Two family businesses sit at the heart of the indictment against East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King.

One is King Management Group, which operates a squat office building at 13308 Euclid Ave. Formed by King and his brothers in 2000, the company has long served as a landlord for an East Cleveland court domestic violence program, according to business records, state audits and court filings. 

The other business is American Merchandising Services. Run by King’s elder brother, the company sells fuel, chemicals and other goods, according to state ethics commission letters that cite King. Among its clients was the City of East Cleveland. 

Brandon King’s victory in a 2013 East Cleveland City Council race put him in the position of being both a city official and a city vendor. Then he became mayor in late 2016. 

Since King became a public official in East Cleveland, the city has paid at least $116,400 for services from the two family companies, a Signal Cleveland review of multiple state audits and other records found. That figure does not include any payments in the years 2018 and 2021-2024, for which full audits are not yet available. 

Read: Excerpts from state audits noting East Cleveland payments to businesses affiliated with King and relatives.

Prosecutors now accuse King of misusing his office to benefit his and his family’s businesses. King and the suburb’s law director argue that he sought the Ohio Ethics Commission’s guidance and stayed within the limits of the law. The mayor has not yet entered a plea in the case. 

Public records tell the story of how King handled the connections between his family’s companies and the financially strapped city he was elected to serve. This report is based on state ethics commission letters, King’s financial disclosures, business records, city documents obtained from a council member and 12 years of state audits.  

A man who answered a phone number for American Merchandising Services declined to comment. Another man who answered a number for King Management Group said he would call back but has not yet done so. 

Ohio Ethics Commission spells out legal limits

Over the years, King sought advice from the Ohio Ethics Commission on how to navigate these legal and ethical waters, commission letters show. 

One ethics commission letter from late 2016 illustrated how King’s public and private roles could come into conflict. In the letter, a commission attorney told King that, as mayor, he could not personally sign off on purchases from American Merchandising Services.

“You are prohibited from authorizing any purchases from AMS, your brother’s company, which is also your employer,” the letter said. 

The commission told him that he could not have a financial interest in a public contract, but that there was an exception to the law. One part of the exception applied to contracts that predated a person’s time in office, known as a “continuing course of dealing.” (The commission said that the office building could fit the “continuing course” definition, but that the merchandise purchases did not.)

Still, the commission advised King not to use his political position in any way to influence the city’s payments to his family’s businesses. 

While the ethics commission pointed out legal lines, Cuyahoga County prosecutors say King crossed them. When council voted to defund the rent budget for the domestic violence program this year, the mayor vetoed the decision and added the money back into the budget, the indictment said.

Prosecutors also accuse King of influencing the city to buy cleaning supplies from American Merchandising Services. 

Now King faces charges of theft in office, having an unlawful interest in a public contract and other offenses. Those charges, announced by prosecutors earlier this month, do not encompass the full decade he has served in public office. 

A family business and a ‘role on paper’

In an interview with Signal Cleveland the day charges were announced, King said that his father began American Merchandising Services and that it long sold goods to the city schools. 

“That was a continuing course of business that at some point it wasn’t worth the hassle,” he said. “We stopped, as a city, stopped doing business with this particular family business.” 

The mayor said that he did not own or manage the merchandise company. He also said that he took steps to distance himself from the office building. 

The ethics commission “said I had to divest from that,” King said of the Euclid office space. “I did all that. All that paperwork had been cleared.”

King did name an intermediary to represent him in King Management Group: a woman named April Thompson, a 2018 business filing shows. She signed for a 2019 lease between the company and East Cleveland’s domestic violence program, according to a document filed in court. 

Reached by phone this week, Thompson told Signal Cleveland that she did not have much to share about her position with King Management Group. 

“It is not an active role. It is a role on paper,” she said. “So I don’t have any information, unfortunately.” 

She did not elaborate on what she meant by the comment. 

As far back as 2011, a “for lease” sign outside the office building listed King’s cell phone number in large red numerals. That sign – with the same cell phone number – was still standing as late as November 2020, nearly four years after King became mayor, a Google Street View image shows.

Read: East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King’s financial disclosures with the Ohio Ethics Commission.

From 2018 through 2022, King continued to list both King Management Group and American Merchandising Services as sources of income in his financial disclosures that public officials must file annually with the state.

In King’s most recent disclosure, the companies’ names are crossed out from a list of income sources. The names still appear elsewhere in the disclosure, however.

This week, King’s defense attorney declined Signal Cleveland’s request to speak further with the mayor about the case. 

An East Cleveland vendor becomes a city council member

Since at least 2008, East Cleveland’s domestic violence program has leased space in an office building at 13308 Euclid Ave. That’s the first year that state audits began mentioning the lease. King told the ethics commission that the city leased space in the building even before he bought it in 2000, one ethics letter says.

King and one of his brothers bought the building at a sheriff’s sale that year, property records show. The city’s lease was with King Management Group, a company in which King served as managing partner, according to an ethics commission letter. Business records show that King and two of his brothers shared ownership of King Management Group.

King entered a new line of work in 2013: politics. He won election to East Cleveland City Council and took office in 2014. That year, he asked the Ohio Ethics Commission for advice about the legality of owning the building while serving as a public official. 

