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 hear Gary? He “sangin’.”
A freelancer for WOIO once informed me that a request for Norton’s cell phone records revealed he made approximately 290 calls to the Plain Dealer during his first year in office. Every politician reading the last sentence thinks its strange and even suspicious for a mayor to spend 290 and out of 365 days of his first year in elected office talking to newspaper publisher, editor and reporters.
The “parties” to the federal crimes Gary Norton has already agreed with the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) that he committed should be concerned about their own inchoate offenses now that he’s “been” talking to reduce the number of charged offenses and time he’ll have to spend in prison if any. The inchoate offenses are the crimes Norton’s organized crime gang involved themselves in like accessory, attempt, conspiracy, compounding a felony, misprision, misprision of felony and criminal facilitation.
Norton’s only been charged with “obstruction.” That’s an extremely sweet deal for what I know are his crimes in office. He must have been hitting the high notes like Eddie Kendricks.
The plea deal he cut with the USDOJ creates for Norton the most difficult challenge of his life. He has to tell the truth to federal prosecutors about everything he did and everyone with whom he did it while committing crimes in office as the Plain Dealer’s endorsed candidate for mayor. Language in Norton’s plea deal should read as follows under the Government’s Rule 11 Memorandum:
Subject to the ongoing, full, and truthful cooperation of the defendant, and before sentencing in the case, the United States will fully advise the Court and the Probation Office of the fact, manner, and extent of the defendant’s cooperation and its commitment to prospective cooperation with the United States’ investigation and prosecutions, all material facts relating to the defendant’s involvement in the charged offense, and all other relevant conduct.
Specifically, this means under the Government’s Rule 11 Memorandum that Norton, as a defendant, agreed to testify truthfully and completely at any grand jury, trial or proceeding involving the criminals he’s identified to the USDOJ and is telling on. He’s agreed to be available, reasonably, for debriefings and pre-trial conferences. He’s agreed to provide all documents, recordings, writings or materials of any kind of his possession to the USDOJ. He’s also agreed not to violate any federal, state or local criminal laws while cooperating with the government.
The video below shows Norton in a conversation with city council in what appears to be seeds he was planting to gain access to the city’s demolition contracting process through Vanessa Veals; and her forging Leach’s name on a contract to deliver him. Keep in mind this was after Norton was recalled and driving for Uber.
It was also after Norton had kept paying himself $65,000 a year as the safety director six months after voters took the money from him. It’s after Automated Traffic Solutions paid $35,000 in campaign funds to help him keep the extra $65,000. That was his cut of the “red light camera” scam. It’s after Norton paid himself $12,000 twice between September and December right before the recall. It was after his Cleveland school principal wife, in a two-income family of five earning over $200,000 a year off public funds, stole $10,000 from her fellow principals to buy them gifts.
Norton showed up at a council meeting approximately two years ago with a free offer to demolish up to $250,000 in homes. The person who shared the video with me knows it was before Norton and Veal’s attempted demolition-contractby-forgery theft.
Norton described his partners as “we” but not by name or company during the municipal government’s official meeting. Councilman Timothy Austin, a retired United States Air Force sergeant, correctly assessed that Norton’s claim was “hard to believe.” He by now has figured that my perspective of Norton after working with and knowing him; is that if his lips are moving he’s lying. Pseudologia fantastica. You can’t take what Norton says seriously … ever.
My sources tell me Moore was Norton’s partner. Driving for Uber and selling used cars for Rick Case wasn’t cutting it for the 7 figure thief. Where’s the $8 million from the $20 million in Cleveland Clinic money he got from Delos Cosgrove and the criminals who conspired with him to close Huron Hospital?
The problem for Norton is he violated so many criminal laws while holding elected office, misdemeanor and felony, as well as local, state and federal, that his crimes are so imperceptible he’ll be lying and not even know it. Here’s an example.
There’s a Supreme Court of United States of America case most lawyers haven’t read captioned Frisbie Co. v. City of East Cleveland. It’s found in Ohio Jurisprudence at 98 Ohio St. 266, 120 N.E. 309, 312 (1918). 99.9 percent of the nation’s mayors have never heard of it. For contractors doing business with any government it’s the most important law they should know.
