Zubair Mehmet Abdur Razzaq Al Zubair

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…

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Facing 100 years in prison, Al Zubair brothers sabotaged their own defense with secret recordings and ChatGPT

CLEVELAND, OH — Local followers of the federal criminal trial of convicted ex-East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King’s chief of staff, Michael Leon Smedley, have been wondering why it’s taken more than 70 days after his February 20, 2025 superseding indictment to be heard.  His trial with the Al Zubair brothers was originally scheduled for April 14, 2025.  The answer for the delay is found in a docket that details the stall tactics being used by his sibling co-defendants. The two Cleveland brothers, Zubair Mehmet Abdur Razzaq Al Zubair and Muzzammil Muhammad Al Zubair, are each staring at a maximum prison…

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King and Smith’s state trial moves forward while Smedley’s fed trial is temporarily delayed

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…

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Smedley used his job with Mayor King to seek an annual $250,000 in bribes from 2 brothers conning foreign investors out of $10 million

EAST CLEVELAND, OH – It is obvious in reading the 69-page federal indictment of Michael Smedley, 56, Zubair Mehmet Abdur Razzaq Al Zubair, 41, and his brother Muzzammil Muhammad Al Zubair, 30, that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents had an intimate level of knowledge about the organized criminals.  Evidence includes numerous text messages, email, wire transfers of funds, receipts, letters, contracts, expensive Cleveland Browns loge and game tickets, Euclid police investigatory records, IRS records and what appears to be detailed conversations with cooperating witnesses. $10 million was on the table. The words in the 69-page indictment describe Smedley…

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Indictment shows Mayor Brandon King hid the Al Zubair brothers $10 million foreign investor swindle from city council and the public

CLEVELAND, OH – To understand why East Cleveland Mayor Brandon Lee King turned his back on the law enforcement duties of his elected office, to involve himself in the $10 million con game two born and raised in East Cleveland half  brothers were running on Chinese and Saudi investors, his family history, personal associations and state-of-mind are important.  King has testified to living for the past 23 years with family members who court and other records show have sold drugs, compelled prostitution and engaged in felony voting fraud. Two of the King’s in Brandon’s household at 1735 Elsinore Street, his…

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