New report accuses this Republican lawmaker's companies of evicting tenants during the pandemic

President Joe Biden has extended a federal moratorium on evictions through at least March 31, stressing that a pandemic is no time to be evicting tenants who are unable to pay their rent. But one politician who has no problem evicting tenants, according to the leftist publication Jacobin, is Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.

Jacobin's Emma Rindlisbacher notes that according to the Oklahoma Secretary of State website, Mullin, a Republican, and his wife Christie Mullin are heavily involved in real estate in Oklahoma — the congressman through his companies Mullin Properties LLC and Mullin Properties West Division LLC, and his wife through the company TC4 Investments.

Rindlisbacher notes that according to court documents obtained by David Sirota's the Daily Poster, "Mullin Properties filed an eviction notice on December 10 against two residents of an apartment in Moore, Oklahoma" due to "nonpayment of rent, fees, or other charges." And TC4 Investments, Rindlisbacher says, "filed an eviction notice against a resident of an apartment building in Pryor, Oklahoma on June 15, 2020" because of "nonpayment of rent, fees, or other charges."

Jacobin, according to Rindlisbacher, made "multiple requests for comment" from Rep. Mullin's office, which didn't respond to any of them.

Rindlisbacher points out that although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an eviction moratorium that went into effect last year on September 4, it has been "weakly enforced" and has "allowed evictions to continue despite the pandemic." The moratorium was extended to January 31, and Biden's order extended it again — this time, to March 31.

Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, told Jacobin, "The current CDC order requires tenants to file a declaration in order to have its protections. Few tenants understand this, and the CDC has made no efforts to educate the public."

Roller went on to say: "Evictions also increase homelessness and in many cases, force families to live in overcrowded conditions. In a time when we should all be limiting social contact, eviction forces people out into the open. New research has demonstrated that evictions lead to higher rates of transmission of COVID and result in deaths from the illness."

Rep. Mullin has drawn much criticism from Democrats for two of the things he did on Jan. 6: voting against certifying Biden's Electoral College victory in the 2020 presidential election, and refusing to wear a mask inside the U.S. Capitol Building when it was under siege by far-right extremists. Tulsa World has described the Oklahoma congressman as being "skeptical of masks' effectiveness in reducing COVID-19 risks."