Brandon King

Convicted ex-chief of staff Michael Smedley’s got a long prison journey ahead of him

YOUNGSTOWN, OH — Convicted federal felon Michael Leon Smedley is currently incarcerated in the Mahoning County Justice Center awaiting his May 5, 2026, sentencing before U.S. District Court Judge Donald C. Nugent. The man who once threatened to hit East Cleveland’s then 70-year-old former Clerk of Council in the head, now wears an orange jumpsuit in a mug shot. Their encounter came after the Clerk of Council told a resident not to pay the illegal automatic traffic camera citations convicted ex-Mayor Brandon King violated a council resolution to keep issuing. Smedley’s white beard is unkempt. His eyes, in the mug…

Read More

Ohio’s first municipal receiver is a $400 an hour failure who’s in contempt of court for letting East Cleveland’s mayor spend money without a 2026 budget

CLEVELAND, OH – East Cleveland is a city that has been dying by a thousand paper cuts, most of them self-inflicted, many of them illegal. Its mayors have been convicted. Its budgets have been fabricated. Its employees have been paid with money that, by the strict letter of Ohio law, was never lawfully appropriated to leave the city’s accounts. Its residents have watched their streets deteriorate, their police department shrink, their service department reduced to nothing and their government collapse into a rotating cast of uninformed state and local elected officials who treated the law as a suggestion and the…

Read More

There is no “Circle East” as the Land Bank sells an Al Zubair brothers-like scheme 5 years after its contract expired

CLEVELAND, OH – Convicted ex-Mayor Brandon Lee King and his former now convicted ex-chief of staff, Michael Leon Smedley, were involved in a scheme with two brothers to convince foreign investors to give them $10 million.  According to testimony during the federal trial that resulted in Smedley being jailed while he waits the long sentence he’s expected to receive, he, King and fired ex-law director Willa Mae Hemmons led investors to believe the brothers actually owned General Electric’s former Nela Park lighting division headquarters property. It’s similar to the scheme the Cuyahoga County Land Reutilization Corporation (CCLRC) employees used to…

Read More

The state’s $400 an hour East Cleveland receiver, George Shoup, is in contempt of court order he’s paid to enforce

CLEVELAND, OH – For $400 an hour or $3200 a day and a law degree, attorney George Shoup, III is expected to know how to read and obey the court order giving him the equivalent of an $800,000 a year salary.  He’s the so-called “savior of East Cleveland” appointed by Court of Claims Judge Lisa Sadler at the request of Ohio Auditor of State Keith Faber.  Shoup earns over four times more than, and has one tenth of one percent of the responsibility of, Ohio Governor Richard Michael Dewine who’s paid $176,000. I underscore his $400 an hour wage because…

Read More

Quinlan’s running an OPOTA training records laundering operation out of the Attorney General’s office, and hiding uncertified cops from Ohio’s mayors, judges, prosecutors

CLEVELAND, OH — At precisely midnight on January 1, 2024, something extraordinarily criminal happened across the State of Ohio. One thousand and eighty-one police officers — men and women from 38 law enforcement agencies entrusted with the power to arrest, search, and use deadly force — ceased to exist as legal peace officers. They became private citizens impersonating law enforcement officers. Under Ohio law, a police officer’s authority is not a permanent appointment. It operates more like an annual driver’s license. It is a conditional privilege, renewed annually through mandatory training that is reported on computer systems owned by the…

Read More

Convicted ex-mayor King and his boy, Smedley, were in a scheme to bring polluting crypto miners from Communist China to East Cleveland

CLEVELAND, OH – In 2021, while the world was focused on a pandemic, convicted ex-East Cleveland Mayor Brandon Lee King and his indicted ex-Chief of Staff, Michael Leon Smedley, were busy opening the city’s back door to more potential environmental terrorism. Under the guise of “economic development,” and guided by the now-indicted Al Zubair brothers, the former King administration courted an unidentified owner of Valarhash (V-Hash as the FBI calls the company). Valarhash was a desperate Communist Chinese cryptocurrency mining corporation, a polluter China ran out of the country that was seeking refuge in the United States. An FBI affidavit…

Read More

Quinlan’s running an OPOTA training records laundering operation out of the Attorney General’s office, and hiding uncertified cops from Ohio’s mayors, judges, prosecutors

CLEVELAND, OH — At precisely midnight on January 1, 2024, something extraordinarily criminal happened across the State of Ohio. One thousand and eighty-one police officers — men and women from 38 law enforcement agencies entrusted with the power to arrest, search, and…

Learn more

Morgan campaigning with dirty OPOTA-violating ex-police chief Shabazz fired, and who received $106,000 in stolen funds from fired ex-finance director, is bad news for East Cleveland’s voters

CLEVELAND, OH – Sandra Morgan didn’t know how to terminate Kenneth Lundy as East Cleveland’s “acting” chief of police and didn’t understand why he should be terminated.  He has a way with women and Morgan was beguiled by the skinny-jeans-wearing younger man. …

Learn more

Malicious attorney Heather McCollough took council clerk’s criminal and sex abuse complaints, and the next day helped the accused councilor retaliate against her

