Baltimore's top prosecutor pleads not guilty on federal perjury charges

[February 05, 2022]  By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) - Baltimore's top prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, pleaded not guilty on Friday to federal charges of perjury and making false statements on loan applications stemming from her purchase of two Florida vacation homes.

Mosby, the Baltimore city state's attorney since 2015, has said she is innocent of wrongdoing and the victim of a politically motivated prosecution by adversaries in the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office trying to smear her as she runs for a third term.

Online court records showed Mosby entered not guilty pleas to all four counts contained in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury on Jan. 13.

During a 15-minute arraignment before a federal magistrate in Baltimore, Mosby answered several perfunctory questions and told the judge, "Your honor, I would plead not guilty to all four counts," according to The Washington Post.

Mosby is accused of twice falsely claiming to have suffered a work-related financial hardship from COVID-19 in order to request two early withdrawals totaling $90,000 from her city employee retirement account.

Prosecutors said Mosby, 42, used that money - $36,000 in May 2020 and $45,000 on Dec. 31 of that year - toward down payments on two vacation homes in Florida, in Kissimmee and Long Boat Key.

The two counts of perjury stem from Mosby's allegedly false statements of coronavirus-related financial duress at a time when she was earning a gross annual salary of nearly $248,000 in full, according to the indictment.

Baltimore state attorney Marilyn Mosby speaks on recent violence and says there is "probable casue to file criminal charges in the Freddie Gray case" of officers involved in the arrest of the black man who later died of injuries he sustained while in custody in Baltimore, Maryland May 1, 2015. REUTERS/Adrees Latif/File Photo

She is also charged with two counts of making false statements on mortgage applications seeking a total of more than $900,000 in loans to buy the Florida properties. The indictment says Mosby failed to disclose federal tax delinquencies resulting in a $45,000 lien imposed by the Internal Revenue Service in 2020.

Her lawyer has said Mosby was unaware of a "tax lien issue" at the time.

Mosby said political opponents "have had a target on my back" since she made national headlines in 2015 by filing criminal charges against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray, a young Black man who suffered a fatal spinal injury while being transported in the back of a police van. None of the six officers charged in his death was convicted.

Mosby, whose husband, Nick Mosby, is president of the Baltimore City Council, ran for office as a part of a movement of "progressive prosecutors" promising to address systemic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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