Baltimore Police are investigating a burglary at the home of Rep. Elijah Cummings that happened early Saturday morning in West Baltimore’s Druid Heights neighborhood.
The burglary happened hours before President Donald Trump began a Twitter attack on the Democratic congressman and the city of Baltimore that lasted days and continues to dominate headlines, Capital Gazette reported.
What set Trump off on his Twitter rant against Cummings? The Atlantic suggested that maybe it was because the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Cummings, voted to subpoena emails and text messages from White House officials on personal accounts. This could be embarrassing to the president’s daughter, Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner. Both have said through their attorney that they used personal accounts while working in the White House, The New York Times reported.
Trump tweeted about Baltimore’s high crime rate and called the city a “rodent-infest mess.”
The burglarized home is owned by Cummings and Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, chairwoman of the Maryland Democratic Party. It is not known if anything was stolen.
Cummings is the son of sharecroppers from South Carolina. Trump is the son of a rich real-estate developer in New York who once faced federal allegations that his company refused to rent apartments to Black tenants.
Trump accused Cummings of being “a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA.”
Cummings has remained mostly silent in the face of Trump’s attacks, CBS Baltimore reported.
The congressman visited Baltimore senior citizens on Thursday.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended Cummings and shifted attention to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, whose family business owns properties in Baltimore. Some of them have mice, Associated Press reported.
Pelosi, a Baltimore native, said that Trump should look at his own family when it comes to profiting from rodent infestation in the city, according to Politico.
“The president — this comes as no surprise — really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But maybe you could ask his son-in-law, who’s a slumlord there, if he wants to talk about rodent infestations,” Pelosi said
Kushner’s family real estate firm owns thousands of apartments and townhomes in the Baltimore area. Some have been reported for the same kind of disrepair and neglect that the president has accused Cummings of failing to address. Residents have complained about mold, bedbugs, leaks and rodents. And they say management isn’t in a hurry to fix the problems.
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Since 2017, Kushner-owned properties have had 164 complaints resulting in 56 correction notices and citations of a proposed $13,200 in fines, according to Baltimore County spokesman T.J. Smith.
While 699 of the units passed annual inspection, 200 units failed, according to Housing and Urban Development.
All of these were for livability issues including mold, insect infestations, mice, rats, window or door leaks, inadequate air conditioning or heat.
The properties include:
Commons at White Marsh
Cove Village
Essex Park
Fontana Village
Harbor Point Estates
Highland Village Townhomes
Riverview Townhomes
The Apartments at Bonnie Ridge
The Apartments at Cambridge Court
The Apartments at Canterbury
The Apartments at Owings Run
The Apartments at Saddle Brooke
Whispering Woods
