In national TV interview, Marilyn Mosby says she’s seeking a presidential pardon. What does that mean?

Former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby wants President Joe Biden to intervene ahead of her federal sentencing on perjury and mortgage fraud charges.

In an interview Wednesday night on “The ReidOut,” Joy Reid’s MSNBC weeknight show, Mosby said she has done “absolutely nothing wrong, nothing illegal, nothing criminal” — and said she thinks it would be appropriate for Biden to pardon her.

“I’m confident that this administration will see past the political attacks,” said Mosby, attributing her legal woes to attacks by conservative adversaries.

Mosby’s sentencing on mortgage fraud and perjury charges is set for May 23. She faces up to 40 years in prison, though maximum penalties are rare. Federal juries found that she lied to withdraw money from her city retirement account and then submitted a false gift letter when she used the money to buy a Florida vacation property.

Reid expressed disbelief that Mosby was found guilty of withdrawing “her own money” from her retirement savings. The television host drew a direct line from Mosby’s decision to charge the officers involved in Freddie Gray’s death in 2015 from injuries suffered while in police custody and her public battles with Republican lawmakers, including former President Donald Trump, to Mosby’s indictment in January 2022.

The indictment against Mosby came under a Democratic U.S. Attorney, Erek Barron, and has been handled by a Biden-nominated judge, U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby.

Mosby told Reid she is asking the people she fought for as state’s attorney to support her now.

“If they can do this to Marilyn Mosby, who had the audacity to challenge the status quo, they can do this to anybody,” Mosby said.

Mosby’s request for a presidential pardon before sentencing is unusual, not least because she has not submitted an application to the Office of the Pardon Attorney. In typical cases, the office reviews pardon applications and makes recommendations to the president.

But the presidential pardon is a powerful tool that can be used at any time after a crime has been committed, not just after sentencing, experts said.

“A second route that was particularly popular during the Trump administration would be to find a way to grab the president’s attention,” said Jeffrey Crouch, a politics professor at American University and an expert on executive clemency.

“Trump would sometimes grant clemency to individuals he learned about through the media or word of mouth,” Crouch said.

That hasn’t been the case under Biden, who has largely used his pardons for people who were convicted of drug crimes. In general, pardons are exceedingly rare: Biden has received nearly 1,000 pardon petitions during his term and has granted only 24.

“It’s a vanishingly small number of pardon petitions that are granted,” said Eric Bacaj, a former federal prosecutor who now practices at the Baltimore law firm Silverman Thompson Slutkin & White. “It’s a long shot for any criminal defendant.”

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In recent weeks, Mosby has begun promoting an online petition that calls for Biden to pardon her. As of Wednesday evening, it had more than 9,000 signatures. The number jumped by about 400 after Mosby’s television appearance.

It’s not clear how Biden would handle a pardon request from Mosby, Crouch said.

“People with money, connections, and status may have better odds, but it’s unclear how much better,” he said. “President Biden has not shown much willingness to entertain clemency for some of the prominent names that have been swirling in the news, such as Donald Trump or [his son] Hunter Biden.”

Mosby’s lawyer, Federal Public Defender James Wyda, declined to comment on the pardon petition.

Federal juries convicted Mosby of perjury in November and mortgage fraud in February at two criminal trials. Prosecutors charged that Mosby lied when she claimed to have suffered a pandemic-related financial setback to withdraw money from her city retirement account.

The two withdrawals, which totaled about $80,000, formed the basis for Mosby’s conviction on two counts of perjury. She used the money to put down payments on a pair of Florida vacation properties, worth almost $1 million combined: an eight-bedroom house near Disney World and a beachside condo on the Gulf Coast.

The government alleged that Mosby made a series of false statements when she applied for mortgages on the two properties, but jurors convicted Mosby of only one count, related to a gift letter she submitted as she sought to buy the condo.

The letter claimed that Mosby’s then-husband, Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby, sent her a $5,000 gift so she could close on the property. In fact, Marilyn Mosby had transferred that money to her husband’s bank account herself. He moved it between his checking and savings accounts before wiring it to an escrow agent for closing.

The couple has since divorced.

In her interview with Reid, Marilyn Mosby said she had “lost everything” because of the investigations that led to her indictment. Mosby asked for one of those investigations, a review by the Baltimore Office of the Inspector General that came as Mosby faced scrutiny for launching a travel business while still in office.