CLEVELAND, OH – Joe Cimperman is Global Cleveland’s president. He’s also a convicted thief, indicted on 26 counts, whose vote on Cleveland city council misdirected funds intended for impoverished Cleveland neighborhoods to a non-profit that employed a girlfriend who became his wife before he resigned to lead Global Cleveland in 2016. He also hasn’t stopped.
Cleveland Heights resident Basheer Jones in June 2020 sponsored legislation Councilman Brian Kazy seconded to pay Cimperman’s organization $125,000 in annual “dues.” Of course Kevin Kelly violated the city’s charter to pass the ordinance as an “emergency” providing for the usual operation of a “municipal department.”
Global Cleveland is not a “municipal department” of the government of Cleveland. There is no section of Title 7 of the Revised Code of Ohio, or any Section in Article 18 of the Constitution of Ohio, that gives “foreign relations” duties to a “municipal corporation. It’s a misappropriation of municipal funds that should lead to a federal investigation to identify the specific line item finance director Sharon Dumas acquired the funds from; as the ordinance did not identify it or the “emergency” that affected the usual operation of a municipal department.
Cimperman has other problems … too.
A copy of a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) form the law firm of Burson & Marstellar filed with the United States Department of Justice in 2018 shows a meeting with Cimperman on behalf of their foreign government client on June 29, 2017 at a “civic” dinner with Dora Pruce. Squire Patton Boggs lawyers filed as well. It’s a shame the law firm represents the Cuyahoga County Mayors and City Managers Association; but doesn’t advise mayors and city mangaers when they’re working for the Russian Federation or any of their foreign clients. This is an insidious conflict of interest. Cimperman’s council campaign committee got $500 from Squire Patton Boggs’ out of the money they were paid by 14 foreign governments.
Global Cleveland is not affiliated with the “official” Sister Cities International U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley and Kevin Cramer announced on November 17, 2020 they want investigated. It only uses the name. The official 501c.3 non-profit started in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower through an Executive Order was supposed to always be under the oversight of the United States Department of State so each relationship would be supervised and in line with U.S. foreign policy interests. Global Cleveland’s Facebook page identifies it as a “consulting agency.”
Over the years as immigrants with either no knowledge or regard for the nation’s espionage laws got elected to local offices, they used them to create unlawful “back home” relationships that resulted in unauthorized exchanges of information between individuals calling themselves Americans and a foreign government’s officials. Councils, commissions and school boards started passing resolutions encouraging or opposing the foreign policy decisions of the Government of the United States of America; and exercising a power that was not granted to their units of government in any federal, state or local law. Local involvement in foreign affairs are federal crimes.
Cleveland Heights city council has no legal authority to communicate with the officials of Oblast, Russia. Russian Bernie Sanders Gitman had no legal authority to enter a “Sister Cities” relationship with the Boris Yeltsin “appointed” mayor of Yaroslavl, Russia when he served as Burlington, Vermonts mayor. Blackburn is calling these unauthorized, unsupervised and unlawful relationships “dangerous.”
Cleveland Heights is more than 50 percent American Negro; and the majority of the city’s residents are not from any part of Communist Russia. Had a vote of the people been taken on a Sister City relationship with any Russian city local councils have aligned with it would have failed.
Global Cleveland just held a “Sisters City Conference” hosted by the Cleveland Public Library between September 29 – October 2, 2020 that Eisenhower’s Sister Cities International had no knowledge was occurring. On its website there’s no record of either Global Cleveland or Joe Cimperman as being affiliated with the “real” Sister Cities International.
But Cimperman along with Cleveland Public Library director Thomas Felton made contact with the officials of 14 governments for their conference. So did members of Cleveland city council and an an employee in Mayor Frank Jackson’s administration. None of their contacts with the officials of 14 foreign governments was “authorized by law” even if Global Cleveland’s “conference” as a “consulting agency” was under the guise of it being sanctioned by Sister Cities International. It wasn’t. Just the mere mention of the word “consultant” on its Facebook page would require Global Cleveland and Cimperman, as well as the “paid elected official speakers,” to register as foreign agents under the FARA.
