Prosecutors Say Marilyn Mosby ‘Lacks Honesty With The Public’ Amid Calls To Pardon Ex-Baltimore State’s Attorney

May 21, 2024 3

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Federal prosecutor pushed back against growing calls for Marilyn Mosby to receive a presidential pardon by claiming in a court filing that Baltimore’s former top prosecutor deserves to go to prison in part for showing no remorse following her mortgage fraud conviction earlier this year.

The prosecutors’ court filing came one week before Mosby was scheduled to be sentenced.

Mosby, 44, who served as the State’s Attorney for Baltimore from 2015 to 2022, is facing 40 years in prison. However, it’s doubtful that she would receive such a sentence as federal prosecutors have asked for a sentence of at least 20 months.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said a full pardon application for Mosby was submitted on Tuesday to the U.S. Department of Justice. Crump and others advocating for Mosby’s pardon have said that the former State’s Attorney for Baltimore is the victim of retaliatory efforts by political adversaries who resented her work holding the police accountable, like with the infamous Freddie Gray case.

“The persecution of Black female progressive prosecutors is indicative of a disturbing trend that should have ended with the last administration. But yet, here we are,” Crump said in a statement sent to NewsOne. “Marilyn Mosby will be sentenced later this month, and is facing a staggering 40 years in federal prison. Not only were the charges in this case completely trumped up, as Marilyn was accused of using money from her own retirement account, but this entire case is driven by a political agenda. President Biden, we implore you to not follow in the treacherous steps of your predecessor. Put an end to this modern day witch hunt and immediately pardon Marilyn Mosby.”

But CBS News reported that the federal prosecutors pushed back against those notions and claimed in their court filing that “Mosby has repeatedly and publicly demonstrated that she accepts no responsibility for her actions, has no respect for this court’s rulings and lacks honesty with the public and candor before this court.”

Calls for Marilyn Mosby’s pardon grow

Crump is joined by more than 50 other attorneys – including notable names like Angela Rye, Bakari Sellers and Harry Daniels – who echo that sentiment he expressed in his statement and signed the pardon application for Mosby.

Elie Mystal, the attorney who is also a columnist for the Nation, recently wrote that “Mosby’s case is special” and that she is the victim of a “wrongful prosecution.”

Writer Dayvon Love penned this week a piece of commentary in Afro about Mosby’s pending sentencing and similarly noted that the “federal prosecution and conviction of Marilyn Mosby is an act of the law enforcement establishment punishing her for taking stances against their racist policy positions on criminal justice issues.”

Those opinions from Love, Mystal and the dozens of aforementioned attorneys came on the heels of an open letter to Biden sent by more than a dozen civil rights organizations, including the NAACP, appealing to the president to pardon Mosby.

“Ms. Mosby’s focus on accountability and racial equity raised the ire of highly placed officials including the U.S. Attorney General and other law enforcement officials,” the letter states in part before adding later: “Mosby [in 2020] vowed to prosecute any federal agents who engaged in unlawful actions against Baltimore citizens. Two months later, Attorney Mosby learned she was under federal investigation, a move widely perceived as retaliation for her courageous stance in protecting her constituents’ constitutional rights.”

The letter suggests that timing is not coincidental and said Mosby was “wrongfully convicted.”

The letter also adds: “We expect that political persecutions and malicious prosecutions pursued during the Trump Administration would not continue in the Biden Administration. Ms. Mosby’s case is not the only one–it is the latest and one of the most egregious cases. This matter should be corrected because it is a miscarriage of justice and an example of the last administration’s misuse of authority.”

Mosby’s defense attorneys, for their part, have been pushing for their client to only be sentenced to probation instead of prison time.

Mosby’s sentencing hearing is scheduled to be held on May 23.

What happened to Marilyn Mosby?

Mosby was originally hit with four felony counts in 2022 related to allegations centered on a withdrawal from her own retirement fund in 2020. The exact language of the indictment alleged that Mosby “willfully and knowingly” lied about experiencing “adverse financial consequences stemming from the Coronavirus” and that she intentionally lied on a loan application because she was in arrears to the IRS.

Specifically, Mosby was accused of taking out $40,000 from her 401K because she had a financial hardship caused by the pandemic. The Baltimore Sun reported at the time that Mosby earned a $10,000 pay raise that year to bring her annual salary up to $248,000. After she withdrew $36,000, Mosby used it for a down payment on a property in Florida that she said would be a second home in an effort to lower interest rates, the indictment claimed.

Mosby’s lawyer when she was initially charged claimed the indictment was the result of a political witch hunt and that the charges were “rooted in personal, political and racial animus” while she was seeking reelection just months before Election Day — claims that her federal public defender maintained during the trial that was relocated from Baltimore to Greenbelt in Prince George’s County, a suburb of Washington, D.C.

The federal investigation began in 2021 and was initially focused on Mosby and her husband, then-Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, for potential campaign finance violations. At the time, it was reported that subpoenas were being issued for the couple’s financial information and an investigation into their alleged link to city churches.

In particular, Union Baptist Church in Baltimore was subpoenaed and its lawyer said at the time that investigators wanted to know how much money the Mosbys give to the house of worship.

“I spend more monthly at Starbucks than the Mosbys gave during the time period,” said Robert Fulton Dashiell, the attorney representing the Mosbys back then, adding that the total was less than $200.

Around the same time, independent news outlet the Baltimore Brew published a report claiming then-State’s Attorney Mosby “paid $11,000 to a Washington law firm that acted on [her] personal behalf, which is a prohibited practice under Maryland election law.”

There have been a number of previous instances where the Mosbys found their actions under heightened scrutiny, including suspicions of campaign finance violations when it came to receiving gifts, paying taxes and traveling, for example. However, none of the accusations have ever been proven.

Mosby was also convicted in November for committing perjury by making false statements on a COVID-19 loan application during the pandemic. In that case, Mosby was found guilty of two counts, with each count carrying a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Mosby first rose to national prominence during the uproar over the in-custody death of Freddie Gray, a Black man who was arrested in Baltimore for possession of a small pen knife in 2015. He died in transport under questionable circumstances. Mosby called for the indictment of six city cops but ultimately dropped the charges against the remaining three officers involved. Mosby faced tough criticism after the three other officers involved were found not guilty.

Mosby called for system reform after the failure to find any criminal involvement in Gray’s death.

“We know that Freddie Gray did not kill himself,” she said at the time and stood by the medical examiner’s determination that his death was a homicide.

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