Frisbie Co. dug and laid the water and sewer lines along Doan and Hayden Avenue in 1895. The company’s owner accepted a no-bid contract when East Cleveland was a township. The project completed when East Cleveland had grown to a village and the village council looked at the records, saw “no bid” and did not pay. Public bidding laws were not followed.
The bottom line to the Supreme Court’s affirmation of a lower court’s ruling is that Frisbie Co. was entitlted to no payment even if the work was done because the contract was unlawfully awarded when public bidding anlaws were not enforced by East Cleveland’s township officials. The court took the unchanged position that contractors have a duty to know and obey public bidding laws whether the elected or appointed officials do or not.
Contractors have a “misprision of felony” duty to report the crime when they receive no-bid and other unlawfully-delivered contracts. Each duty boxes contractors into obeying laws with no escape.
A thread running throughout the many cases the court has reviewed is that the contractor must ascertain whether the contract complies with the Constitution, statutes, charters, and ordinances so far as they are applicable. If he does not, he performs at this peril, e. g., City of Wellston v. Morgan (1901), 65 Ohio St. 219, paragraph four of the syllabus; Frisbie Co. v. City of East Cleveland, supra, paragraph five of the syllabus; State, ex rel. Allen, v. Lutz, supra. The most articulate explanation of this principle was given in McCloud & Geigle v. City of Columbus, supra, at 452 and 453, where the court, in referring to private contractors, said: “We think there is no hardship in requiring them, and all other parties who undertake to deal with a municipal body in respect of public improvements, to investigate the subject and ascertain at their peril whether the preliminary steps leading up to contract and prescribed by statute have been taken. No high degree of vigilance is required of persons thus situated to learn the facts. They are dealing with public agencies whose powers are defined by law, and whose acts are public transactions, and they should be charged with knowledge of both. If the preliminary steps necessary to legalize a contract, have not been taken, they can withdraw from the transaction altogether, or delay until the steps are taken. The citizen and taxpayer, in most instances, unless directly affected by the improvement has but a remote, contingent and inappreciable pecuniary interest in the matter and should not be required to personally interest himself about its details. *
Darrell Moore of D-Moore Enterprises has unlawfully been receiving no-bid contracts from Mayor Brandon King. They’re fraternity brothers. Alpha Phi Alpha. Moore is in another fraernity as a federal ex-offender for his role in violating federal Securities & Exchange Commission laws in a financial scheme.
Under King as East Cleveland’s mayor Moore’s been “making money moves.” He just got a no bid contract from his frat brother to knock down yet another building in the city at Noble Road and Euclid Avenue. With the asbestos in it, and the hauls to the landfill at Minverva, a job like that goes for around $140,000. Lower if it’s bid. Despite the fire and the nuisance, securing the property from pedestrians for a week’s worth of special council meetings to get bid approval is no real delay in a city with over 4000 vacant properties just like the one Moore’s knocking down.
What Moore had a “misprision of felony” duty to do was report King, Norton and Leach to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for giving him no bid demolition contracts. As the “Frisbie” case reveals, government doesn’t operate under the “Ooh I got the hookup” paradigm.
Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
Moore as a contracted vendor was discharging an adjunct function of the funding governments when he accepted the illegal contracts. The words I’m highlighting are legal terms found in the “definitions” sections of the Revised Code. It makes Moore and every vendor a “quasi-government official” whether they are administered oaths of office or not.
What Moore doesn’t know doesn’t matter. The university-educated man should have read, mastered and obeyed all federal, state and local laws regarding demolition and public bidding before bidding on public contracts. Every one of you contractors reading my words had better lock all of them into your brains. Forever.
At all times, and as East Cleveland’s former mayor, I know the city’s charter has no public bidding or contracting conflicts with unsuspended state general laws. What I know Norton and King don’t know are the charter section and two Revised Code of Ohio sections that would authorize them to award certain contracts without public bidding. From their acts I know they’ve read what they wanted into the state’s general laws; and have only selected the “few words” they think lets them do what they want while ignoring all the other words around their chosen words.
Section 72 of East Cleveland’s charter gives the mayor the following limited contract authority on his own. “Contracts” is the heading.