CLEVELAND, OH – When East Cleveland’s Clerk of Council Stacey White filed a June 23, 2025 sexual harassment and a criminal complaint against Ward 2 Councilman Timothy Austin, she officially transmitted both documents to attorney Heather McCollough.  McCollough signed the documents as…

Learn more

Sandra Morgan acts like “Brandon King in a skirt” as she uses fired city attorney Heather McCollough to answer Mayor Lateek Shabazz’s quo warranto

CLEVELAND, OH – Sandra Morgan will soon learn she should have listened when Ideastream’s Matt Richmond incredulously asked her if she was relying on an unethical criminally minded ex-city attorney named Heather McCollough for legal advice. When the granddaughter of stoplight inventor Garrett…

Learn more

HUD’s Inspector General must investigate the effects of the conspiracy between CMHA director Jeffrey Patterson and board member Robert Davis to obstruct East Cleveland’s appointment

CLEVELAND, OH – Attorney Robert Davis should have left the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) board in 2011 after I appointed him twice to serve as East Cleveland, Ohio’s representative in 2006 and again in either 2007 or 2008.  Instead he told…

Learn more

Brandon King has debate opponent who humiliated him arrested, jailed and instructs cops not to let him make bond on his word only that he was “assaulted”

CLEVELAND, OH – Richmond Heights resident Brandon King lost a mayoral debate miserably to a first time candidate with a lengthy criminal record who simply outclassed and outknowledged him with every response.  “Name-dropping” King was humiliated in front of an audience of…

Learn more

Beaten attorney Heather McCollough “retires” 4 weeks after Judge Dawson confirms arrests like Basheer Jones’ disappeared between police and prosecutor’s office without a court hearing

CLEVELAND, OH – In a letter dated July 2, 2021 troubled attorney Heather McCollough advised attorney Willa Hemmons that she was “retiring” effective July 2, 2021.  McCullough wrote that she’d like to wait and return to the administration within two months; and…

Learn more

Gowdy encourages Americans stopped, arrested and pursued by uncertified East Cleveland cops to use council’s “impersonation” ordinance to file criminal charges against them with Judge Dawson

CLEVELAND, OH – People who are detained, pursued, ticketed or arrested by individuals discharging police duties in East Cleveland should be using Ordinance Number 525.03 Council Vice President Juanita Gowdy, Councilman Nathaniel Martin and Council President Korean Stevenson enacted to validate their…

Learn more

Read Ohio Criminal Rule 11 and the “pleas, rights upon plea” rights that come with every arrest to understand why Basheer Jones’ disappearing arrest records made Judge Dawson curious

CLEVELAND, OHIO – I have published Ohio Criminal Rule 11 in its entirety at the bottom of this story so readers will fully-understand the relevancy behind the question I asked East Cleveland Municipal Court Judge William Dawson about the status of Ward…

Learn more

Basheer Jones’ 2019 gun arrest appears to have been “fixed” by Brandon King’s administration as Judge William Dawson confirms Ward 7’s councilman was not arraigned in his court

CLEVELAND, OH – When East Cleveland police arrested Ward 7 councilman Basheer Jones on April 19, 2019 they sought to charge him with “improper handling of firearms in a motor vehicle.”  The offense was a 4th degree felony violation of Section 2923.…

Learn more

Brandon King vetoes East Cleveland’s appropriation law before he got it from council in the most crazed, self-dealing veto this writer as an ex-mayor has ever seen

CLEVELAND, OH – Richmond Heights resident Brandon King’s continued illegal presence in the office of East Cleveland mayor has created yet another problem for the city.  King doesn’t know it, but Michael Smedley and Belinda Kyle told friends when he was campaigning…

Learn more

Smedley’s “caught on tape” story is that Cleveland Heights ex-Mayor Cheryl Stephens was the hookup to “Mike Riley” and the illegal Noble Road death-spewing dump

CLEVELAND, OH – The late Gerald Strothers told me he believed Cuyahoga county council member and child of Carribbean immigrants Cheryl  Stephens was the reason 5-stories of deadly construction and demolition debris death existed in East Cleveland on Noble Road.  The regularly-burning…

Learn more

When Gary Norton pleaded guilty to the USDOJ; he agreed to tell everything about his and everyone else’s felony crimes out of East Cleveland city hall and a whole lot more

CLEVELAND, OH – Sing, Gary Norton, sing.  Hit the “high” notes to so they reach the ears of your “big boy” friends.  Sing it loud.   James Rokakis. Gus Frangos.  Cheryl Stephens. Michael Cardilli.  Brandon King.  Thomas Wheeler.  Darrell Moore.  Michael Smedley.   Y’all…

Learn more

The 4 East Cleveland mayors the Plain Dealer endorsed, and then used reporters to conceal their crimes in office, explains why the politicians in Cuyahoga County are corrupt

CLEVELAND, OH – A look at the Plain Dealer’s endorsements of East Cleveland’s last four mayors reveals a truth the newspaper’s publishers and editors do their worst to conceal.  They encourage voters to elect incompetents and criminals to elected office.  The lower…

Learn more