Lawyers for Marilyn Mosby, the progressive Baltimore prosecutor who faces several legal battles of her own, are fighting to get federal perjury charges against her dropped.
Mosby’s attorneys filed paperwork earlier this month asking the judge in her case to allow them to argue for a dismissal, for a second time. Their first shot at getting the charges dropped was tossed out by U.S. District Court Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby last month, but that’s not stopping them from trying again, the Baltimore Sun reports.
Mosby was indicted in January by a federal grand jury, accusing her of lying on applications that allowed her to borrow money from her public retirement accounts, cash which was later used to acquire a condo and a house in Florida. Prosecutors allege that Mosby falsely stated that she had suffered financial hardship during the pandemic, a condition that had to be met in order for her to take out the cash.
Mosby’s legal team is doing its best The Rock impression, arguing that it doesn’t matter how she filled out the application, because there was no basis for charging her.
From the Baltimore Sun
But, lawyers for Mosby argued, her checking the box that she experienced financial hardship because of COVID-19 as a way to qualify for coronavirus relief doesn’t matter because her assertion wasn’t intended to influence the company that administers the city’s retirement plan, Nationwide.
The defense lawyers also contend that nobody can be prosecuted for perjury based on the ambiguous language Mosby attested to: that she suffered “adverse financial consequences.”
In addition to trying to fighting her own federal case, Mosby is still working as Baltimore’s head local prosecutor and running to hold onto that seat. She faces multiple challengers in the Democratic primary scheduled for just five days from now, with her trial slated to start in September, two months before the general election, should she prevail in the primary.
Mosby is also fighting accusations that she’s repeatedly violated a gag order in the case of Keith Davis Jr., a Baltimore man who her office is trying for the fifth time with a 2015 killing. Davis’ defense attorneys have argued that she should be held in contempt for comments she’s made on social media and on radio.