WFB’s Andrew Kerr Discusses Warnock’s Slum Apartment Building on Jesse Watters Primetime
Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Georgia senator serves as senior pastor, has attempted to evict at least eight tenants
Washington Free Beacon investigative reporter Andrew Kerr appeared on Fox News's Jesse Watters Primetime on Monday to discuss his report about a low-income apartment building owned by Sen. Raphael Warnock's (D., Ga.) Ebenezer Baptist Church, which has attempted to evict at least eight residents for owing as little as $28.55 in past-due rent.
The church, where the Georgia senator serves as senior pastor, provides Warnock a $7,417 monthly housing allowance.
"One resident told me that she was only one day late making rent, and they filed an eviction lawsuit against her anyway," Kerr said. "Warnock's church owns 99 percent of this apartment building. They chose to partner with a company called Columbia Residential which has filed a dozen eviction lawsuits against residents of this building during the pandemic for trifling amounts of rent."
Under Scrutiny, Warnock Claims Without Evidence Walker Is Exploiting the People Facing Eviction From Ebenezer Baptist Church’s Low-Income Apartment
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) claimed without evidence on Tuesday that his Republican opponent, Herschel Walker, is trying to "exploit" the disadvantaged residents who face eviction from the low-income apartment building owned by his church.
Warnock told reporters there have been no evictions from the building, a claim undermined by publicly available court records. It is the Democratic senator's latest attempt at obfuscation in the wake of several Washington Free Beacon reports on the eviction lawsuits filed against residents of Columbia Tower at MLK Village, of which Ebenezer Baptist Church is a 99 percent owner. Warnock, who serves as senior pastor at Ebenezer, receives a $7,417 monthly housing allowance from the church.
Warnock accused Walker of sullying the name of civil-rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. for "short-term political gain."
"This is an example of a candidate who has so little to offer to the people of Georgia that he has resorted to trying to sully the name of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church and John Lewis’s church," Warnock said of Walker. "And what is also shameful is that the work that’s being done there is for people who struggle with mental illness, disabilities. Folks who are coming out of homelessness. And he is exploiting these people as he is good at for short-term political gain."
Residents told the Free Beacon in October they had no idea that Ebenezer Baptist Church owned their home.
Warnock also misrepresented the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s reports on his church’s building, saying the outlet reported "there have been no evictions" from Columbia Tower.
In fact, the paper confirmed that the building’s one-percent owner, Columbia Residential, had filed dispossessory notices against the building’s residents during the coronavirus pandemic, one for just $28.55 in past-due rent. The paper also reported that Columbia Residential said it had not evicted tenants for not paying rent since June 2020, implying that evictions took place during the early months of the pandemic.
Publicly available court documents show that Fulton County marshals have carried out at least two court-ordered writs of possession against residents of Columbia Tower since the start of the pandemic. One was carried out on Aug. 17, 2020, and the other on Feb. 1, 2022.
"You are hereby commanded to remove said Defendant together with his/her property hereon from said house and premises and to deliver full and quiet possession of the same to the Plaintiff herein," the writs say.
Another Columbia Tower resident said in a September court filing that the building managers "drills locks in door with no probal [sic] cause didn’t give notice to vacate," and that he was "evicted for 1 night by lock change, incurred hotel fee."
Residents of the building told the Free Beacon that Columbia Residential has become more aggressive in its rent collection policies, and sent out a notice in September saying it would initiate removal proceedings after five days of non-payment.
"If you don’t pay your rent by the fifth, a dispossessory notice comes out that week," one resident said. "They won’t accept the payment after the fifth."
Columbia Tower resident Phillip White, an African-American Vietnam War veteran, told the Free Beacon he was served an eviction notice in September 2021 for $179 in unpaid rent. He resolved the matter, but only after paying $325 in fees. White received a second eviction notice in September 2022 for $192 in past-due rent, which he said he plans to fight in court.
"They treat me like a piece of shit. They're not compassionate at all," White said.
Columbia Tower filed removal proceedings against three additional tenants on Oct. 12, one day after the Free Beacon broke the news that the church-owned building had filed a dozen eviction lawsuits against residents of the building since the start of the pandemic. Two new eviction lawsuits seek $115 in past-due rent, plus $325 in fees.
Warnock told reporters on Tuesday his church has no involvement in the day-to-day management of the apartment building. But Warnock is the principal officer of Ebenezer Building Foundation, the 501(c)3 charity controlled by Warnock’s church that owns 99 percent of the apartment building through a network of shell organizations. Ebenezer contracted with Columbia Residential to manage the property "on their behalf," the residential management company told the Free Beacon.
