

They've got a plan that I'm convinced is actually going to.

And so more importantly, as Suma, it is going to bring some additional scale and an ability to make that economically viable.

More importantly, because of the year and a half, my great staff did over over the last year and a half, we brought additional money into the private foundation and that is being created out of the proceeds of this $30 million.

That is enough that if this were a stent, that additional $30 million was a standalone function.

It would be in the top quintile of all Ohio charities.

This is a this is a good deal in a tough environment.

Thank you for that.

But we're about to begin our audience Q&A.

For those just joining us via our live stream and radio audience, I'm Mike McIntyre, the executive editor of Ideastream Public Media, moderator For today's conversation, I'm speaking with Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost on the work ahead for the state.

He also recently released a new memoir called Stand An Ohio Life.

We welcome questions from everyone city club members, guests and those joining via our live stream at City Club dot org or our live radio broadcast on 89 seven WKSU Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question to the Attorney general, please text to 3305415794.

That's 3305415794.

And City Club staff will try to work your text into the program.

A reminder to keep your questions short, everyone and to the point and actually a question so that we may get as many questions as possible.

Okay, let's have the first question, please.

Attorney General Yost, my question for you is you mentioned about the corruption by the Speaker of the House of the and the indictments and all that.

Why have you not worked so hard to try to change the law back so that the citizens of this state are not paying the rate increases that we are paying because of that law?

That was change but corruption.

Thank you.

And I will let you reiterate that I'm not a legislator.

What I did do was I went to court.

I challenged that what they call the decoupling provision, which added about $1,000,000,000 to ratepayers bills over the course of of the life of this thing.

We won in court and got that off the bill.

We also looked we also challenged the nuclear power plant subsidy about another billion dollars over there, and we won that too.

So the majority of House Bill six has been taken off the books because I went to court and won.

The remaining pieces of House Bill six are up to the Ohio legislature because I don't have a basis to challenge them in court.

I'd like to follow up on that.

I saw the documentary about dark money, and we've done a lot of reporting on this.

What are your thoughts about the environment that allowed this kind of corruption to happen?

The idea of these unregistered, dark money groups, you don't know where the money comes from.

Obviously, this is something that the that the former House speaker was was convicted of using.

Do you think there needs to be reform in campaign finance?

Yes.

And Mike, I'd like you to have me on ideastream so we can have a fulsome discussion.

We can't get to it here.

It's way more complicated than quote unquote, dark money.

And it implicates a important civil rights case called ACP versus Patterson.

So I would love to dive into that with you.

Short answer.

Let's fix it.

But we need to be careful how we fix it.

Okay.

Your staff is getting a phone call.

Maybe this afternoon.

Yes, ma'am.

Good afternoon.

My question is, since you withdrew from the grace and the Republican Party nominated the VAC.

I'm just wondering, with the president's poll numbers dropping that that with him being so closely tied to the president that that might leave an opening for a Democrat to win the governor race.

Interesting.

Well, if I were if I were a good political prognosticator, I probably wouldn't be sitting here as a non-candidate for governor.

That's it.

Opinions are like armpits.

Everybody has a couple and most of them stink.

Well, we have a text question next.

It says, Can you tell us more about your commitment to end human trafficking in Ohio?

Thank you.

I mentioned the leadership position that the church played in the abolition of slavery.

The Atlantic slave trade.

Anyway, So it was amazing to me to discover that we have modern day slavery here in America, much less around the world.

This is just maybe the most important thing to me, not because it impacts the people in this room or the majority of Ohioans, but because, as Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere.

The degree of barbarity associated with human trafficking says something very bad about this condition of our society.

And so what has your office done to try to intercede?

Oh, that could be another visit to Ideastream.

In very quick summary, we have dramatically more than doubled the number of Enforcement task force's human task for Human trafficking task forces around the state.

We have put lots of people away, traffickers for long sentences.

We also have shifted the emphasis.

Traditionally, law enforcement looked at human trafficking and it did.

Enforcement sweeps against the sellers of sex, usually women who are already traumatized.

We have shifted it to the traffickers and to the buyers who fund human trafficking by their purchases so as to really go after the truth, the true root of the problem, and to avoid retraumatizing the survivors.

Sir.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, we had a serious problem here in Cuyahoga County and throughout the state of Ohio with elderly judges who were falling asleep on the bench, whose memories were somewhat questionable.

And that problem was resolved in 1968 with the Modern courts amendment, which bars judges from being inaugurated if they are 70 years of age, which effectively means if you're 69, you can serve out your term, you're 75, but you're done.

You cannot be reelected.

Would you support such a move, particularly given the events of the previous presidency of this country?

To put a similar age restriction on election to high public office?

That's a really interesting question, and I, I really don't have a strong opinion about it.

I the last case I ever tried as prosecutor was a civil case of 2010 in front of Judge Marcus, who served on the eighth District here.

He was 80 years old at the time, sat through a five day trial, listened to all of the evidence and the witnesses at the conclusion.

He asked us on Friday afternoon to waive closing arguments, which a lawyer's out there.

The judge asks you to waive.

Waive.

He proceeded to rule from the bench and to dictate into the record from memory his his findings of fact as well as his conclusions of law.

It was a bravura performance.

I don't want Judge Marcus to be I don't want him to go away.

Was on a visiting judge position at the time.

