BALTIMORE — Defense lawyers for Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby leveled new accusations against the U.S. Attorney’s Office in a host of legal papers filed Friday night seeking to have the indictment against her dismissed.
Mosby’s attorneys accused Maryland U.S. Attorney Erek Barron and Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise, the lead prosecutor on Mosby’s case, of wielding prejudice against Mosby to bring a discriminatory indictment, claimed the prosecutors ignored evidence of Mosby’s innocence and said the government failed to show that Mosby knowingly engaged in the criminal behavior of which she’s accused.
In a trio of pretrial pleadings, Mosby’s lawyers asked a federal judge to throw her case out, disqualify Wise from prosecuting her and require the government to provide more evidence to support the charges against her. A host of attached exhibits offer new insights into the yearlong tax investigation into Mosby and her husband, City Council President Nick Mosby.
Marilyn Mosby is charged with two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements on loan applications to buy a pair of properties in Florida. Nick Mosby is not charged with any crimes.
The two-term state’s attorney has maintained she is innocent, and has described her prosecution as politically motivated. The papers filed by her attorneys largely echo their public comments about the case, but provide more details in support of their claims of prosecutorial impropriety.
Mosby allegedly made two withdrawals of a combined $81,000 from retirement savings account early and without penalty under the federal CARES Act by claiming to have suffered financially from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the indictment. However, federal prosecutors say she suffered no such hardship, and point to the fact that her salary increased.
Mosby is also accused of using the money from the withdrawals for down payments on an eight-bedroom rental home near Disney World and a condo on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Federal prosecutors said she lied on mortgage applications for those properties by neglecting to disclose a federal tax lien and claiming the Orlando, Florida-area house would be a second home when she planned for it to be a vacation rental.
Federal prosecutors have not yet filed legal responses to the motions from Mosby’s defense but wrote in a status report Friday they planned to ask the judge to “preclude personal attacks on Government counsel.” Neither a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office or Barron immediately responded to requests for comment Saturday.
While Mosby’s defense has long targeted Wise, the legal papers are the first time her lawyers have gone after Barron publicly. The lawyers wrote Barron has “expressed disapproval of her both personally and professionally,” accusing him of questioning her ability and repeating rumors about marital infidelity on Mosby’s part.
Sheaniqua A. Thompson, who is Nick Mosby’s top adviser, wrote in a declaration in support of the indictment being dismissed that she worked with Barron between 2017 and 2019 while he was a state delegate and she was working as a lobbyist. She attested she was outside a committee room once when Marilyn Mosby walked by, Thompson expressed admiration for Mosby and Barron responded.
Thompson claimed Barron brought up rumors about the state’s attorney’s “sex life” and said “I don’t get how she got where she is.” Thompson said she was paraphrasing, but claimed Barron continued while working with Thompson to “tell me how much he disliked working with State’s Attorney Mosby, and how he didn’t like her style and approach.”
Mosby’s defense accused Wise of “being involved in several attempts to sabotage” Mosby’s career, “engaging in similar conduct aimed at other Black officials” and cited that Wise contributed to the campaigns of Mosby’s opponents for state’s attorney in 2018, Ivan Bates and Thiru Vignarajah.
They noted that Wise and then-acting U.S. Attorney Stephen Schenning brought up during the Gun Trace Task Force prosecutions that an assistant state’s attorney from Mosby’s office leaked word of the investigation to corrupt officers. Mosby and her defense say it’s untrue, while federal prosecutors said they came to the conclusion after a proffer session with the rogue cops’ ringleader Wayne Jenkins.
A. Scott Bolden, Mosby’s lead attorney, raised concerns with the Department of Justice in March, filing complaints asking for Wise and Schenning to be yanked from the tax investigation. The department’s Office of Procedural Responsibility declined to remove the veteran prosecutors, saying there was no evidence to support Bolden’s claims and that he could make the case to a judge during litigation.
Now, Mosby’s attorneys argue the U.S. Attorney’s Office is participating in discriminatory prosecution that violates Mosby’s rights to due process and equal protection.
“Since its inception, the prosecution against State’s Attorney Mosby has been driven by malicious personal, political, and even racial animus on the part of the prosecutors,” Mosby’s attorneys wrote.
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