CLEVELAND, OH – One of indicted and suspended Mayor Brandon King’s last-minute alibis fell apart when his municipal court employee co-conspirator, Deborah Black, testified that she bypassed her director and the council to sign an illegal $14,184 rental contract with his King Management Group LLC.
Black is the East Cleveland Municipal Court’s “victims advocate” for its domestic violence program. Black is not an elected or appointed officer of the municipal corporation with the authority to appropriate funds, negotiate or sign contracts. Not even her employer, Judge William Dawson, has contract signing authority pursuant to Chapter 1901 of the Ohio Revised Code.
Section 733.03 of the Ohio Revised Code assigns contract signing authority to mayors of municipal corporations. So does Section 72 of East Cleveland’s charter. What King and his fired ex-law director impersonator, Willa Mae Hemmons, called themselves doing was transferring the mayor’s contract signing authority over to a willing and low-level court employee so he could keep paying his company $14,184, annually, in city funds. It appears they engaged Black in a scheme behind Dawson’s back to create the illusion that King wasn’t doing business with himself and his family.
Hemmons had called herself writing and using an unauthorized “legal opinion” to justify King’s desire to lease office space to the city during his 8 years as mayor. In it she described how he could divest himself of his interest in King Management Group LLC and continue paying himself with public funds. While dually serving in her alleged role as a municipal director of law, Hemmons notarized King’s so-called “divestiture” business transactions.
King’s divestiture solution was to give his daughter’s mother, celebrity chef April Thompson, a limited power of attorney to sign the lease for him. King is married to Cleveland Clinic Nurse Practitioner Stephanie McCarroll-King. Thompson cooks for Lebron James.
Black and Thompson’s names are on the fraudulent lease King bypassed obtaining council approval to let them sign so he could enrich himself. Thompson told a reporter for Signal Cleveland that she was not actually transferred King’s “interest” in his family-owned building and that her involvement was “on paper” only. Black’s testimony further implicated King in the family enterprise when Black testified that her official interactions were with his brothers and mother.
Black didn’t know that by admitting to signing a contract with King’s company, and his assigning the expense to a federal VOCA grant council didn’t approve the court to receive, her court testimony would be a federal crime confession.
As a subrecipient of VOCA funds, the municipal court’s domestic violence program is bound by Uniform Administrative Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for Federal Awards. The violations of federal law Black admitted to are found at Chapter 2 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations Part 200. Had Black read the laws associated with the federal grant that paid a portion of her wages she may not have been so eager to make herself an accomplice in King’s felony theft crimes.
Paying rent to the mayor’s LLC is a clear conflict of interest, especially without competitive bidding and when space was available for free at city hall. Black and King’s fraudulent contract violated federal Conflict of Interest laws found at 2 CFR Section 200.318(c).
The federal government has Procurement Standards Black and King ignored that were found at 2 CFR Sections 200.317–326. Among federal law requirements are for officials to comply with their own laws to spend federal grant funds.
An Inspector General could cite King and Black for violating Section 72 of the Charter because there was no competitive search for office space. The fact space was available at city hall, and council did not fund rental payments, made the monies paid to King’s management company an “unallowable” cost pursuant to 2 CFR Section 200.403. Expenses must be necessary, reasonable and allocable. VOCA grant funds are supposed to provide shelter for crime victims and not office workers.
King offered the “federal grant” alibi in his April 29, 2025 motion to dismiss three of the 17 criminal charges against him the day before his April 30, 2025 trial with co-defendant Ernest Smith began.
Tyler signed his name to the baseless claim that VOCA grants supporting the municipal court’s domestic violence program were federal and could not be unappropriated by city council. King, he reasoned, was given the authority by R.C. 102.03(5) to restore office rent payments to his business.
The Gucci shoe and purse wearing attorney explained in “a Willa Mae Hemmons” way that R.C. 102.03(A)(5) exclusion of such action from public official liability.
“In short, the cited statute protects a public official’s discretion in the consideration of legislation from attack by adversaries. The line items affected herein that were the subject of Indictment Counts One [Theft in Office], Two [Having an Unlawful Interest in a Public Contract] and Six [Representation by Public Official] involved the restoration of federal grant rent funding, VOCA, to a Domestic Violence Program supporting victims of family abuse.”
Chapter 102.03 of the Ohio Revised Code King’s attorney offered in his alibi is captioned, “Representation by present or former public official or employee prohibited.” It provides no defense for the crimes King is accused of committing as it implicates Hemmons for the crimes she’s committing with her back door representation of the indicted mayor and Smith.
The empowering language of the state law prohibits “present or former public official or employees” like Hemmons from “representing a client or a person on any matter in which the public official or employee personally participated as a public official or employee through decision, approval, disapproval, recommendation, the rendering of advice, investigation, or other substantial exercise of administrative discretion.”
The reference to subsection 5 is odd because it is completely irrelevant to the alibi King offered.
“As used in divisions (A)(1), (2), and (3) of this section, “matter” includes any case, proceeding, application, determination, issue, or question, but does not include the proposal, consideration, or enactment of statutes, rules, ordinances, resolutions, or charter or constitutional amendments. As used in division (A)(4) of this section, “matter” includes the proposal, consideration, or enactment of statutes, resolutions, or constitutional amendments. As used in division (A) of this section, “represent” includes any formal or informal appearance before, or any written or oral communication with, any public agency on behalf of any person.”
Tyler didn’t explain how the description of “matter” supported the dismissal of the three charges that pertained to King’s office rental payments to his companies.
Black told Judge Hollie Gallagher, prosecutors Andrew Rogalski, James D. May and the jury that East Cleveland city council approval was not needed for her to enter a contract with King’s family-owned property management company. Her claim was contradicted by Ohio Ethics Commission investigator James Hood. King and Black had no authority to bypass council to sign his self-dealing $14,184 office lease contract.
Regardless of the false claims she’s now making about her non-existent contracting authority, Black knows better because she would never have attempted such a duty-exceeding criminal act during this writer’s four years as East Cleveland’s mayor. My administration brought King’s lease agreements to city council to be approved and I signed them. He was a private citizen at the time and not an elected official anywhere. At the time they owned the only office building in the city. Currently city hall has an abundance of empty offices.
Since some of the funds for the Domestic Violence Program Dawson oversees are sourced to the American Rescue Plan Act as another pool of dollars subjected to federal law enforcement, Black’s testimony makes her personally liable for the unauthorized $14,184 contract she called herself entering with King’s family business.
Under federal laws Ohio’s attorney general has the duty and authority to cause VOCA spending violators to be prosecuted since that office disperses the funds to local jurisdictions. Funding support for the East Cleveland domestic program could be terminated. King and Black could be forced to repay the funds for the contracts she signed and for the rental money he paid his company without an actual council approved lease agreement.
Black’s decision to knowingly engage in criminal acts with King makes no sense given her being near the end of her nearly three-decade long career at city hall. King is the third mayor she’s watched face criminal charges and convictions.
Black has watched more than 40 cops face criminal prosecutions since 1998 when the FBI arrested six East Cleveland police officers for protecting undercover agents who were posing as cocaine dealers. She’s laughed at how this writer has written about other officials, like her, who have crossed lines to engage in crimes against the city of East Cleveland.
It is not funny to me that I have to write about her. It’s sad to write about a person you thought was better.
