October 16, 2024 03:42 PM UTC

Aurora Slumlord "Crisis Comms" Now Shilling For Trump Too?

• 1 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As readers who have been following the summerlong controversy over wildly exaggerated election-year rumors that the city of Aurora has been “conquered” by migrant gangs are aware, much of the story concerns several apartment buildings operated by one property management company CBZ Management, a company that has been out of compliance with city code on a host of maintenance and safety issues at their Aurora properties years before the “takeover” of the city became a fashionable talking point. City officials up to and including the city’s GOP Mayor Mike Coffman have consistently stated that these buildings were suffering from negligent maintenance, and residents almost all say they are more afraid of their own management’s neglect than crime. In August, one of the buildings was shut down by the city due to unsafe conditions caused by lack of maintenance.

In mid-September, the New York Times published an in-depth story that uncovered new details about how CBZ Management pitched the excuse of the supposed “takeover” of their properties with a message from Sarah Lattman, a public relations specialist the company had recently hired:

In July 2024, the landlord, CBZ Management, which says it is based in Colorado and Brooklyn, offered a new argument for why it couldn’t repair the buildings: Venezuelan gangs had taken over, and the property managers had been forced to flee…

On Aug, 5, a public relations agent, Sara Lattman, hired by CBZ, pitched a “tip” to the local Fox television network affiliate in Denver. [Pols emphasis]

“An apartment building and its owners in Aurora, Colorado have become the most recent victims of the Venezuelan Gang Tren de Aragua’s violence, which has taken over several communities in the Denver area,” she wrote on Fox 31’s tip line, according to an email obtained by The Times. “The residents and building owners of these properties have been left in a state of fear and chaos.”

Lattman is an account manager for the “crisis communications” public relations firm Red Banyan, whose client history ranges from disgraced former Ohio Republican congressional candidate J.R. Majewski to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Majewski paid Red Banyan at least $30,000 in the fall of 2022 while unsuccessfully defending himself from allegations he had lied about his war service. Banyan advertises itself as a company specializing in “crisis communications, corporate public relations, government relations, and legal PR” with the goal of “solving complex, highly sensitive and mission-critical communications challenges.”

The story Red Banyan and CBZ planted of a foreign gang “takeover” as an excuse for not maintaining their run-down properties in Colorado became a national talking point for Donald Trump and Republicans determined to hype tales of an “invasion” for electoral advantage. When that happened, suddenly Red Banyan and CBZ were on the hook for much more than a slumlord looking to get out of maintenance. Now, their excuse for not doing repairs has ballooned into Trump’s tale of a whole city overrun by “the most violent people on earth” with the entire state close behind.

That could be why, as Denver7 reports, CBZ Management is suddenly engaged in a major social media PR campaign in the wake of Trump’s visit to Colorado last week, ostensibly under its own brand:

CBZ Management, which operates 11 apartment complexes in Colorado including a trio of troubled buildings in Aurora that have been thrust into the national conversation around immigration politics, is doubling down on its claims of a Venezuelan gang takeover on a newly-created social media account.

A new account on the social media site X, formerly Twitter, surfaced last month and posted for the first time Friday. CBZ Management has since added the link to the account on its website and publicly claimed the account on Monday.

A flurry of weekend posts from the account alleged that gangs had taken over multiple of the company’s Aurora buildings, marking the most public chapter of what has become a months-long back-and-forth between the apartment manager and the city.

To be clear, the timeline of events as recited by this Twitter account doesn’t match up any better now than it did a year ago. CBZ Management’s properties have been blighted for years before the recent surge in migration became a headline issue. Furthermore, CBZ’s properties in Aurora are not all in the same location, making it even more improbable that gang members looking to “take over” apartment buildings would target their properties exclusively.

Can we say for sure that Red Banyan’s scope of work has now formally expanded to backing up Trump’s false claims in the presidential race? Not without seeing them on somebody’s expense report. But at this point, the exact same misinformation CBZ Management is using to cover its backside under sanction from the city of Aurora for longstanding code violations is being used by Donald Trump to frighten his voters to the polls.

The slumlord and Trump have a common interest in their “crisis PR” winning the news cycle.