‘A crime on every citizen:’ Shaker Heights lawyer who donated to Trump headed to prison in election fraud case

James Saunders, in orange, listens as Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Andrew Santoli sentences him to three years in prison for illegally voting in both Ohio and Florida in the 2020 and 2022 general elections.Cory Shaffer, cleveland.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A judge on Monday sentenced a Shaker Heights attorney to three years in prison for illegally voting in the last two general elections.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Andrew Santoli called 56-year-old James Saunders’ actions “purposeful, intentional and cavalier” in handing down the maximum sentence. Santoli also fined Saunders $10,000.

“You violated a fundamental right of this country that every person speaks with one vote and one voice,” Santoli said. “I can think of no greater crime of a felony of the fourth degree than a crime perpetuated against every single person in this country.”

Saunders told Santoli before learning his sentence that he no longer planned to vote. He also said that because cases of voter fraud are rare, making an example out of him wouldn’t do much good.

“My voting days are behind me,” Saunders, whose family is from London, said in a British accent.

According to federal campaign finance filings, Saunders made multiple small donations to former President Donald Trump’s campaign and super PACs that back GOP candidates.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said after the hearing that Saunders’ case was the only example his office has seen of someone blatantly violating the state’s voting laws.

“He thought the rules didn’t apply to him,” O’Malley said. “He found today that they do apply to him.”

Santoli denied a request from defense attorneys to delay Saunders’ prison sentence until after he appeals his conviction.

Santoli found Saunders guilty of two felony counts of election fraud last week following a one-day trial held in July. Three witnesses -- elections officials from Cuyahoga County and Broward County, Florida, and an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations agent who examined the case -- testified that Saunders cast ballots in Florida and Ohio in each election.

Records showed that Saunders also illegally voted twice in the 2014 and 2016 general elections, but prosecutors said they could not charge him for those votes because the statute of limitations had passed.

Santoli also ordered Saunders to repay the Cuyahoga County public defenders for their representation of him. Saunders, whose attorneys said enjoyed “a life of wealth and privilege” and lived off money his parents left to him in a trust fund, did not qualify for a taxpayer-funded lawyer.

Saunders applied to be represented by a public defender and filled out forms that said he earned $2,800 a month from the trust fund and had less than $5,000 in cash available to him. Cuyahoga County Public Defender Cullen Sweeney said in response to a question from Santoli that the office did not seek bank statements or other financial proof from Saunders before the office agreed to take the case.

Saunders told Sweeney during the hearing that he earned a salary of about $135,000 per year in the eight years he worked for the IRS, before leaving the workforce in 2018 and living off the trust fund.

The assistant public defender who represented Saunders at trial, Roger Scott Hurley, told Santoli that Saunders’ father worked for BP in London and married his mother, a chemist, and moved the family to Cleveland to work at what was then the company’s U.S. headquarters in downtown.

Hurley said Saunders had become accustomed to a life of “affluence and privilege” and that, after both of his parents passed away in the previous decade, he sought to maintain that lifestyle that included having residences in multiple states. That may have led to a “psychological split” that gave Saunders the belief that he had the right to vote in both Ohio and Florida, Hurley argued.

Hurley asked Santoli to “grant [Saunders] the privilege” of a probation sentence.

Santoli rejected that argument. Instead, he held that Saunders ought to be held to a higher standard because of his position as an attorney.

“You know what the laws are and know exactly what you can and cannot do,” Santoli said.

The sentence came after Assistant Cuyahoga County Public Defender John Martin asked Santoli to throw out his verdicts finding Saunders guilty and grant a new trial. Martin argued that Santoli incorrectly interpreted the Ohio law that Saunders was convicted of breaking. The law says that no person can vote “at the same election.”

Martin argued that the U.S. Constitution has said that each state governs and holds its own elections, so elections in Ohio and Florida are not “the same election.” He pointed to Florida’s election law, which says that no person can “vote two ballots in any election in Florida or any other state” and that, because Ohio’s lawmakers were not as specific, the law only applied to Ohio’s election.

“Florida knew how to do it. They put it into their statute,” Martin said. “Ohio did not put that in.”

Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Andrew Rogalski argued that the plain meaning of the statute was clear and accepting Martin’s interpretation would lead to “an absurd result.”

“The argument that [Saunders] could have voted in 50 states if he chooses was ludicrous, and I’m glad that Judge Santoli rejected it,” O’Malley said after the hearing.

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