The people of Cuyahoga County deserve no less. 32/32

None of what he's doing seems to be in service of any strategic goal. But I would keep an eye out for the next time he weighs in personally on an issue—and ask if it feels like he’s weighing in on the operations of his office or if he’s playing politics/running cover for something (or someone) else.

All of this to say: I don’t know what Michael O’Malley is planning, either. (Nor would I expect to, given that he seems to be kicking up fights with most corners of the Democratic Party, rather than attempting to collaborate the way we should be trying to at this moment in history.)

A screenshot of a cleveland.com article with the headline: "Should the county prosecutor's staff be running for partisan positions? Editorial Board Roundtable"

And it is interesting that while cleveland.com's editorial board did eventually call this power grab out for what it is and come out solidly against it, the original article gave O’Malley an opportunity to spin a tale that could be easily called into question with even just a little bit of digging.

It is particularly interesting to me that O’Malley spoke directly with cleveland.com about 30 of his employees running for county central committee—especially after the news was previously covered by independent journalists who took a slightly more critical eye and were not granted similar access.

We’ve seen processes that don’t appear to account for certain victims and their trauma along the way.

And we've see O'Malley speak directly instead on all manner of other things.

A screenshot of a cleveland.com article with the headline: "Cleveland police used AI to justify a search warrant. It has derailed a murder case."

Indeed, in term number three, we've seen serious cases thrown out over the use of AI in investigations. We've seen more lost trials, including some high-profile ones that have resulted in further civil lawsuits against our local government officials.

Perhaps he believes that this will help him with voters. Or perhaps he believes that this will help keep him in the good graces of some of his funders, Republican or otherwise, as he contemplates his political future in a party he has been feuding with now for two years.

Perhaps our esteemed prosecutor does not see himself as tasked just with policymaking and personnel for an important and powerful office in its own right, but instead as some kind of power player who needs to bend other elected officials in the county to his will and to his narrative.

Issues that pop up in his office’s criminal cases appear to be more the realm of his comms department. (There are some ethics considerations at play here, but the difference is quite stark to me even accounting for that.)

All in all, it is interesting to me that O'Malley is primarily choosing to weigh in personally on issues relating to what he sees as his job duties *outside* of the criminal courts, where things are more political, more narrative-driven, and can't be boiled down to wins and losses.

(While the rest of county government is bemoaning the cost of a delay, I would yet again note that the jail is only so expensive because O'Malley's office continues to seek cash bail for folks who we know, as a result of COVID-19, are likely to not be a problem on bond.)

..despite by his own admission, the legal requirement he's talking about is not new and has been part of jail discussions since 2024.

Could he not have resolved the legal issue with one call to Ronayne at any point in the last 18 months? And if so, why are we seeing all of this blow up now?

A screenshot of a cleveland.com article where O'Malley and his civil chief, Dave Lambert, are discussing the blocking of jail planning in Garfield Heights.

Similarly, O'Malley is on the record again in recent coverage of his attempts to block the Garfield Heights jail construction from moving forward. O'Malley and I do agree on the idea that the jail needs to remain downtown, but it is very odd to me that he's just now escalating with Ronayne...

An infographic regarding Michael O'Malley's Republican donors in 2024, including Jimmy Haslam, Tony George, Donzell Taylor (married to a Republican former lieutenant governor), Justin Herdman, and Ed Crawford (Trump's ambassador to Ireland), all of whom gave between $1000 and $10,000 in 2024.

(It's also worth noting that O'Malley took over $100,000 from Republicans in 2024, and yet campaign finance reports do not indicate that O'Malley ever paid the county Democratic party, the same one he seems to be trying to take over, for appearing on the Democratic sample ballot in 2024.)

A screenshot of a cleveland.com article where O'Malley is directly quoted responding supportively to Yost's non-binding opinion that Ronayne is overstepping his duties.

In a November 2025 article discussing this fact, O'Malley speaks with cleveland.com personally yet again, trying to push the narrative that the arrangement he himself agreed to is not in the best interest of the county.

At the same time, while it may have been good press for O'Malley to bash Yost in 2024, it sure is interesting that he is now using a non-binding opinion from Yost in trying to block Ronayne from doing things according to a memorandum of understanding that O'Malley himself signed in his first term.