18 U.S. Code § 219.Officers and employees acting as agents of foreign principals. Whoever, being a public official, is or acts as an agent of a foreign principal required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 or a lobbyist required to register under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 in connection with the representation of a foreign entity, as defined in section 3(6) of that Act shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both. (b) Nothing in this section shall apply to the employment of any agent of a foreign principal as a special Government employee in any case in which the head of the employing agency certifies that such employment is required in the national interest. A copy of any certification under this paragraph shall be forwarded by the head of such agency to the Attorney General who shall cause the same to be filed with the registration statement and other documents filed by such agent, and made available for public inspection in accordance with section 6 of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as amended. (c) For the purpose of this section “public official” means Member of Congress, Delegate, or Resident Commissioner, either before or after he has qualified, or an officer or employee or person acting for or on behalf of the United States, or any department, agency, or branch of Government thereof, including the District of Columbia, in any official function, under or by authority of any such department, agency, or branch of Government.
Speakers included Cleveland council president Kevin Kelly, Basheer Jones and Jasmin Santana. The website identifies speaker fees at $2500. Section 102 of Ohio’s Revised Code restricts elected officials from accepting “anything of value” from the use of their public office. Identifying themselves as members of council and accepting “something of value” from the same Global Cleveland they voted to pay $125,000 in dues to puts Kelly, Jones and Santana in the same trouble Cimperman had that got him 26 indictments in 2018.
Global Cleveland is the late Canadian citizen and Communist Cyrus Eaton’s old Pugwash Conferences. Eaton was born in Pugwash, Nova Scotia in 1883 and worked on John D. Rockefeller’s estate in East Cleveland at what is now Forest Hill Park. Rockefeller’s Baptist pastor was Eaton’s uncle. When he left East Cleveland for Ormond Beach, Florida, the devoutly-Protestant Rockefeller attended the American Negro Ormond Baptist Church as its “only” so-called “white” member.
Rockefeller’s affinity for the American Negro community was legendarily-loving. Like FBI Director John Edgar Hoover the thought in the American Negro community is that he was “passing for white.” It was the same discussions behind Presidents Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Wilson McKinley, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge.
Every Standard Oil board member was required by Rockefeller to be Protestant, Christian and an abolitionist. I served as the city’s mayor for 4 “out of fiscal emergency” years. Had he not funded Spelman College from East Cleveland, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr’s mother and grandmother would not have been educated at the university that bears his wife’s family’s name. They wouldn’t have had the intellectual capacity to educate him. Rockefeller was still alive when my grandparents arrived in Cleveland around 1919 from the Carolinas.
Rockefeller owned East Ohio Gas and was building natural gas lines like those that still exist on streets like Lakefront, Holyoke and Elsinore in East Cleveland when Eaton lived with the billionaire’s family at Forest Hills in the city. He let Eaton negotiate some of the property disputes and deeds while learning to become a pastor from his uncle.
Living with the world’s first billionaire in East Cleveland changed his perspective; so Eaton chose business instead of the ministry. He also later chose Nikita Krushkev and Communism over President Dwight D. Eisenhower and loyalty to the Government of the United States of America and our Republic.
Eaton claimed to have been made a citizen in 1913. All he filed with the Cleveland municipal court was a declaration of intent that expired 6 years later; and two years before all immigration filings were required by Congress to be handled by U.S. District Courts and not the local ones in 1915.
Against U.S. foreign policy, the disloyal Canadian citizen on his own began communicating with foreign leaders he invited to his home in Northeast Ohio under the guise of “cultural exchanges.” In truth Eaton was operating domestically as an unregistered agent of Communist Russia.
Following American Negro Paul Robeson’s receipt of the Josef Stalin Award in 1953; Eaton received the Lenin Peace Prize from Krushkev in 1960 for his work between Cleveland and Canada obstructing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s foreign policy towards the nation and Communism. All this was in between Congress enacting the National Security Act of 1950; and the Communist Control Act of 1954. Both outlawed Communism or any affiliation with it in this nation; but it didn’t stop Eaton like it hasn’t stopped Global Cleveland.
When he returned to Cleveland from Russia, Eaton should have been arrested for his Logan Act, Espionage Act and FARA violations. To receive an award from the Russian government for work that enhanced that government against the U.S. government’s interests was evidence that both he and Robeson were Logan, Espionage and National Security Act violating traitors. Pursuant to Chapter 18 of the United States Code, Section 953 the Logan Act instructs citizens like Cimperman of the following:
Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply, himself or his agent, to any foreign government or the agents thereof for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.
Cimperman’s name appears along with that of Mayor Frank Jackson and County Executive Armond Budish on two FARA forms; but not on those that require them to report foreign agent contacts. The “foreign agents” reported to the U.S. Department of Justice that they met with the three. The three did not share their foreign agent meetings with the USDOJ. Neither did Mark Naymik as a cleveland.com reporter.
