CLEVELAND, OH – The dockets for the state and federal criminal trials of indicted and suspended East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King, recalled ex-councilman Ernest Smith and his fired ex-chief of staff, Michael Smedley, give the impression the three men are preparing for plea agreements instead of a trial.
There isn’t much in the way of pre-trial motions that King and Smedley have offered to challenge the United States and State of Ohio’s evidence and investigative procedures in the criminal cases against them. Smith’s original attorney, a private attorney impersonating East Cleveland’s law director, Willa Mae Hemmons, initially filed a motion to dismiss on his behalf until she learned she was a witness and it was denied. Their shared Akron family law and bankruptcy attorney, Charles Tyler, may know resistance is futile.
The lack of pre-trial pleadings by Tyler could be because the Akron attorney knows he didn’t fare too well in defending members of King’s family against challenges to their voter registrations before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in May 2023. All four King members had their voter registrations cancelled from a slum apartment they claimed to live in so they could vote for him. King’s Jamaican born mother, Norma King, voted 47 times in federal, state and local elections in East Cleveland from Richmond Heights beginning in 1990. Her U.S. citizenship is questionable.
Tyler’s defamation complaint against the Clerk of Council was dismissed. So was another pleading involving two King sanctioned private citizens he called himself acknowledging as members of council, Nathaniel Martin and Mark McClain. The Supreme Court of Ohio said they weren’t. It was a decision that rendered all the fake legislation King and attorney Willa Mae Hemmons created and disseminated with votes cast in Martin and McClain’s names fraudulent. Mayors don’t supervise any of council’s affairs pursuant to Section 113(A) of East Cleveland’s charter.
Tyler received over $54,000 in unbudgeted public funds to represent King, his relatives and associates, so he knows federal and state prosecutors have evidence which shows both his clients openly disregarded laws to use their public offices for self-enrichment. There’s no better evidence to prove intent than Smedley’s texted request for a contract to support his request for bribes. King screwed himself when he placed his initials next to his penciled $14,184 annual office lease payments. This was done on a self-created “re-veto” of his veto of an appropriations ordinance council overturned and approved without it in 2024.
The U.S. District Court docket shows Smedley’s federal trial was scheduled to begin April 14, 2025 and was postponed because the Al Zubair brothers recently hired new attorneys. King’s trial is still scheduled for April 30, 2025. The court has already begun notifying witnesses.
Newly appointed defense attorneys for Zubair Mehmet Abdur Razzaq Al Zubair and Muzzammil Muhammad Al Zubair joined with Tyler to ask U.S. District Court Judge Donald Nugent for more time to prepare for their trial and the request was granted. Instead of an April 14, 2025 trial, the date was converted to another pre-trial appearance.
King and co-defendant Smith’s April 30, 2025 trial before Cuyahoga County Court of Pleas Judge Hollie Gallagher is scheduled to proceed. Tyler can for now concentrate on King without worrying if his trial will overlap with Smedley’s.
The Al Zubair brothers initially hired attorney and former federal prosecutor Marisa Darden to represent them when they were indicted in February 2024. Darden is the daughter of Cleveland Brown’s running back Thom Darden. She was nominated to lead the Northern Ohio District’s US Attorney’s office by former President Joseph Biden.
The brothers ended their relationship with Darden and hired attorneys Ali Haque, Carole Rendon and Paul Mathias Min Willison. All four attorneys were dismissed by the brothers under the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.
The brothers then decided to represent themselves pro se until they were hit with another indictment that included Smedley’s federal charges as another defendant on February 20, 2025. The brothers decided they needed an attorney, since Smedley was represented by Tyler, and hired attorneys James Jenkins and Michael Goldberg. A plea deal for Smedley could come with a prosecutor’s demand for his testimony against the two brothers or vice versa if the siblings enter pleas that come with testimony against King and Smedley. There’s no honor among thieves.
King has publicly described his criminal prosecution as “weaponized” without explaining how the state’s 17 charges against him were maliciously inspired. It may be too late for Tyler to move to suppress illegally obtained evidence related to Smedley, or to plead that King’s rights were somehow violated after he was investigated and indicted for stealing.
The King criminal docket also shows multiple notations about his alleged indigency with Tyler being assigned as the thieving mayor’s court appointed counsel. His critics believe King is scamming the taxpayers to pay for his legal representation like he’s been scamming them to steal their funds since his election.
King was paid $65,000 a year as mayor and was a frequent diner at the city treasury he treated as an all you can steal buffet. He and his brothers own 11 properties on Elsinore Street, an office building, car wash, Jamaican restaurant and King controls four stock brokerage accounts. After assuming the office of mayor, King reported to the Ohio Ethics Commission that his sources of income grew from three to 25.
His six-figure-salaried Cleveland Clinic nurse practitioner wife, Stephanie McCarroll-King, testified before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections that she paid all the bills at their 20230 Glen Russ Lane home in Euclid, Ohio. She claimed King did not reside with her in Euclid after their February 22, 2022 marriage.
King testified that he resided with his mother, three brothers, a brother’s girlfriend and his wife at 1735 Elsinore Street. One of his brothers, Sheldon, was described by King as a mentally ill hoarder. His brother, Cecil, was convicted for compelling prostitution from their shared residence. Twice the mayor’s residence was raided by East Cleveland police for drugs trafficking.
King didn’t help his claim of indigency by creating a GoFundMe account using the city’s seal and his title of “mayor” to appeal for thousands of dollars in personal and unreported defense funds. The criminal defense money has to be reported to the Ohio Ethics Commission though he’s still being identified as “indigent” on the court’s docket. King has ended his GoFundMe campaign and deleted the fundraising page before his April 30, 2025 trial. Tyler may have advised the mentally slow mayor he was digging a deeper hole for himself.
Smedley’s biggest public defender, attorney Heather McCollough, offered the conceal-minded excuse for her former co-worker that he was tricked by the Al Zubair brothers into believing they were members of the Saudi royal family. McCollough’s nonsensical legal argument ignores that their lineage didn’t stop Smedley from accepting a car, Cleveland Brown’s tickets, dinners and funds from the sons of a man they knew was a former city parks and recreation worker.
McCollough was identified as joining King, Smedley and Hemmons in the mayor’s office for a signing ceremony they used to help the Al Zubair brothers con a Chinese investor into releasing $9 million. $1 million from a Saudi investor.
She’s also a payroll thief who impersonated the city’s prosecuting for two years after council vacated the public office she held. In 2023-2024 council refused to appropriate funds to pay McCollough, attorney Willa Mae Hemmons and all outside attorneys.
Smedley discredited McCollough’s excuse when he told employees he asked to work a fundraiser for the mayor, and donors, that the brothers were the city worker’s sons when they let King use their University Circle condo’s penthouse to host it. The indicted mayor and his campaign treasurer, Nadia Lovelace, concealed the fundraiser from campaign finance reports they’ve never filed with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. It is a first-degree misdemeanor for a candidate and his treasurer not to deliver campaign finance reports to the elections board 12 days before and 38 days after a general election.
There are so many more rabbit holes prosecutors could have pursued to indict King. He’s lucky they didn’t follow them all.
