Baltimore’s Democratic machine attacks Isabel Cumming for doing the one thing they won’t: taking accountability
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming made a mistake last weekend. She shared a third-party YouTube video on her personal Facebook page that contained a satirical, AI-generated image of Mayor Brandon Scott — a cartoon rendering depicting him with cash, luxury goods, and a cigar. She says she did not notice the image when sharing the post and does not endorse it. She removed it when people pointed it out. And then she did something that has become almost unrecognizable in Baltimore’s Democratic political establishment: she took accountability.
Her formal statement read: “I apologize to Mayor Scott, my dedicated OIG team, and the residents of Baltimore City. This post detracted from the important mission of the OIG to investigate waste, financial abuse and fraud. It will not happen again.”
Full stop. No spin. No blaming a staffer. No press release buried on a Friday afternoon. Just a public official owning a public mistake on official letterhead.
The response from Maryland’s Democratic machine was immediate — and revealing.
Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson declared the apology insufficient, posting on X that it was “fine for personal redemption” but “not sufficient professionally under the circumstances.” He argued that sharing content targeting a sitting mayor had “undermined public trust in an office built on impartiality.”
Think about that framing for a moment. The Senate President of Maryland — who has done nothing to protect Cumming’s ability to actually investigate — is now the arbiter of whether her apology clears the professional bar. The same Bill Ferguson whose General Assembly just watched legislation die that would have protected inspectors general across Maryland from exactly the kind of obstruction Cumming is facing right now.
Political analyst John Dedie put it plainly: “I think he’s piling on in a lot of ways, and I think he’s doing it for political reasons.” Dedie also noted that “lawmakers are all for Inspectors General until they’re inspecting them.”
That’s the story the media is mostly missing. This social media flap didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened while Cumming is in an active court battle to do her job — a battle she is currently winning.
Lawmakers are all for Inspectors General until they’re inspecting them.
The Real Story
Cumming found that at least two contractors overbilled Baltimore by thousands of dollars and submitted fraudulent invoices while being paid from a $694,000 taxpayer-funded pool to help troubled youth through the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. Her office obtained original invoices from one company showing the actual cost was far less than what was billed to the city.
When she tried to follow that money with a subpoena, she got back roughly 200 pages with critical information blacked out. Her access to city records was then abruptly cut off.
In February, Cumming filed a lawsuit in Circuit Court seeking a declaration confirming her office’s independence and subpoena authority under the city charter. “For anyone to say this hasn’t weakened my office,” she said publicly, “this has devastated my office… we can’t do our job.”
The Scott administration’s legal counterargument is breathtaking in its audacity. City lawyers argued in court that the inspector general’s subpoena power “can only be read to apply to entities outside of city government” — meaning the office voters twice empowered to investigate City Hall cannot actually investigate City Hall.
The judge wasn’t buying it. Baltimore Circuit Court Judge Pamela J. White said from the bench that the watchdog office’s ability to enforce subpoenas had been “not just debated, but crushed by the decision-making of the solicitor’s office.” She described an “irreconcilable conflict” of interest between city lawyers and the inspector general.
The irony is rich: a senior Scott administration official once argued the exact opposite position, writing in an email that requiring the OIG to “request or wait for access to systems or data would create an undue burden on the OIG investigative process and undermine the mission of the OIG.” The Scott administration asked a judge to seal that email from public view.
Accountability Is a One-Way Street
Mayor Scott says he believes Cumming knew the image was AI-generated. “Anybody that looks at that image knows it was AI,” he told reporters. “You would have to be a blind 90-year-old person to not know that’s AI.”
He may be right. He may be wrong. That’s a fair question to ask. But notice what the mayor did not say: that the underlying concerns about MONSE spending are unfounded. That the invoices weren’t altered. That the redacted documents don’t exist.
The mayor’s chief of staff called the image “deeply inappropriate, misleading, damaging, and racist” — and then turned around and used that characterization to raise questions about whether Cumming can “bring fairness and objectivity” to her investigative work. The message from City Hall is clear: embarrass us, and we will use that embarrassment to justify the obstruction we were already engaged in.
Baltimore voters amended the city charter in 2018 and again in 2022 — the second time by an 87% margin — specifically to insulate the OIG from exactly this kind of political pressure. The voters of Baltimore created an independent watchdog and empowered her to go after fraud regardless of who is in the mayor’s chair. The Scott administration is litigating against the expressed will of those voters.
Ferguson, meanwhile, had the power to help. A bill that would have clarified inspectors general’s records access across Maryland died in the legislature this session without his support.
What Actually Happened Here
An independent watchdog shared a video she probably should have looked at more carefully before posting it on her personal Facebook page. She acknowledged that, apologized for it, and moved on. The people whose spending she is investigating responded by filing an ethics complaint, attacking her credibility publicly, and weaponizing the incident to cast doubt on a lawsuit she is winning.
And the Senate President of Maryland — silent when the administration was shredding the OIG’s subpoena authority — found his voice just long enough to say the apology wasn’t good enough.
Cumming made a careless mistake. The Scott administration and their allies in the Democratic establishment are exploiting that mistake to run out the clock on a fraud investigation. Only one of those things threatens the residents of Baltimore City.
Accountability, as Cumming’s own statement noted, starts with her. The question now is whether it will ever start with anyone else.
Sources: The Baltimore Banner; The Baltimore Sun; CBS Baltimore (WJZ); Fox 45/WBFF; WYPR; The Daily Record; Baltimore Brew; Circuit Court for Baltimore City filings, Cumming v. City of Baltimore; public statements from Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming, Mayor Brandon Scott, Chief of Staff J.D. Merrill, Senate President Bill Ferguson, political analyst John Dedie, and attorneys Anthony May and Mark Stichel.
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