I can't speak to the specifics of how cases get charged after someone's death, but given that O'Malley was able to figure out that Yost had indicted a dead person, it seems in the interest of our community as a whole to not fuel the cycle of trauma by avoiding Yost's practices when at all possible.

So why is this relevant to all of what O'Malley is kicking up in the media? Well, I think it speaks to what he's often trying to do in the media: elevate political coverage and bury operational coverage, sometimes regardless of the facts.

(Keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of folks with pending criminal cases are themselves recent victims of, or bystanders to, crime, so the possibility of retraumatizing victims is substantial.)

But it did strike me that while many folks around the courthouse seemed to treat the potentially abated case as paperwork, these cases had the potential to cause substantial stress or suffering to the families of the deceased, who plausibly could be victims themselves if their loved one was killed.

I was at the courthouse observing arraignments this morning, including a criminal case involving someone who was indicted over a month after they died. (I won't name them publicly, as I suspect their family is unaware that this indictment was handed down and don't wish to compound their suffering.)

A note: Criminal cases in Cuyahoga County are regularly abated due to the death of a defendant. Some of these situations are of course unavoidable (say, when someone dies after being charged or just before), but it's not unprecedented for someone to be dead for weeks before they are indicted.

A screenshot of a cleveland.com article discussing Dave Yost's indictment of Ramesh Patel, who had previously died. In relevant part, it reads: Cuyahoga Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said Wednesday that Patel died in December 2022. He said he’s “philosophically opposed” to indicting a dead man and that Yost should be too. “This is one of the greatest examples of prosecutorial overreach I have ever witnessed,” O’Malley said. “The practice of indicting the deceased is draconian. This is not how we would have handled this case in my office. I am calling on Ohio Attorney General David Yost to immediately dismiss this indictment.”

...even though O'Malley himself was in the courtroom for parts of the trial. In contrast, in late 2024, O'Malley spoke directly to cleveland.com and personally called out Dave Yost for trying to indict a Cuyahoga County resident who had previously passed away.

A screenshot of an Ideastream article that reads: The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office declined to comment on the community perception that authorities are trying to "take down" Tolbert. "Your email speaks volumes about your journalistic integrity and the direction of your current story," Lexi Bauer, a spokesperson for County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley, wrote in an email. "We decline to comment for your obviously biased story, and we will let the facts speak for themselves in court. Perhaps you should, too."

During the New Era Cleveland trial last summer, for example, when the prosecutor's office threw a slow-motion temper tantrum over a 6-week trial that they had no business wasting public dollars on, quotes (including some truly outrageous ones) came largely from the communications department...

This rang some bells for me, as I've noticed a pattern in when O'Malley speaks to outlets such as cleveland.com himself, as opposed to through the communications department of his office.

This is nothing unusual for politicians, of course, but I find it an interesting window into his thinking.

A screenshot of a cleveland.com article about O'Malley's subordinates running for central committee, with multiple direct quotes from O'Malley included.

...an attempt that was first covered on March 12, the quotes included in cleveland.com's coverage were not from a staff member in the prosecutor's communications department—they were from O'Malley himself, who granted that reporter a direct interview.

To me, this feels more like an attempt by the prosecutor to bully his way into a more favorable media narrative, hoping that an old-school PR campaign would work. One thing that caught my attention is the fact that in cleveland.com's coverage of O'Malley's takeover attempt of the county party...

I've heard a lot of speculation about why this all might be happening. There were rumors that O'Malley wanted to run for county executive, which I didn't find particularly credible. (Why would O'Malley, if he wanted that job, repeatedly be looking to take power away from the county executive?)

A screenshot of a Cleveland Scene article noting that some members of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party have taken issue with Michael O'Malley's suggestion that "safe" suburbs supported Matthew Ahn "simply because those areas aren't intimately familiar with public safety issues."

Each raises eyebrows, especially given O'Malley's public unhappiness with Democrats for not simply handing him an endorsement on a silver platter. (In 2024, he called out Lyndhurst and Bay Village as suburbs that did not vote to endorse him because they're too "safe" to understand criminal justice.)