From ‘held up high’ to guilty: Marilyn Mosby’s fall from grace

When a federal grand jury indicted Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby on perjury and mortgage fraud charges, she railed against the allegations during a defiant appearance in front of the powerful office she’d held then for seven years.

Mosby claimed that day in January 2022 that she was being persecuted for disrupting the status quo as a progressive prosecutor. Her legal team at the time adopted those claims, adding allegations that a racist federal government was pursuing the case because of its animus for her, in unsuccessful requests to dismiss the charges.

With trial approaching this year, a new set of attorneys waged legal battles to have her case moved from federal court in Baltimore, where she held office, to Greenbelt, where she hoped for a more sympathetic pool of jurors, and to have her perjury and mortgage fraud charges tried separately. The presiding judge ruled in Mosby’s favor on both matters, finding such precautions would ensure her right to a fair trial.

Mosby walked into a courtroom Monday and faced a jury of her peers during a trial that put a magnifying glass to her personal finances and conflicting public statements. The panel, predominantly women and majority African American, found her guilty Thursday of both counts of perjury, determining she lied about suffering financial hardship from the coronavirus pandemic to take money from her retirement savings for a pair of properties in Florida worth $1 million.

Mosby, once acclaimed as the youngest chief prosecutor in a major American city, now stands convicted of federal crimes.

“It’s sad for the city, as well as sad for her, because you just don’t like to see publicity regarding the city of another elected official being convicted of a crime,” said University of Baltimore President Kurt L. Schmoke, who previously served as the city’s state’s attorney and mayor, in an interview. “It hurts not only her and her family, but the community.”

Mosby rose to national renown shortly after taking office when she indicted city officers with crimes related to Freddie Gray’s 2015 death from injuries sustained in police custody. None of those charges ended in convictions, but Mosby remained a polarizing figure in Baltimore throughout her tenure as state’s attorney because of her policies, like discontinuing the prosecution of petty crimes.

“She branded herself as a progressive prosecutor, and a progressive prosecutor by definition is taking a side,” said Patrick Seidel, a defense attorney who worked as an assistant state’s attorney under Mosby. “She took that position and I’m sure made a lot of friends through that attitude, but she also made a lot of enemies. Her supporters are going to say [the convictions are] ridiculous and outrageous, but her enemies are going to say she got what she deserved.”

But where a Baltimorean stands on Mosby’s actions might not align with what they thought of the politician.

“A lot of people, even her supporters, have a lot of anger that she would engage in something so reckless and needless,” said defense attorney Warren A. Brown, who has stood by Mosby’s side during some of the most trying times of her career. “People were like, ‘We held you up high, and then you engaged in this petty deceit — and it was needless.’”

Brown said in an interview that he warned Mosby soon after she took office that she should expect extra scrutiny as a young, Black politician who set out to effect change.

After reporters started asking questions about Mosby’s personal businesses, the then-state’s attorney requested an investigation by Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming, to absolve her of any wrongdoing. Cumming released a report in 2021 outlining the findings of a seven-month investigation, determining that Mosby spent 144 days away from Baltimore in 2018 and 2019, and that she did not seek approval from the Board of Estimates for that travel.

The report also identified that Mosby sought to deduct $5,000 in losses associated with her businesses on her 2019 federal tax returns. Mosby, according to the report, provided records indicating she spent $7,651.27 directly related to her companies. But “despite numerous requests” from the inspector general, Mosby did not clarify which transactions comprised her $5,000 reported business loss.

A forensic accountant with the FBI testified during her trial that Mosby double-counted expenses incurred in her personal life or in her capacity as state’s attorney, as the costs of operating her portfolio of businesses, which were organized under the holding company Mahogany Elite Enterprises.

The jury found that Mosby lied about experiencing an “adverse financial consequence” because of the coronavirus to make herself eligible for a pair of early withdrawals from her city retirement savings under the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. Mosby used the approximately $80,000 to close on a pair of properties in Florida: an eight-bedroom rental near Disney World and a condo on the state’s Gulf Coast.

Her convictions follow those of former mayors Catherine Pugh and Sheila Dixon, as well as police commissioners Darryl De Sousa and Edward T. Norris, but some supporters distinguish her conduct from past officials found guilty of crimes.

“What she was charged with was basically taking her own money, so it’s not like she was caught with her hand in the public treasury, taking money from other people,” Schmoke said.

At trial, Mosby’s lawyers weren’t allowed to refer to the retirement funds as “her money,” because the law considered it the property of her employer. Instead, they focused their defense on the argument she qualified for pandemic relief because the health crisis prevented her businesses from taking off.

The FBI accountant testified she couldn’t have afforded the properties without taking the money she obtained from her CARES Act withdrawals, and that Mosby’s businesses actually may have made money during the pandemic because of the $5,000 tax deduction identified by Cumming.

