BALTIMORE — Marilyn Mosby’s federal perjury and mortgage fraud trial likely will be delayed a third time, according to a court filing Friday.
Federal Public Defender James Wyda met with prosecutors and determined he would not be able to be ready for trial until June 6 at the earliest, according to the filing. Mosby’s trial was scheduled to begin March 27.
Given the filing, U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby is expected to set a scheduling conference and pick a new trial date.
Griggsby appointed Wyda to represent Mosby on Jan. 27 after allowing her entire six-attorney defense team to quit the case. The public defender’s office is appointed when a criminal defendant is found to be indigent, meaning they cannot afford to hire legal counsel on their own.
Mosby’s former lead defense attorney, A. Scott Bolden, left the case because Griggsby found he had violated the Maryland rules governing attorney conduct and procedures, and threatened to hold Bolden in criminal contempt of court. That still-pending issue is separate from Mosby’s criminal case.
Baltimore state’s attorney for eight years, Mosby left office at the end of 2022 making an annual salary of about $250,000. However, Griggsby determined over the summer Mosby qualified for government assistance to help afford expert witness testimony, ordering her to pay it back over time.
Prosecutors charged Mosby with two counts each of perjury and mortgage fraud. Federal prosecutors claim she lied about experiencing adverse financial conditions in 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic in order to make two early withdrawals from her city-managed retirement account. She used the money she withdrew, about $80,000, to make down payments on two Florida vacation properties: An eight-bedroom rental near Disney World and a condo on the Gulf Coast.
Prosecutors claim Mosby failed to disclose a federal tax lien against her and her husband on both mortgage applications, lied about her intended use for the Disney-area home, and lied about having lived in Florida when purchasing the condo.
Mosby has always maintained her innocence and claimed she is the target of a racist and politically vindictive prosecution. Griggsby issued a gag order in January that prohibited any of Mosby’s lawyers from making those claims, with Griggsby writing that she had found no evidence to support them during an April 2022 hearing on the subject.
While a new trial date has not been set, a postponement is imminent. In April 2022, the defense asked for a continuance on the grounds that too much evidence had been turned over close to the start of trial, and they could not be prepared, despite initially demanding a speedy trial.
In September, prosecutors asked for their own postponement, citing the defense’s failure to fully turn over expert witness testimony under a timeline Griggsby established. That continuance prompted Bolden to use profanity on the courthouse steps when speaking at a news conference, and is part of why Griggsby is seeking to hold him in criminal contempt.
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