Forget It Jake, It's Baltimore

Twitchy, Prosecutors seek nearly five years in prison for former Baltimore mayor over ‘Healthy Holly’ book scam

This story really hasn’t gotten a lot of traction, but it really is something. If you missed Twitchy’s previous coverage, former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh made a killing on sales of her self-published “Healthy Holly” children’s books; for example, she sold 100,000 copies at a total cost of $500,000 to the University of Maryland Medical System, on whose board she was sitting at the time. Also, the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund puchased $7,500 worth of copies shortly before Pugh successfully sponsored legislation sought by the company.

More? Kaiser Permanente, which was seeking a city contract, also purchased more than $100,000 worth of the mayor’s self-published books, and a local nonprofit that won a big city contract just happened to purchase $87,000 worth. But when reporters tried to track down copies of this amazing best-selling series, they found 8,700 unsolicited and unopened boxes of “Health Holly” books at a decrepit Baltimore School District Warehouse.

Pugh eventually resigned after the scandal broke, and now federal prosecutors are asking for nearly five years in prison for the former mayor.

Pugh’s “personal inventory" of Healthy Holly books never exceeded 8,216 copies, prosecutors say. But through a three-dimensional scheme, they say, she was able to resell 132,116 copies for a total of $859,960. https://t.co/ZqZ0bZJr6G

— Colin Campbell ☀️ (@cmcampbell6) February 13, 2020

Some corruption is too much even for Democrats.