A Cuyahoga County grand jury has indicted East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King and a former council member on charges of theft in office and other crimes.
King is the third mayor or former mayor of the financially strapped suburb to face charges in the last 20 years, following former mayors Gary Norton and Emmanuel Onunwor.
Prosecutor Michael O’Malley announced the indictment in a news release Thursday afternoon. The allegations stretch from 2018 to 2024.
“Mayor Brandon King demonstrated a complete disregard and disdain for the rule of law,” O’Malley said in the release. “The citizens of East Cleveland deserve better. The investigation continues.”
O’Malley said he would be asking the Ohio Supreme Court to suspend King from office while the case proceeds.
Reached by phone, the mayor sounded surprised by the news.
“He’s indicting me?” King said to Signal Cleveland.
The mayor suggested the charges stemmed from “someone in City Hall that’s been sending this stuff and asking for all of these investigations.”
He added: “It’s unfortunate, because now East Cleveland just stays in the news about something that’s been settled. It’s been settled.”
The indictment alleges that the city’s “Domestic Violence Department” leased office space from a building belonging to King Management Group Ltd., a company the prosecutor’s office said was owned by King and his family. The lease was for $14,184 annually, according to O’Malley.
Another set of charges centers on what prosecutors said was the city’s purchase of $5,803 in cleaning supplies from another King company called American Merchandising Services. A third set of charges focuses on former council member Ernest Smith’s use of a city vehicle, which was the topic of an investigation by the Ohio auditor.
Twon Billings, the president of East Cleveland City Council, told Signal Cleveland that he had expected an indictment – but was still surprised when it came.
King left council “in the dark on everything,” Billings said. He said that he and others in city government had been sharing information with investigators.
“East Cleveland deserves better, and it deserves better expeditiously,” Billings said.
“It’s really good to have the outside confirmation that he really needs to go,” said Council Member Patricia Blochowiak, who has long raised alarms about East Cleveland mayoral administrations.
The city for years has leased office space on Euclid Avenue from King’s company, King Management Group, even when he served as a City Council member and later mayor – a fact noted over the years in the state audits of the city’s budget.
King told Signal Cleveland that he divested himself from the company on the advice of the Ohio Ethics Commission. The mayor said that the cleaning supply contract dates back to his father’s management of American Merchandising Services and that he does not own or control the company.
King said that the city law director would forward documents to Signal Cleveland substantiating his statements.
The mayor said the city had no copy of the office space lease because it wasn’t a signatory to the agreement. He said the city’s domestic violence program was “100% funded off of a state grant.”
Smith’s use of a city car was “blown way out of proportion,” he said.
In a 2023 state ethics disclosure obtained by Signal Cleveland through a records request, the names American Merchandising Services and King Management Group were crossed out from a list of King’s income sources. Those names still appear elsewhere in the disclosure, however.
East Cleveland’s charter spells out two lines of succession for the mayor. If a mayor is “temporarily unable for any cause” to do his job, the position falls to the finance director, followed by the law director and the public service director.
In the event of “removal or long-term absence,” the council president becomes mayor. Asked if he wanted the job of mayor, Billings said, “It’s a job that I would take.”
Billings, who unsuccessfully challenged King for the job in 2021, said that he would also give the seat up to someone better qualified.
King took office after Norton was recalled in 2016 and has won election twice. He has also withstood recall efforts and an attempt to use the courts to push him out of office. Smith, who lost a 2022 recall, could not be reached for comment at a working phone number.
The investigation was conducted by the state auditor and ethics commission and is ongoing, O’Malley’s office said.