Two years after her investigation, Cumming said Friday that the subsequent convictions are evidence “there are checks and balances in government, and there is oversight.”

“In the end, it’s important to let our justice system play out,” said Cumming, who also called it a “sad day” for the public. “We put our trust in our elected officials.”

In addition to perjury, Mosby’s indictment charged her with two counts of mortgage fraud.

Prosecutors say she duped mortgage brokers by failing to disclose a tax debt and by claiming she intended the house as a second home, when she’d already had lined up a company to run it as a rental, to secure a lower interest rate.

Jurors at her trial heard evidence of Mosby’s real estate search, which began with COVID-19 bearing down on America, in the spring of 2020. Mosby’s salary of about $250,000 was unaffected by the pandemic, even as many of her employees at the state’s attorney’s office experienced furloughs.

Around that time, she sent a text message to a real estate agent, saying she wanted to “capitalize on the uncertainty of the market.” Her search for property began in Baltimore but ended in Florida.

Thousands of dollars short on the closing costs for the two Florida properties she wanted, Mosby turned to the administrator of her city retirement savings account, Nationwide, inquiring about loans and withdrawals.

“I’m trying to close on a house,” Mosby began a call with a Nationwide representative, about two weeks before she paid for the house near Disney World, in September 2020.

The mortgage fraud charges are pending. A second trial has not been scheduled yet.

Sentencing for Mosby’s perjury convictions hasn’t been scheduled, and likely won’t be until the attorneys decide how to proceed with the mortgage fraud charges, according to legal experts. Each perjury conviction carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, with mortgage fraud sentences capping out at 10 years per count. Defendants rarely face the maximum in federal court.

Federal judges deciding a person’s punishment consider a plethora of factors, such as their criminal record, personal background, health, financial welfare, and acceptance of responsibility, as well as the nature of the crimes they were convicted of and the cost of the fraud. Even if prosecutors chose not to pursue the mortgage fraud case, the law allows them to bring up those charges, or other past conduct they believe is relevant, at sentencing.

Given the “high profile, political nature of the case, her resistance to the case, fighting, all the stuff she did at the beginning,” Seidel said, “I don’t see how she’s not going to go to jail.”

That’s not to mention Mosby’s law license, which legal experts expect to be stripped away.

Maryland rules for lawyers say the state Attorney Grievance Commission’s bar counsel is supposed to notify the Supreme Court of Maryland on an emergency basis when they learn that a lawyer has been convicted of a crime, regardless of whether there is a pending appeal, asking for that lawyer to be immediately suspended from practicing law. The high court has several options, including disbarment.

Rules of professional conduct hold attorneys to a high ethical standard, and a federal judge might consider that a factor in favor of imposing a stiffer sentence for Mosby, said Natalie Finegar, a Baltimore defense attorney. In federal court, sentencing guidelines are “cautionary,” not mandatory, and the fact that Mosby was in a position of public trust could lead a judge to hand out a sentence above the guidelines, Finegar said.

“As an attorney, when I sign documents I know there’s an expectation that I have a deeper understanding than a layperson of what I’m signing,” Finegar said.

Over Mosby’s eight years at the helm of the State’s Attorney’s Office, her signature appeared on countless indictments and legal documents brought by her prosecutors.

State’s Attorney Ivan J. Bates, who unseated Mosby in January after winning an election clouded by her indictment, sought to allay any concern about Mosby’s behavior tarnishing the institution.

“Yesterday’s verdict was related to the individual actions of the former State’s Attorney and has no bearing on the commitment of our current prosecutors as they continue pursuing justice on behalf of the residents of Baltimore,” said Bates, a Democrat, in a statement.

Some of Mosby’s loudest critics were police union leaders, who were angered when she brought charges against officers following Gray’s death.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say there’s a lot of smiles in local law enforcement right now,” said Dave Rose, former president of the union for Baltimore County Police officers. “It’s unfortunate for her and her family but she did it to herself.”

He criticized Mosby for scrutinizing officers’ credibility.

“Lo and behold she’s got a credibility issue herself … What comes around goes around,” Rose said.

J. Wyndal Gordon, an attorney and fervent Mosby supporter, said he hopes prosecutors choose not to pursue mortgage fraud charges against Mosby, saying that doing so would be “overkill.”

“What does anybody get out of further prosecution at this time?” asked Gordon, expressing sympathy for Mosby, who is in the middle of a divorce and has two daughters. “What more do you want from Marilyn Mosby?”

Brown, the defense attorney, recalled the advice he gave Mosby when she took office.

“I said, ‘Marilyn, you’ve got to be very, very careful, because the establishment doesn’t like that you got elected,” said Brown, adding that he told Mosby to be “squeaky clean.”

Mosby’s convictions prove she wasn’t, Brown said. “Therein lies my disappointment.”

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