East Cleveland

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…

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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…

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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…

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Opinion: Morgan and Shoup will screw themselves by attempting a retroactivity cure for their illegal spending

Honorary British Consul and Order of British Excellency (OBE) Mayor Sandra Morgan arrives to work around 10 a.m. and hides in her office surrounded by her fiscal officer, a Jamaican national and an Eritrean refugee's daughter. No secretary. Employees aren't allowed in the mayor's "wing" like they were during the Shabazz administration.

CLEVELAND, OHIO – Inside the closed doors of East Cleveland City Hall, there should be a frantic search underway for a “legal time machine.” Mayor Sandra Morgan and $400‑an‑hour Receiver, George Shoup III, should be huddled in a “straight panic” meeting. The topic? How to erase 57 days of illegal spending. They should be looking for a legal way to pass a “retroactive” budget that serves as a legislative eraser to wipe away the fact that since January 1, 2026, every city check or contract signed by unbonded and uncertified Director of Finance Lynn Ann Gries has been a violation…

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Mayor Sandra Morgan’s finance director, Lynn Ann Gries, is spending public funds without a 2026 council approved budget and exposing her personal wealth to civil liability

Mayor Sandra Morgan's "smart" finance director decided she wanted to work out of the mayor's secretary's office instead of in the finance department with finance workers. So, now, Morgan doesn't have a secretary or a finance director smart enough to prepare a 2026 appropriations ordinance for council to pass.

CLEVELAND, OH – Only in East Cleveland does a city government operate without a budget and officials who don’t know they’re creating a constitutional crisis by doing so. It is 2:00 a.m. on Euclid Avenue.  A police patrol car powered by fuel purchased with a “void” Voyager fuel contract and being driven by a police officer receiving wages that have not been appropriated by city council since January 1, 2026, pulls over a motorist.  East Cleveland’s mayor, council and judge are operating without a 2026 appropriations ordinance. Because the officer’s paycheck, the fuel in the public safety vehicle, and the…

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Altered police training records open the floodgates for legal chaos, reversed convictions and massive lawsuits across Ohio against the State

CLEVELAND, OH — In the courtrooms of Ohio, a foundational and basic assumption is being dismantled, piece by fraudulent piece. Every day, men and women wearing law enforcement uniforms and carrying weapons take the stand, swear to the tell the truth, and then testify against American citizens they’ve stopped, detained, arrested and filed criminal charges against. Judges sign their warrants.  Prosecutors rely on their sworn affidavits.  Citizens lose liberty and lives based only on their word. Thousands of American and Ohio citizens have died because they’ve been shot, beaten or chased to death by a law enforcer.  Thousands more are…

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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. …

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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…

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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…

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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…

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Frank Jackson’s “Kelley endorsement” isn’t sitting too well with Clevelanders who want to move on and close the door on his 32 year presence at city hall

CLEVELAND, OH – Clevelanders looking for an indication of how the 2021 campaign to replace Frank Jackson as mayor might turn out can look at two endorsements.  Jackson’s and the Plain Dealer’s.  Each endorsed Nina Turner to represent the 11th Congressional District…

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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…

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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…

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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.…

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Darryl Moore’s silly lawyer, Jazmyn Stover, cries discrimination because Councilor Juanita Gowdy asked her thieving client about his federal fraud convictions, garnishment and no bid contracts

CLEVELAND, OH – Attorney Jazmyn Stover had to do something to help the federally-convicted mortgage and securities fraud thief known as Darryl Moore keep the $160,000 in contracts Richmond Heights resident Brandon King, Beachwood resident Willa Taylor Hemmons and “community development director”…

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Ex-US Attorney Herdman needed mortgage fraud felon Darryl Moore’s $2.8 million in restitution; so the USDOJ said nothing while he stole it from East Cleveland in no bid HUD demolition contracts with King’s help

CLEVELAND, OH – When Richmond Heights resident Brandon King usurped the office of East Cleveland mayor as a non-resident of the city on January 1, 2018, his friend, Darryl Moore, had only made $3400 in restitution payments to the United States government…

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HBCU’s targeted by unregistered Communist Chinese government agent Julia Wilson with help from Morgan State University’s president

CLEVELAND, OH – College and university presidents along with local school district superintendents and boards have been targeted for infiltration by the Communist Peoples Republic of China.  100 colleges and universities, and 42 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), appear to be…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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The INTERCEPT’s attack on HUD secretary nominee Marcia Fudge with a fake writer named Vanessa A. Bee, who doesn’t exist anywhere as a Harvard grad or lawyer, is insidious

CLEVELAND, OH – None of Vanessa A. Bee’s background and “American” story adds up as writer for the INTERCEPT edited by Betsy Reed; and neither does her completely uninformed opinion of United States Representative Marcia Fudge. In her first article for the…

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Eaton’s “Global Cleveland” continues Logan Act, Espionage Act and FARA violations he started in the 1950’s through ex-con Joe Cimperman

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…

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