Baltimore’s former top prosecutor, Marilyn Mosby, was convicted of two counts of perjury Thursday after she had been accused of lying about her finances to withdraw money from her city retirement account under a program designed to help people struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic.
Mosby has been on trial this week in federal court in Maryland. Prosecutors said she falsely claimed to suffer from financial hardships to access $90,000 from retirement funds that she later used to buy two homes in Florida.
Mosby has denied wrongdoing, saying she didn’t defraud anyone.
Her trial was moved from Baltimore to Greenbelt after her lawyer argued that a jury in the city where Mosby was a controversial prosecutor would not be fair. Mosby became well-known nationally for charging six city police officers in the death of Freddie Gray in 2015. Gray died one week after being arrested by police following a foot chase in his neighborhood in April 2015. Mosby failed to convict any of the six.
In closing arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky stressed to jurors that “telling the truth and taking an oath matters.”
“We should not allow Ms. Mosby to lie under oath regardless of her position,” Zelinsky said.
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| The classic "prosecutor" pose |
An attorney for Mosby, federal public defender James Wyda, countered that Mosby started a travel business in 2019 while heading up the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office. Wyda said that the venture was devastated by the pandemic and that she properly obtained the relief funds by filling out required paperwork.
“This case is about a three-page form and what was in Marilyn Mosby’s mind when she filled it out,” Wyda said. “She qualified, and she reasonably believed she qualified.”
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Prosecutors asserted that Mahogany Elite was hardly a business and that it had no clients, no revenue and no records linked to setting up trips.
Mosby didn’t disclose the venture on her 2020 financial disclosure forms submitted when she was state’s attorney, according to prosecutors. And that same year, prosecutors added, Mosby’s spokeswoman told a news outlet, Baltimore Brew, that Mahogany Elite wouldn’t operate while she was in office.
If it wasn’t operating or bringing in money, prosecutors stressed to jurors, it couldn’t be hurt by the pandemic.
“I got a math problem for you,” prosecutor Sean Delaney told jurors. “What’s zero minus zero? Zero.”
If she could get her trial moved out of Baltimore because of potential jury bias, I can't see how Donald Trump can't get his trials moved out of D.C. and NYC, which would be far more biased against him.
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