Federal prosecutors respond to accusations from Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s lawyers, saying she ‘invented a tale of victimhood’
BALTIMORE — Federal prosecutors fired back Friday afternoon against arguments raised by Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn last month, dismissing her claims of vindictive prosecution as baseless and lacking legal merit.
Last month, Mosby’s defense filed a series of motions accusing federal prosecutors including U.S. Attorney Erek Barron of harboring animosity against the city’s two-term elected prosecutor. The defense lawyers claimed the U.S. attorney’s office brought charges against her because they disagreed with her politically and personally, and said her indictment should be dismissed.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise, who is leading Mosby’s prosecution, and two other federal prosecutors authored the response filed Friday. They wrote that Mosby’s defense argument amounted to personal attack on Wise, Barron and prosecutor Stephen Schenning. Not supported by fact, law or logic, they said, it was part of a pattern of Mosby lashing out at any authority investigating her.
“Name calling is not facts and that is all the Defendant offers,” federal prosecutors wrote.
The Jan. 13 indictment charged Mosby with two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements.
Mosby falsely claimed the coronavirus pandemic caused her financial hardship to make early withdrawals from her retirement savings under the federal CARES act, according to the indictment. She used the roughly $81,000 to make down payments on a pair of properties in Florida.
Federal prosecutors said she lied on the loan applications by failing to disclose a tax lien and claiming a house near Orlando was going to be a second home when she had already lined up a company to run it as a rental, a maneuver to secure a lower interest rate.
Mosby and her lawyer, A. Scott Bolden, have publicly assailed federal prosecutors as being biased against her and filing frivolous charges. Mosby said she was targeted because they don’t approve of her policies and claimed the indictment was meant to prevent her from being reelected. The primary is June 28; Mosby has not filed to run yet.
Her defense formalized their public allegations into a long-shot legal argument last month. The pleading accused Barron of making a disparaging comment about Mosby while he was a lawmaker in Annapolis and highlighted Wise’s donations to some of Mosby’s opponents in the 2018 election.
“The Defendant has invented a tale of victimhood in an attempt to deflect attention from her own behavior,” federal prosecutors wrote in Friday’s filing. “As the evidence at trial will show, the only thing the Defendant is a victim of is her own lies and choices.”
Mosby’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon. The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment beyond what was said in the filing.
The lengthy response from federal prosecutors Friday defended Wise, Schenning and Barron.
It comes one day after the U.S. attorney’s office filed a superseding indictment against Mosby.
Made public Thursday, the new charging document added no new offenses, but prosecutors provided further evidence to support their charges that Mosby lied to lenders to receive more favorable financial terms for two Florida vacation homes: an eight-bedroom rental near Disney World and a condo on the state’s Gulf Coast.
———