So I think and if you look at Benjamin Franklin would have been too old by that sort of rule to do a number of the things that he did.

I think it depends on the individual.

And I, I think that we as citizens need to be a little bit more judicious in the selection of our leaders.

What do you think about judges who abandoned their seat and run against a fellow judge in order to get in underneath that limit?

Wow.

I don't I don't really know.

Yes, sir.

General, having served eight years as Delaware County prosecutor and now six and a half years as Ohio attorney general, is there anything in particular about the criminal authority or criminal jurisdiction that the Ohio attorney general has that you would like to see expanded or changed in any given the prosecutor experience you had as a county prosecutor?

Thank you.

Great question.

And in Ohio, the attorney general has virtually no independ authority for prosecutions.

If you see me in the news, it is almost certainly because a local prosecutor asks me to take a case because of a conflict of interest or caseload.

We keep law enforcement local, close to the voters so that it's accountable.

And I think that's a wise we should continue to do that.

The only thing that I would add to our current situation, and I'm actually writing a law review article on it, is what I referred to briefly during at some point today is the prosecutor's veto.

I think it's critically important that we have an answer to the local prosecutor who refuses to, as a blanket matter, to enforce the law.

Other than that, I like local control of law enforcement, and that's where we ought to keep it.

Thank you for that question.

Yes.

Coleen Cotter from the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.

One of the ways we intersect with your office is with regard to consumer protection, consumer fraud, which we're seeing, especially with regard to veterans and people on public assistance.

Can you talk about what your office is seeing and your initiatives to reduce consumer fraud and protect consumers?

Thank you.

Technology as a whole, and particularly recently a I seems to be really driving some innovation and I think that it's going to continue to be an arms race.

But the basic rules of consumer protection, of protecting yourself are the same as they've always been.

If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

Don't give up your information to people that don't have a need for it.

Don't pay in cash, Get it in writing.

Use a credit card where possible, not a debit card.

I know your office recently nailed one of the biggest robo callers in the state.

And now we.

What's in the country?

In the country and now?

Well, both.

And now we have these texts that everybody is getting from the quote Department of Ohio Department of Vehicles, which I think they mean to be the BMV.

Don't click on anything on those.

They're all scams.

What about going after those types of things, texting?

How do you start to to make a case or do you look into those and say, that's in our that's in our wheelhouse.

So we go after everything that comes across the threshold that we can.

The key is being able to go back.

The choke point of the telecommute location system is the Internet providers.

And there is a law that in about another year it was phased in.

We've still got some bad actors out there that are not included, but we actually are going to have a good bottleneck where we're going to be able to hold Internet providers accountable for who they allow to use that because they can see the traffic.

If you're if you've got millions upon millions of calls coming through over a course of two days, that's not legitimate from a same set of numbers, that's not legitimate traffic.

So it's hard to do, but we are working on it with the Federal Trade Commission.

All right.

Just a couple of minutes left and we'll take another question.

Can you talk about the fentanyl opioid crisis these days?

Is it peaked?

If so, why?

Or what's the magnitude?

You know, how is it changing over to you?

And along with that, the settlement that Ohio is a part of with the Sackler family.

Yeah.

On how we might spend that money.

So, first of all, at a large picture, fentanyl has not gone away.

Deaths have not stopped.

They probably, it looks from preliminary data that that it's peaked, but it's still a major problem.

Methamphetamine is on the rise.

And I actually talked to a treatment provider who said that one of her habitual opiate users was very proud and told her that he wasn't using opiates anymore.

He had moved to meth.

Public service announcement that amphetamine is not medication assisted treatment for addiction.

The Sackler settlement is inadequate, but the best we can do because they moved a great deal of the money in ways that are beyond the corporate shield and in places in jurisdictions where they can't get to it.

It is very large.

Ohio's take could be about 198 million, depending on some variables.

Most of that will go to the One Ohio Foundation, which was a collaborative local government organization that acts statewide.

I want to thank you Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, for joining us at the city club today.

Forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like you.

You can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City Club dot org.

Today's forum is part of the City Club's Authors and Conversation series with support from Cuyahoga County Public Library.

It's also the annual Richard and Sally Hollington Endowed Forum, which was created to celebrate the City Club's dedication to local and national civic dialog.

Dick Hollington devoted more than five decades to practicing law and leadership in the community.

Sally was also an extremely active civic volunteer serving on the boards of education and medical institutions.

The City Club is grateful to Arlington family for their commitment to the exchange of ideas and opinions and being such civic champions in Northeast Ohio.

The City club would also like to welcome guests at the tables hosted by Cuyahoga Community College, Geauga County Public Library.

Guests of Paul Clark, Joseph Carney and Associates, the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

Good job buying a table for your own forum.

Good job.

Next Friday, June 27th, the City Club will be joined by local and national experts to dig into the future of regional public universities.

Institutions like Cleveland State University and the University of Akron and Toledo.

What would it mean for Ohio's communities if these universities closed their doors?

Signal Ohio's Amy Morono will lead that conversation.

You can learn more and get your tickets at City Club, dawg.

And that brings us to the end of today's forum.

Thank you once again, Davis.

Really appreciate you being here.

Good to be with you.

And to our members and to our friends of the city club, thank you as well.

I'm Mike McIntyre, and this forum is now adjourned.

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