Squire Patton & Boggs was representing 14 governments when they met with Jackson. Matt Cox of Burson Marstellar met with Cimperman on June 29, 2017 as Global Cleveland’s president. Cimperman was indicted on state charges that should have been federal in April 2018. All were supposed to report their contacts with the foreign agents with the U.S. DOJ’s FARA division.
The City of Cleveland’s logo is attached to the Global Cleveland website. 18 U.S.C. 853, the Logan Act, did not authorize the mayor or council member of a municipal corporation to communicate with foreign officials. Foreign affairs duties for municipal corporations is not written into any section of the Revised Code of Ohio under Title 7. The use of a “municipal public office” to engage in foreign affairs reserved for Congress should result in not only a “stateu audit finding,” but criminal prosecution for exceeding the authority of the office and a suit to recapture the misappropriated public funds.
The non-profit’s mission makes it ineligible in every way to receive a dime in federal block grant or municipal funds funds; particularly since Cleveland council has unlawfully designated the city a “sanctuary” for illegal immigration Cimperman’s Global Cleveland criminally-supports in obstruction of the nation’s immigration laws. Jackson and Cleveland city council violate federal laws when they spend municipal or federal block grant funds with Global Cleveland in obstruction of the local enforcement of the nation’s federal immigration laws and foreign policy. Jackson and Kelly were elected to make sure the trash was collected. No sane American citizen would elect either of them to handle foreign affairs.
Just this past September 29th through October 2, 2020, Global Cleveland hosted a global seminar or what it claimed was a “Sister Cities Conference 2020.” The event was described on Global Cleveland’s website as follows:
A 3-day interactive event bringing together representatives from 20+ sister cities to discuss their partnership goals, successes, and aspirations to cross-pollinate ideas and forge a connection. This event is free and open to all community members interested in learning more about Cleveland’s international connections from a ground-level perspective. We will have representatives from our Sister Cities engaging with community members, business leaders, students, and civic leaders. The host committee of the Sister Cities Conference will be on hand to speak about the city-city relationship, past accomplishments, and goals for the future. Benefits of a Sister City: Direct contact with local businesses, civic leaders, and educational institutions around the world. Increased cooperation, respect, and hence prosperity for both cities and their people.
Global Cleveland identified the following as keynote speakers:
Director Felton Thomas, Cleveland Public Library Director; Ambassador Daniel Mulhall, Ambassador of Ireland to the United States; Council President Kevin Kelley, Cleveland City Council President; Ted Carter, Cuyahoga County’s Chief Economic Development and Business Officer; Nizar Zein, Cleveland Clinic Director of Global Patient Services; Ronn Richard, Cleveland Foundation President; Fernando Gonzalez Saiffe, Consul General of Mexico in Chicago; Director-General Eric Huang, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Chicago.
On Wednesday, September 20, 2020 a panel of “international mayors” joined a conversation. Jackson did not participate. An employee, Alex Lackey, whose title is claimed to be the Government and International Affairs Manager, filled in for Cleveland’s “mayor.”
City of Cleveland Government and International Affairs Manager, Alex Lackey; Deputy Mayor Mr. Dejan Crnek- Ljubljana, Slovenia; Chief Bayo Oyero, Ibadan, Nigeria; Mayor Jackie Levy, Beit She’an, Israel; Mayor Yoram Karin-Valley of the Springs, Israel; Managing Director of International Relations, Leonardo De Marzo- Vicenza, Italy; Mayor Vytautas Grubliauskas- Klaipeda, Lithuania; Mayor, Pál Veres – Miskolc, Hungary
Who was not in attendance in the conference was anyone from the United States Department of State. That federal government agency’s logo is not on the Global Cleveland website; and its “sister cities” program is not identified on the United States Department of State’s website was one that is “authorized” by law.
The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development’s Inspector General, as well as Ohio’s Auditor of State, should have long ago investigated Jackson and council’s misappropriation of federal block grant funds equally to members of council in wards ineligible to receive it. Cleveland members of council are all following the same “outside the federal law” distribution of block grant funds to who they want, instead of obeying the city’s “grant management agreement with HUD and federal laws.
The late reporter Benjamin Wells in an October 3, 1971 story for the New York Times wrote about “Soviet” espionage and identified the United States of America as a main target. Wells’ story identified two types of Soviet immigrants living in the United States of America.