He received a reply from John Rawski, an attorney for the commission. Rawski used the abbreviation KMG to refer to King Management Group.

“You are prohibited from having an interest in a contract with the city unless you can meet an exception,” Rawski wrote. “Even if you can meet the exception, you are prohibited from participating as a council member in any matter that affects the city’s lease of office space from KMG. Further, you are prohibited from using your influence, formally or informally, with other city officials and employees to secure a benefit for KMG.”

The ethics commission’s letter outlined four conditions for meeting an exception to the law, all of which had to be met:

• The contract must be for necessary supplies or services
• The services are unobtainable elsewhere for the same or lower cost, or are part of a “continuing course of dealing” that predated King taking office
• The city is receiving either better treatment or the same treatment as other customers
• The transaction is carried out “at arm’s length,” with knowledge of city officials, and King takes no part in discussions or deliberations about it 

The letter advised that King would be able to meet those conditions if he informed other city officials about his interest in the building. King was also advised to demonstrate that KMG gave the city the same or better services than it provided other customers. If the city were to negotiate new terms, it should open the selection process to all interested or qualified providers of office space, Rawski wrote. 

A couple of months after the letter, King formed a new company called KMG 13308 Ltd. and transferred ownership of the property to it, business and county records show. King remained the point of contact for the new company in state business records until 2018.

East Cleveland typically paid about $11,180 each year for the domestic violence program office space. But state audits say that the city rented additional space for court storage in 2015 and for the finance department in 2016. The city paid $21,981 for space in the building in 2016, the audit for that year says.

At the end of 2016, King had a sudden change in job title. Mayor Gary Norton lost a recall election. King, then the council president, became mayor. 

King ascends to the East Cleveland mayor‘s office

As he prepared to take office as mayor, King again asked the Ohio Ethics Commission for advice – this time about both the office building and American Merchandising Services, his older brother’s company. 

King told the commission that East Cleveland used American Merchandising Services for “spot purchases” of typically less than $2,000, according to a 2016 commission letter. The company sold fuel, office supplies, janitorial products and other goods, the letter said.  

He told the commission that he worked in sales and marketing for his brother’s company. King, then the council president, said he processed some of the city’s orders for American Merchandising Services, the letter said. King told the commission that he would have to sign off on the city’s purchases as mayor, according to the letter. 

Ethics commission attorneys told King in two 2016 letters that, as mayor, he could not approve purchases from his brother’s company or leases at the office building. Nor could he discuss the contracts with others.

That wasn’t the end of the matter. In 2018, King turned to East Cleveland Law Director Willa Hemmons for advice on handling his business ties. 

In a letter, she advised King to resign as managing partner at King Management Group. The mayor also shouldn’t make any money off of the domestic violence program’s lease at the Euclid Avenue office building, she wrote. Her letter said the lease was set to automatically renew without King’s signature.

The purchases from American Merchandising Services could continue if King did not sign for the invoices or make money off of them, Hemmons’ letter said. 

In its response to Hemmons, the ethics commission took her advice one step further. It reiterated that King shouldn’t even talk about American Merchandising Services purchases or recommend the company to staff.

Even though “no action is required by Mr. King regarding the city’s spot-purchases from AMS, he is prohibited from using his authority or influence over other city officials and employees in any way to secure city purchases from AMS,” the ethics commission letter said.

Hemmons included her letter and the Ohio Ethics Commission letters in a legal filing this month seeking to dismiss the indictment against King’s codefendant, former Council Member Ernest Smith. (Hemmons said that she was well situated to represent Smith because of her knowledge of city law, writing to Signal Cleveland in an email: “I feel that my defense participation is crucial in achieving a just and fair result.”)

After Hemmons’ letter, King stepped down as managing partner and appointed Thompson as his representative at King Management Group, a business filing shows. Thompson signed the company’s 2019 lease for the domestic violence office space, according to an attachment to Hemmons’ legal filing.

East Cleveland continued to pay for office space in 2019 and 2020, state audits show. The city also paid American Merchandising Services $7,741 to buy blankets and other necessities for the city jail those years, according to the audits.

King vetoes spending cuts

For years, King has clashed with some members of East Cleveland City Council, particularly over matters of city finances. Those battles have spilled out of the council chambers and into the courtroom across numerous lawsuits. 

This spring, council slashed spending throughout the city budget. Among the spending items that council cut was the domestic violence program’s budget for rent at the King Management Group building. 

King vetoed council’s cuts. In a document provided to Signal Cleveland by a council member, the cut spending was written back into the budget in blue ink next to the mayor’s initials. 

Where council had zeroed out the domestic violence rent budget, a handwritten message restored $14,181 in spending. Beside the dollar figure were the initials, “BK.” 

Hemmons, the city law director, argued in a court filing that the veto was just one of more than 150 cuts that the mayor vetoed. 

Patricia Blochowiak, the council member who shared the budget document and King’s veto letter, said that the arguments of the mayor’s defenders don’t hold up. 

“They don’t seem to understand that there are other ways of supporting the domestic violence program,” she said, “other than giving Brandon and his family all sorts of money.”