BALTIMORE — Federal prosecutors shot back Friday afternoon against arguments raised by Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby last month, dismissing her claims of prejudiced prosecution as factually baseless and legally meritless.
Whereas lawyers for the city’s two-term prosecutor portrayed her as the victim of vindictive prosecutors in a series of defense motions filed in February, federal prosecutors say she’s assumed that role and attacked their credibility to distract from the allegations they brought against her.
“The defendant has invented a tale of victimhood in an attempt to deflect attention from her own behavior,” prosecutors wrote in a sweeping response to Mosby’s motion. “As the evidence at trial will show, the only thing the Defendant is a victim of is her own lies and choices.”
Federal prosecutors for the first time addressed Mosby’s allegations that Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise, who is leading the prosecution, and former acting U.S. Attorney Stephen Schenning harbored racial and personal animus against her and that U.S. Attorney Erek Barron has allowed the prosecution to continue because of a personal vendetta he has against her.
The prosecutors used pointed language to reject each of the allegations, doubled down on the evidence they have against Mosby and argued her lawyers could cite no law to suggest her case should be thrown out.
Mosby’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.
The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment beyond what was said in the filing.
The federal prosecutors’ lengthy filings come a day after they filed a superseding indictment against Mosby that added no new charges but provided further evidence for their case against her.
Mosby is charged with two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements on loan applications in order to purchase two Florida vacation homes: an eight-bedroom rental near Disney World and a condo on the state’s Gulf Coast.
Prosecutors claim Mosby lied in 2020 about experiencing financial hardship during the pandemic so she could withdraw $81,000 without penalty from her city of Baltimore retirement savings account to make down payments on the vacation homes.
Federal prosecutors also said she lied on the loan applications by failing to disclose a tax lien and claiming a house near Orlando was going to be a second home when she’d already lined up a company to run it as a rental, a maneuver to secure a lower interest rate.
“Without those two withdrawals, she would not have been able to make the down payment on either of the two Florida vacation homes she purchased in September 2020 and February 2021,” federal prosecutors wrote in the latest filing. “Simply put, the Defendant’s perjury allowed her to leverage $90,000 in funds she should not have had access to in order to get two vacation homes.”
Mosby and her lawyer, A. Scott Bolden, have publicly assailed federal prosecutors as being biased against her and filing frivolous charges. Mosby said she was targeted because they don’t approve of her policies and claimed the indictment was meant to prevent her from being reelected. The primary is June 28; Mosby has not filed to run yet, though she’s said she is.
Her defense formalized their public allegations into a legal argument last month. The pleading accused Barron of making a disparaging comment about Mosby while he was a lawmaker in Annapolis and highlighted Wise’s donations to some of Mosby’s opponents in the 2018 election.
Wise donated $100 to Thiru Vignarajah and Ivan Bates, Mosby’s 2018 primary opponents, according to campaign finance records. Wise admits as much in Friday’s filings, but claims both candidates solicited the money. Vignarajah and Bates both submitted letters attached to the filing acknowledging they sought out Wise for the donations.
“(Mosby’s) theory appears to be that (Assistant U.S. Attorney) Wise made these contributions because he thought $200 could change the outcome of a city-wide (election) and then, when he was unsuccessful, he lay in wait for three years in order to launch a ‘witch hunt’ targeting the defendant,” prosecutors wrote. “Somehow, although the defendant never addresses how, (Assistant U.S. Attorney) Wise then convinced the FBI, the IRS, the Tax Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, his two colleagues on the prosecution team, and not one but three U.S. Attorneys from two different administrations to go along with it.”
Prosecutors called Mosby’s claim that Wise hoped to undermine her chances of reelection by donating to political opponents “laughable,” writing that the small nature of the donations would have no impact on the outcome of the election.
The U.S. attorney’s office also took issue with Mosby’s claims of a racially motivated prosecution, seeming to dismiss the claim by writing: “The appointment and confirmation of United States Attorney Erek Barron obviously scrambled the Defendant’s false assertion that she is being prosecuted because she is a progressive Black Democrat.”
But Mosby claimed Barron is also out to get her, including a declaration from a woman who claimed she heard Barron make disparaging remarks about Mosby when Barron served as a Maryland Delegate.
The author of the declaration works at Baltimore City Hall for Nick Mosby, the city council president and Marilyn’s husband. Prosecutors say the declaration is obviously biased in favor of the defense and also dispute the accuracy of its contents.
Mosby is currently scheduled for trial on May 2 in Baltimore’s U.S. District Court.
———