According to U.S. Immigration records, Wells reported that only 1380 “legal” Soviets or Russians were residents of the nation as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1894 restrictions codified in the 1921 Emergency Immigration Quota Act; and again in the 1929 federal law President Calvin Coolidge signed under the same name. The rest, Wells wrote, were “illegal.” The majority of the illegal Russians he described as “deep cover spies” who were “concentrated in New York.” Today’s U.S. Russian or Soviet population exceeds 6 million.
The “legals” allowed in were the “Albert Einstein” exceptionals. Not the Ratner’s, Bloomberg’s, Klobuchar’s, Epstein’s, Pritikin’s, Schiffs, Nadler’s, Ginsburg’s and others who claimed their ancestors arrived here poor “looking for opportunities.” America’s immigration laws have never “welcomed” poor, uneducated or average-educated immigrants.
The Chinese Exclusion Act limited immigration from “all” of Eastern Europe, not just Russia, to no more than 73 immigrants per year. The idea of one Ratner entering the nation and arranging for his 8 brothers to arrive here in 1920, all at one time, is evidence of organized crime. Wells wrote the following in 1971.
The main concentrations of Soviet citizens officially in the United States are said to include 400 to 500 in the Soviet Embassy and its branches here; 800 to 900 in the New York area, including 120 to 150 at the Soviet Mission to the United Nations; 150 to 160 working as international civil servants in the United Nations; 10 to 20 at the Amtorg trade delegation; 10 to 20 working jointly for Aeroflot and Intourist plus 10 to 20 correspondents for Tass and other Soviet news agencies.
“There are also hundreds each year who come in and out on temporary duty to attend trade, cultural and scientific conferences,” said an American security expert. “Many are known, identified, K.G.B. or G.R.U. officers.”
Currently the legal Soviet presence in the United States comprises 1,380 men, women and children. About half of the men are considered by the security services to be agents of the K.G.B. or G.R.U., the military intelligence. Many Soviet wives here are also believed to work for one of the services.
President Donald Trump’s administration misdirected attention away from Russia and focused on China; it’s next door neighbor. Senator Washburns’ concerns about China in her letter to the member mayors of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in October 2020 echoes the same either way for both Communist nations.
“Sister-city partnerships may be Beijing’s newest political weapon. Across the globe, China has exploited these relationships, which are ostensibly intended to promote cultural exchange, to achieve geostrategic goals,” said Senator Blackburn. “It is imperative we shed light on these partnerships to determine whether they leave American communities vulnerable to foreign espionage and ideological coercion.”
“The Chinese Communist Party wants to spread its influence wherever it can. Now there is reason to believe Beijing is using partnerships between local governments in the United States and China to spread lies, steal ideas, and gather information it can use against Americans. The Sister City Transparency Act shines a light on this threat and ensures we have the information we need to protect our communities from the Chinese government’s spies and propagandists,” said Senator Hawley.
“Communist China regularly exploits its sister-city partnerships around the world to aggressively advance its own agenda,” said Senator Cramer. “Our bill would give us a better understanding of China’s reach into the United States and allow us to address that accordingly.”
“The Chinese government and Communist Party has a history of exploiting cultural and economic partnerships to conduct malign activities, and it’s clear that opaque, sister-city partnerships deserve increased scrutiny,” Senator Rubio said. “We must do more to better understand, and then counter, Chinese influence operations at the state and local level, which are often conducted under the benign auspices of sister city relationships. I am proud to join Senator Blackburn on this legislation, and I hope our colleagues will support our efforts to provide greater transparency and diligence in preventing the CCP’s efforts to exert sharp power and conduct influence operations in the U.S.”
According the yet-to-be-written language of Washburn, Hawley, Rubio and Cramer’s proposed admendments, the Sister City Transparency Act would literally shut down Global Cleveland’s “loose” operation as a consulting agency with tight oversight and monitoring; and safeguards to prevent academic and industrial espionage. Global Cleveland’s current convict-led operation looks like an international espionage ring that’s setting up local elected and appointed officials too ignorant to read the nation’s laws in a Democratic run city for one of the biggest international federal spy ring bust in the history of the world.
The foreign agents as I’ve demonstrated in their filings have identified their contacts with the USDOJ’s FARA unit. The USDOJ knows the contacts who had filing requirements after the meeting. Federal prosecutors can identify in the filings the names of the contacts who did not report to them on the required form the nature of the meeting. It’s not often what you do in politics that gets you busted. It’s what you don’t do that you’re required to do that gets you busted.