Top 10 Scapegoats If Democrats Lose the Midterms
Everyone but themselves to blame
Journalists and other left-wing activists are freaking out over a New York Times poll that shows Republicans leading Democrats by 4 percentage points among likely voters ahead of next month's midterm elections. They were particularly aggrieved by the poll's finding that Republicans were tied with Democrats at 47 percent among female voters and were supported by 34 percent of Hispanic voters and 18 percent of black voters. Those are terrible numbers for Democrats.
We don't know how the election is going to play out, but at least one thing is guaranteed: If Democrats lose, they are going to blame everyone but themselves for the outcome. Here are the top 10 scapegoats Democrats are likely to blame for the party's poor performance at the ballot box in November.
10) Vladimir Putin
The Russian dictator's ill-advised invasion of Ukraine caused a surge in oil prices, which forced voters to support Republicans. (Never mind that President Joe Biden responded by depleting the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve while blocking efforts to expand domestic oil production.) If Democrats lose, there's a good chance that some politicians and media pundits will suggest (without evidence) that Russian hacking played a role in their defeat.
9) The Saudis
Pundits are already accusing the Saudis of conspiring to damage Democrats in the midterms after OPEC+ member states announced a steep cut in oil production earlier this month. It's just not fair, especially since Biden debased himself by bumping fists with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after promising to make the Saudi leader a "pariah."
8) The Federal Reserve
Ryan Cooper, managing editor of the left-wing American Prospect, responded to the Times poll by lashing out at the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates and "failing to contain inflation." Fed chairman Jerome Powell, he wrote on Twitter, was "going to hand Congress to the GOP" and lay the ground for Republicans to "abolish democracy" and "do a bunch of heinous gestapo shit" because "normie swing voters" were concerned about inflation.
7) The Lincoln Project
This would be giving the Lincoln Project too much credit, but a poor showing in the midterms might finally make Democrats angry enough to denounce these shameless grifters for raking in millions from liberal donors that might otherwise have gone to organizations that care about winning elections.
6) President Joe Biden
If Democrats get wiped out in November, expect more calls for Biden to leave office after one term. The president will turn 80 on Nov. 20, and a poor showing in the midterms will increase the likelihood that some ambitious young Democrats will start gunning for the party's nomination in 2024. That doesn't mean nominating someone like Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, or Kamala Harris would give them a better chance of winning, but Biden is too old and forcing him to run again would be a cruel form of elder abuse.
5) White women
Democrats losing control of Congress will inspire at least a dozen think pieces about how white women are complicit in the "dismantling of democracy" because they don't agree with Elizabeth Warren, a white woman who advanced her career by pretending to be Native American. The vast majority of these vacuous screeds will be written by white women pretending to be journalists.
4) The media
Democrats hate it when journalists report the facts without adding additional "context" about why Democrats are good and Republicans are bad. Last week, for example, they denounced an NBC News journalist for reporting that John Fetterman, a stroke victim and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, had trouble understanding her while conversing without the aid of a captioning device. Some critics accused NBC News of promoting "violence towards disabled people." Democrats will inevitably complain that mainstream outlets should have spent less time covering inflation, crime, and immigration—issues voters actually care about—as opposed to the January 6 hearings.
3) "Hispanic white supremacists"
If the Republican Party's share of the Hispanic vote continues to grow in 2022, journalists and other partisan Democrats will lose their minds. Expect to see an explosion of hot takes about how Hispanics who don't vote for Democrats are betraying their own community and imperiling democracy by embracing white supremacy.
2) "Jim Crow 2.0"
Stacey Abrams repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of her defeat in the Georgia gubernatorial election in 2018 and faced zero consequences from our media gatekeepers. She is almost certain to lose again this year, and hers probably won't be the only race in which pundits suggest Republicans won due to so-called voter suppression, or "Jim Eagle," in the words of our eloquent commander in chief.
1) The voters
The most predictable scapegoat. Some will suggest American voters were "duped" by so-called misinformation, which is just a polite way of saying their fellow Americans who don't have a fancy college degree are too stupid to think for themselves, or as one lib Twitter user responded to the Times poll showing a Republicans lead, "We are honestly just a dumb fucking species." Look out for hot takes about how Americans just voted to reinstitute slavery and create a real-life version of The Handmaid's Tale because they wanted cheaper gas and groceries.
UPDATE: Joy-Ann Reid, the "pro-democracy" journalist who hosts a low-rated show on MSNBC, never fails to deliver the goods:
It’s terrifying how many Americans will choose literal fascism, female serfdom, climate collapse and the reversal of everything from Social Security & Medicare to student loan relief bc they think giving Republicans the power to investigate Hunter Biden will bring down gas prices.
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