The Mayor may make any contract or purchase supplies or material, or provide labor for any work in any department, not involving more than Two Thousand Five Hundred Dollars or the amount stipulated by State law, whichever amount is the greater.When any expenditure within any department other than the compensation of persons employed therein, exceeds Two Thousand Five Hundred Dollars or the amount stipulated by State law, whichever amount is the greater, such expenditure shall first be authorized and directed by ordinance of the Council, and when so authorized and directed the Mayor shall make a written contract with the lowest and best bidder after advertisement for not less than two nor more than four consecutive weeks in a newspaper having a bona fide daily general circulation of 20,000 copies or more within Cuyahoga County, Ohio. All bids shall be sealed and shall be opened at twelve o’clock noon on the last day for filing the same by the Mayor at his office in the City of East Cleveland, Ohio, and be publicly read by him. Each bid shall contain the full name of every person or company interested in the same, and shall be accompanied by a sufficient bond or certified check on some solvent bank that if the bid is accepted a contract will be entered into and the performance of it properly secured. If the work bid for embraces both labor and material, they shall be separately stated with the price thereof. The Mayor shall report all the bids to the Council at its next regular meeting and shall recommend which, if any, bid shall be accepted. The Council, regardless of the recommendation of the Mayor, may reject any or all bids. No such contract shall be entered into by the Mayor until the approval thereof by the Council has been first had and obtained.
The late attorney Almeta Johnson served as my director of law. Jumping into the first day’s of my administration we followed but started to immediately modify the past practices of the former two administrations. I had inherited a government that in no way resembled the one identified in Title 7 for all forms of government found in Section 705 of the Revised Code.
The same problem exists today for contractors doing business with the city. The “elected” mayor I replaced had disassembled the “accountability” boards so he could do what he wanted. A contractor knowledgeable in all the different statutory nuances of public bidding would have to bypass East Cleveland altogether.
In my administration we had to reorganize the board of zoning appeals, the board of tax appeals, the board of architectural review, the city planning commission and even the board of control. The existence of these boards are not “options.” East Cleveland officials have no other choice but to keep them in existence in perpetuity. The board of control is critical when it comes to contractors. The authority for its existence is found in R.C. 733.21.
The mayor, director of public service, and the director of public safety constitute the board of control of a city. The mayor shall be ex officio president. The board shall keep a record of its proceedings. All votes shall be by yeas and nays and entered on the record, and the vote of a majority of all the members of the board shall be necessary to adopt any question, motion, or order.
Except as otherwise provided in division (D) of section 713.23, and sections 125.04 and 5513.01 of the Revised Code, no contract in the department of public service or the department of public safety, in excess of five thousand dollars, shall be awarded except on the approval of the board of control of the city, which board shall direct the director of the appropriate department to enter into the contract. The members of the board shall prepare estimates of the revenue and expenditures of their respective departments to be submitted to the city legislative authority by the mayor, as provided by law.
What I know do not exist under both Norton and King’s administration are the records of the meetings of the board of control for contracts over $5000 in the departments of public service and public safety. The director of public service is important in the board of control, as well as the director of public safety, because like the mayor in Section 72 can make contracts under his or her control; the same authority is granted to the directors of public service and safety. The authority to enter demolition contracts is under the authority of the director of public service in R.C. 735.06. The heading is “proceedings on opening of bids.”
Bids for work under the supervision of the department of public service shall be opened at the time, date, and place specified in the notice to bidders or specifications and shall be publicly read by the director of public service or a person designated by him. The time, place, and date of bid openings may be extended to a later date by the director of public service, provided that written or oral notice of the change shall be given to all persons who have received or requested specifications no later than ninety-six hours prior to the original time and date fixed for the opening.
Each bid shall contain the full name of each person interested in it and shall be accompanied by a sufficient bond or certified check, cashier’s check, or money order on a solvent bank or savings and loan association that if the bid is accepted a contract will be entered into and its performance properly secured unless the bid is for a contract for the construction, demolition, alteration, repair, or reconstruction of a public improvement, in which case it shall meet the requirements of section 153.54 of the Revised Code. If the work bid embraces both labor and material, such items shall be separately stated with the price thereof.
The director may reject any bid. Where there is reason to believe there is collusion or combination among bidders, the bids of those concerned therein shall be rejected.
Under the circumstances for which Moore’s company has been receiving contracts from King they’re all required to be approved by the “board of control.” As no board of control existed under Norton, and now under King, the contracts over $5000 to Moore are unlawful even if the two mayors perceived they had the authority to give a single vendor they select all or the majority of the city’s demolition contracts with public bids and him posting a bond.
