On Thursday, Baltimore City State Attorney Marilyn Mosby was federally indicted on allegations of perjury and making a false statement on a loan application.
According to FOX 45 Baltimore, “Mosby is accused of lying about experiencing COVID-related hardship on an application where she asked to withdraw $40,000 from her Baltimore City retirement account.”
The indictment asserts that Mosby was not under any actual financial hardship due to COVID-19.
“She is also charged with making false statements to influence a mortgage company, in connection with a vacation home in Florida,” the local media outlet added. “She allegedly failed to disclose that she owed ‘significant amounts of federal taxes’ on a mortgage application.”
The Washington Post reported that she is accused of using COVID-19 funds to purchase two Florida rental homes:
Mosby received the money, the indictment alleges, then used it to purchase two properties in Florida — a home in Kissimmee and a condo in Long Boat Key.
On those charges relating to mortgage applications, she allegedly neglected to note that she “had unpaid federal taxes or that in March 2020 the Internal Revenue Service had placed a $45,000 lien against all properties she and her husband owned, according to the indictment.”
Mosby was elected as State Attorney in 2014 and then re-elected in 2018. She has served as what could be characterized as a “rogue prosecutor” during much of her time in office.
“Last year, she announced she would stop prosecuting certain misdemeanor cases, including prostitution and drug possession,” The Washington Post reported. “She said it was part of a shift to keep jails from overcrowding during the pandemic.”
In response, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) has criticized Mosby, recently telling Fox News that she was a “big part of the problem” of rising crime in Maryland.
“We have a prosecutor in Baltimore City who refuses to prosecute violent criminals and that’s at the root of the problem,” he said.
Just this week, a Republican and pastor in Baltimore named Shannon Wright criticized Mosby for refusing to prosecute crimes like prostitution.
“There used to be a time, and some folks may not like this phrase, but there’s a thing called ‘Black excellence,’ where we strove as parents to instill it in our children, where as teachers we strove to instill it in our students,” Wright said. “It was something that — not mediocrity, not baseline, when you set a goal to say ‘we don’t want to hurt folk by unfairly prosecuting these crimes,’ these lead to other crimes, these escalate. And for those that want to argue that fact, seventh straight year, 300+ homicides. The officer just laid to rest yesterday, our children still not getting a proper education, we’re in a situation where, in our schools, [we have] learning loss whether you’re in the building or not.”
“No parent is going to look at these things as low level crime, and I tell you why,” Wright added in response to Mosby’s prosecutorial stance. “When you’re a good parent, you spend time with your children, you start to discipline them. They understand, when I say this, this is what you have to do. When that doesn’t happen, there’s a punishment. That’s a foundational example that we set with our children when they are young. So when you become a prosecutor, and you have a larger scope to be able to set that foundation of what is acceptable and what is not, and you choose to send the wrong message, you cannot then cry foul when people say you are the cause of the problems with regard to crime that we are seeing.”
Wright also said the city needed “prosecutors to prosecute because they have to be that line of defense where people understand if there is an issue that’s causing you to act outside of the way you should, we’re going to get you help.”
“Marilyn Mosby is that last line of defense to make people follow the normal, accepted community values and morals, and the law, and when she abdicates that role, it leads to anarchy and unrest like we’re seeing in the city,” she added.
Now, Mosby may wind up heading to prison herself if she is found guilty on the charges she has been indicted on by the federal government.