Ellin joins WBAL to talk cover up scandal, host Jeremy Eldridge slams Shoemaker for Sun comment

The Ellin vs. Shoemaker plot continues to thicken

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On Saturday, Carroll County state’s attorney candidate David Ellin joined Jeremy Eldridge on WBAL NewsRadio to discuss a story previously reported by The Baltimore Banner, revealing how county prosecutors and the sheriff’s office allegedly covered up officer misconduct. 

The misconduct at issue came when sheriff’s deputy Sean Buenger applied for a search warrant claiming he had done a trash search at a residence that, as it turns out, was a false address fed to him by state troopers who suspected Buenger of ethical malfeasance. 

The alleged cover up occurred when public defenders requested disclosures regarding any potential credibility issues on the part of Buenger, but his phony warrant application was left unmentioned by the sheriff’s office – an apparent breach of what is called the Brady rule.   

Now the county’s four circuit court judges are unwilling to hear cases from acting state’s attorney Allan Culver, who had been made aware of the issue with Buenger but considered it just a rumor, before asking sheriff Jim DeWees to further investigate.      

Electorally speaking, all this bodes well for Ellin who is challenging a tenured political office holder in Haven Shoemaker, who boasts a well publicized endorsement from DeWees in addition to a close association with him.

But that endorsement has lost much of its shine as a result of this scandal, to put it mildly. 

When Shoemaker was contacted by The Baltimore Sun about the occurrence, he reacted by saying it was “not optimal” before asking that judgment not be rushed to before all the facts were in. 

But the “not optimal” portion of the quote drew the ire of Eldridge, who “found it troubling” and proceeded to criticize Shoemaker for not reacting more strongly.     

When Ellin joined, he somewhat sarcastically equated the situation to being like if Ukrainians were to say it was not optimal that their country was being invaded by Russia, which Eldridge called a fair analogy with a chuckle in his voice.    

Ellin continued by saying that this was “about as serious as it gets” and shouted out assistant state’s attorney Jennifer Brady who brought the entire situation to light, before underscoring the legal necessity for prosecutors to disclose any potentially exculpatory information, which did not happen in this case.

He also expressed the importance of a relationship between police and prosecutors that is one of partnership but healthy separation, which in his view would not be possible if Shoemaker were to become the state’s attorney with Dewees, his political ally, still being sheriff. 

The contest between Ellin and Shoemaker has been an intense one, and this scandal, that has the potential to continue to unravel, only thickens the plot. 

Maryland Muckraker is a completely independent and fearlessly conservative blog covering local issues by me, Ethan Reese. After spending nearly a decade in corporate Baltimore in marketing technology, figured I’d have a go at writing. Since then I’ve contributed articles to FOX’s OutKick, PJ Media, and Rare Politics, as well as being named a Writing Fellow with the America’s Future Foundation.