It was close to three years around late 2008 before I reorganized East Cleveland’s dismantled board of control. The other boards were functional and operating. Instead of sending designates to attend the meetings the mayor was required to attend I attended for the most part. I forwarded my bid requests through city council. Every single piece of legislation from my administration was requested of council by the mayor. No “departmental requests.” Directors have no legislative request authority.
Retired United States Army Captain Samuel Lockhart served as my director of public service when my first service director resigned after slightly over a year. He attended meetings Cuyahoga County’s other directors of public service organized. I sent him to the meetings of the Mayors and City Managers Association when I couldn’t attend.
Samuel brought the board of control and the full scope of the statutory duties of the director of public service to Almeta and my attention; and we reorganized that board. It was up and running when Norton replaced me as mayor.
Hemmons, now a contractor impersonating the director of law, would have known of my administration’s board reorganization effort as someone Almeta had referred to me as a part-time assistant prosecuting attorney. I’d never met her before. Had both Ronald Riley and Hemmons had ensured that Norton and now King maintained and improved upon the governance structure my administration delivered to him on December 31, 2009, many of the problems the city and he now face would be non-existent.
My goal was to see the contractors working with the city grow. Not engage them in criminal acts that destroyed their names, families and the wealth they were creating to leave for them. Criminals in elected and appointed public offices, particularly those in predominantly American Negro cities, are killing our people as bad as the rabid Communist, Nazi, extermination-minded Eastern European Irish Catholics and Russian illegal aliens who had organized themselves into terrorist labor unions and slaughtered 300 American Negro men, women and children in their “Holocaust” against our people on July 6, 1917 beginning in that city and spreading across the nation.
Mayors pursuant R.C. 733.01 are “chief conservators of the peace” or more specifically defined as “law enforcement officers” pursuant to R.C. 2901.01. Every home rule city with a charter has language for mayors that fall within the range of the duties authorized in R.C. 733.01.
733.03 General powers of mayor in cities – merger of certain departments. The mayor shall be the chief conservator of peace within the city. He may appoint and remove the director of public service, the director of public safety, and the heads of the subdepartments of public service and public safety, and shall have such other powers and perform such other duties as are conferred and required by law. In any city the legislative authority thereof may, by a majority vote, merge the office of director of public safety with that of director of public service, with one director to be appointed for the merged department, and the director of the merged department shall have those qualifications provided in section 735.01 of the Revised Code. Effective Date: 09-06-1965 .
As a law enforcement officer Norton’s duty pursuant to R.C. 733.34 was to “supervise the conduct of the officers of the municipal corporation.” He had to ensure that all laws were obeyed and every official and vendor interacting with the city complied with two constitutions and East Cleveland’s charter, and all the applicable federal, state and local laws as unsuspended and written. The same appllies to King who’s too stupid not to direct city workers to buy office supplies from his American Merchandising Company.
King’s frat brothers should have run away from him instead of doing business with him. If they cared for him they would have privately told him to read, master and obey the laws that would guide him towards successfully serving and enriching Americans.
So instead of giving Moore no bid contracts, Norton and King’s duties were to enforce laws. Moore’s duty was to demand that his law enforcement officer friends obey the laws he donated campaign money for them to obey.
It’s not snitching to tell your elected official friend not to do stupid shit that will get you both in jail. It’s not smart to tell the mutha fucka you ain’t giving him a “cut” and cuss his mutha fuckin’ azz out.
I’ll share one of the “municipal” laws that would have allowed Norton and King to award no bid contracts. R.C. 735.051. The emergency defined in the law has to be real and not “tautological.” It means King or Norton can’t just say they’re doing something because it is an emergency without defining it.
A water line break is an emergency. A tree falling a home and injuring a family is an emergency. A sinkhole is an emergency. A fire in a high-rise apartment building like the one I lived in, and that displaces 500 residents, is an emergency. Giving your boy a no bid contract to demolish homes that have sat for years is not an emergency.
