Shaker Heights attorney who supported Trump jailed for felony voter fraud

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Shaker Heights attorney who donated to ex-President Donald Trump’s campaign was convicted Tuesday of election fraud for voting twice in the last two general elections.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Andrew Santoli ordered sheriff’s deputies to take James Saunders straight to county jail after finding the 56-year-old guilty of two counts of illegal voting, a fourth-degree felony.

Santoli held that Saunders cast ballots in both Ohio and Florida in the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 general election. The judge noted that voting records from both states show Saunders also illegally voted twice in the 2014 and 2016 general elections. Prosecutors could not charge him for those votes because the statute of limitations had passed.

Santoli set a sentencing hearing for Aug. 28.

Saunders faces any from probation to three years in prison.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said after the hearing that Saunders’ case is the only instance of a person actually voting twice in Cuyahoga County in several years.

“It appears [Saunders] felt he was smarter than the system,” O’Malley said. “He was wrong.”

Santoli also ordered the Cuyahoga County public defender’s office, which represented Saunders after his May arraignment, to turn over the results of its investigation into Saunders’ financial status to determine whether taxpayers should pay for his representation.

The trial lasted a single day and featured testimony from three witnesses -- elections officials from Cuyahoga County and Broward County, Florida, and an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations agent who examined the case.

Saunders did not take the stand or present any witnesses.

Santoli rejected Saunders’ arguments at trial that he accidentally cast two ballots, did not mean to commit a crime, and that he shouldn’t be prosecuted in Ohio for the vote he cast in Florida.

The witnesses testified collectively that Saunders voted in person at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections on Oct. 21, 2020, and requested an absentee ballot be delivered to an address he used in rural Virginia. The Broward County elections official said that an absentee ballot was not delivered.

Cellphone tower date placed Saunders’ cellphone at his Virginia address on Nov. 1, 2020, then showed that he drove down to Broward County on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020, and cast his ballot in-person there.

In the 2022 general election, Saunders voted by mail in Florida on Nov. 2, 2022, and then voted in person at his precinct in Shaker Heights on Nov. 8, 2022, the witnesses said.

Saunders’ name was among several in Northeast Ohio that Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office submitted to Attorney General Dave Yost’s office for investigation. He is the only person to have been charged in Cuyahoga County in several years.

Federal Elections Commission filings show Saunders made multiple small donations to Trump’s reelection campaign in both 2017 and 2020, as well as super-PACs supporting Trump’s candidacies. Saunders also made several reoccurring donations beginning in March 2020 to the National Republican Congressional Committee and WinRed, the GOP’s fundraising platform. The most recent donation was December 2021, according to records. All of the donations were under $100.

Trump and many of his GOP supporters have blamed his loss to President Joe Biden in the 2020 election on widespread election fraud in several that officials from both parties have said did not happen.