735.051 Emergency conditions obviate formal bidding and advertising for contracts. In the case of a real and present emergency arising in connection with the operation and maintenance of the department of public service, including all municipally owned utilities, the department of public safety, or any other department, division, commission, bureau, or board of the municipality, the legislative authority of the municipality may by a two-thirds vote of all the members elected thereto, authorize the director of public service, director of public safety, city manager, board of public affairs, or other duly authorized contracting officer, commission, board, or authority, to enter into a contract for work to be done or for the purchase of supplies or materials without formal bidding and advertising.
So now here’s Moore’s problem. King gave him his most recent no-bid contract. It’s unlawful and I know he and his associates are reading. What he can’t do is submit records requesting to be paid. That will be fraud. So it’s best for him to stop working and remove his equipment from the job site.
What Moore, King, Smedley, Charles Iyahen, Korean Stevens as council president all have to now concern themselves with, as officials and officers of the municipal corporation, are what are the “individual duties” of their respective statutory public offices as “defined by unsuspended general laws” for the public offices they hold after reading my words.
Moore is operating as an “adjunct official” of the municipal government of East Cleveland as a contractor. He can’t violate any laws and expect anything other than criminal prosecution in the current “known” environment. In this same environment where it’s known the former mayor and secretary of the chief of police have been federallyindicted, Iyahen would be a fool to direct a check to Moore in his official capacity as the director of finance knowing all he knows about the violations of felony level federal, state and local laws in which he and King are engaged.
To pay him would be to legitimize an illegitimate act and make Iyahen a co-conspirator in concealing felony crimes. It’s supposed to be “the law director to the rescue” with a legal opinion that guides every official on how to lawfully discharge their duties, including the adjunct ones; but she’s a criminal, too, as a director of law impersonator. This is how East Cleveland officials look in a federal agent’s file on its way to a federal prosecutor for an ongoing evaluation.
So here’s a final law. It’s a section of East Cleveland’s charter. A charter for a municipal corporation is like the Constitution of the United States of America.
There is not a single word in it that cannot be altered in any way unless the current language and the proposed new language appears on ballot where an election is held during a “referendum” or an “initiative” and qualified electors of the municipal corporation of East Cleveland, only, get to vote yes or no. Fuck anything else you’re told by a criminal in office if you’re a contractor.
The section of East Cleveland’s charter is 75. It’s one fucking sentence written in plain English that needs no interpretation. You’ve already read section 72 of the charter. There are other sections between 72 and 75 you’re going to have read on your own. Within this paragraph I’ve linked to East Cleveland’s charter twice. You can’t miss it if you’re paying attention
75 CONTRACTS – WHEN VOID. All contracts, agreements or other obligations entered into, and all ordinances passed or resolutions and orders adopted contrary to the provisions of the preceding section, shall be void
FBI agents would prefer not to be wasting federal dollars investigating this dumb shit. I’d prefer federal dollars not be wasted on this dumb shit. Will you please read, re-read so you can remember, and then re-read again and again until you get this nation’s Constitutions and laws embedded into your minds when you’re interacting with governments or holding elected and appointed public offices: including you “adjunct officials” of the government who are contractors?
If your local elected and appointed officials are not obeying laws anyone can read free and online they’re criminals. Put their asses out of office at the next election even if they’re a mutha fuckin’ friend. A criminal in elected, appointed or adjunct office ain’t nobody’s friend.
They set us back. They make us look bad.
To the organized crime gang operated out of the mayor’s office, finance department, police department, municipal court … you’re already caught. Why is it so easy to catch East Cleveland thief’s?
When I took my staff to Columbus, Ohio for meetings HUD uses to train community development directors, Karen Hood and crew were able to see the name East Cleveland on the PowerPoint presentation. Ask her, Pat Lacey and Cheryl Stanton. HUD planning director Jorgelle Lawson, retired, said they trained directors, nationally, using East Cleveland’s community development department as an example of what not to do.
They take the public records East Cleveland officials create. They use the audit findings and inspector general investigations coming out of their non-compliance. Viola. How to bust a thief?
All that shit stopped after I was the only mayor in this state, and the only one in the nation, to takeover the community development department and attend the meetings. HUD’s Inspector General delivered the results of a special audit of my work administration over the department my last month in office in 2009. I let Norton listen as mayor-elect.
Zero mutha fuckin’ audit findings … Gary. Remember? All you had to do was keep it up. An A is 95 to 100. Anything less demeans the American Negro race you curve-graded oaf.
