Marilyn Mosby

Marilyn Mosby

: Photo from Wikimedia Commons / Author of Photo: Edward Kimmel from Takoma Park, MD / Source of Photo: MYD 0025 Marilyn Mosby

Overview

* Was elected as State’s Attorney of Baltimore in 2014
* Has numerous ties to the multibillionaire leftist George Soros
* Supporter of Black Lives Matter
* Was indicted for perjury and fraud in January 2022
* Lost Democratic primary in July 2022, derailing her re-election bid
* Was convicted on two counts of perjury in November 2023


Background

Marilyn Mosby was born in Boston, Massachusetts on January 22, 1980. She was raised in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood by her grandparents and mother, the latter of whom who was just 17 years old when Marilyn was born. Mosby’s mother, grandfather, and two of her uncles all served as Boston police officers.

Mosby is a 1998 graduate of Dover-Sherborn High School, one of Massachusetts’ most highly rated schools, located in one of the state’s most affluent towns. She went on to earn a B.A. in Political Science and Government from Tuskegee University in 2002, and a J.D. from Boston College Law School in 2005. Her husband is Nick Mosby, President of the Baltimore City Council.

From 2005-2011, Mosby was employed at the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO), where she worked her way up from law clerk to Assistant State’s Attorney.

She then worked in private practice as Field Counsel for the Liberty Mutual Insurance Company in Baltimore from 2011-2014.

Mosby Runs for Baltimore State’s Attorney & Is Aided by the Soros Network

In 2013, Mosby, a Democrat, announced her candidacy for the post of State’s Attorney (S.A.) in Baltimore, that city’s equivalent of a District Attorney. Asserting that the “biggest problem in the city is the distrust of the criminal justice system,” she declared that “[m]y priority is to change the culture of distrust and bring all parts of the community together—the judges, the police, the people, the state’s attorney.”

According to a Heritage Foundation report, Mosby’s early political ambitions were supported by the leftwing multibillionaire funder George Soros. “When Soros decided back in 2014 to spend millions to fund the election efforts of rogue prosecutors,” said Heritage in 2020, “one of the first people he backed was Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore city.”

Contrary to the claims made by the Heritage report, the public-relations and communications firm BerlinRosen has stated — on behalf of the Justice and Public Safety PAC (JPS-PAC), an affiliate of the extensive “Safety and Justice” network that Soros established to finance leftwing Democrat DA candidates nationwide — that “Mr. Soros has not — directly or indirectly — backed or supported or contributed to Ms. Mosby.”

But while it is true that JPS-PAC has not contributed money directly to Mosby, she has indeed been entangled extensively with elements of the Soros network. For example, as FoxBaltimore.com noted in July 2020, approximately 30% of Mosby’s trips during the preceding two years had been sponsored by Fair & Just Prosecution — a project financed entirely by the Tides Center, which, in conjunction with the Tides Foundation, has received many millions of dollars from Soros and his foundations. According to the Baltimore Brew, Mosby accepted “at least $30,672.63 in 2018 and 2019 airfare, hotel rooms and per-diem expenses – by far the largest amount of travel reimbursements to any elected official in Maryland.”

Yet another Mosby tie to Soros took place when she made an on-stage appearance at a Prince concert, where she received rousing applause for her efforts to prosecute and convict the police officers involved in the controversial 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a longtime black criminal in Baltimore. As investigative journalist Daniel Greenfield notes, that concert was held “for a benefit fund for OSI-B,” the Baltimore branch of Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Soft-on-Crime Approach & Election Victory

Mosby ran on a platform that emphasized the need to minimize prosecutions of “low-level” offenses while focusing instead on violent crime – a radical departure from the so-called “Broken Windows” policing methods that had proven so successful at reducing crime in Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s New York during the 1990s, and then in other cities as well. Instead, Mosby called for a “holistic” approach emphasizing psychological treatment, counseling, life-skills education, and assistance in securing employment for first-time, nonviolent felony drug offenders.

In June 2014, Mosby defeated incumbent Gregg L. Bernstein in the Democratic primary for Baltimore S.A. with 55% of the vote. Though her campaign raised less money than Bernstein’s, Mosby’s efforts were propelled, in part, by crucial support she received from former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, former Baltimore Mayor and incoming University of Baltimore President Kurt Schmoke, and University of Maryland law professor Larry S. Gibson. She was also backed by the NAACP, an organization for which she had served on the Criminal Justice Committee of the Baltimore City Branch.

Running unopposed in the November 2014 general election, Mosby was easily elected as Baltimore’s S.A.  Just 34 years old when she officially took office in January 2015, she became the youngest head prosecutor in any major American city.

Massive Crime Increase Under S.A. Mosby

With Mosby at the helm of the S.A. Office, Baltimore immediately experienced significant increases in all manner of violent crimes. During the eight years before Mosby was elected, there had been an average of 229 homicides per year in Baltimore. During the first five years after she was elected, the corresponding annual average was 331 – a 45% spike. In 2019, the city suffered the second-highest homicide total it had ever seen: 348. The previous high of 353 homicides had occurred in 1993—when Baltimore had nearly 125,000 more residents than in 2019.

By no means was homicide the only crime whose incidence rose after Mosby became Baltimore’s S.A.  Indeed, during the five-year period before Mosby was elected, the city experienced yearly averages of 292 rapes, 4,741 aggravated assaults, and 3,562 robberies. During the first five years after she was elected, the yearly averages rose to 330 rapes, 5,304 aggravated assaults, and 5,070 robberies. Those increases amounted to 13%, 12%, and 42%, respectively.

Mosby’s Freddie Gray Debacle

In the Spring of 2015, Mosby faced her defining moment as S.A. following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black resident of Baltimore with a long criminal history that included at least 18 arrests, mostly for drug offenses as well as a handful of assault and escape charges. Apprehended by six Baltimore policemen on April 12, 2015 for possession of an illegal “spring-assisted, one-hand-operated knife,” Gray fought wildly against the officers as they tried to load him into a police van and transport him to central booking. Thus, the officers put Gray in leg and hand restraints and placed him in a prone position on the floor of the van. National Review Online explains what happened next: “At a certain point, he [Gray] evidently attempted to stand, despite being bound and unable to see outside the van to judge traffic conditions. As the van moved, he appears to have careened violently into its interior, suffering an injury [to his spinal cord] similar to that experienced by a diver in shallow water.”

Gray died a week later from a severe spinal cord injury. The medical examiner in the case concluded that Gray would not have been injured had he maintained the prone position in which the police had originally placed him.

Gray’s death sparked weeks of violent unrest led by Black Lives Matter activists in Baltimore, complete with riots, arson, looting, and assaults that caused injuries to more than 100 city police officers. Mosby, for her part, saw an opportunity to strike a blow against what she and the Black Lives Matter crowd viewed as systemic racial bias in policing – not only in Baltimore, but nationwide.

Overriding the Police Department’s investigation of Gray’s death with what she described as her own S.A. office’s “independent investigation,” Mosby concluded that the six cops involved in the case — three of whom were black — were guilty of “homicide.” She indicted them all on charges ranging from involuntary manslaughter to second-degree murder, to “depraved heart” murder in the case of the van driver. So eager was Mosby to hastily bring charges against the officers, that two of them were initially charged under the wrong names, birth dates, and addresses.

Upon announcing the charges against the six policemen, Mosby stated: “To the people of Baltimore and demonstrators across America, I heard your call for ‘No Justice, No peace,’ … Your peace is sincerely needed as I work to deliver justice on behalf of this young man.” “We’ve all borne witness to an inherent bias that is a direct result of when police police themselves,” she added, making no mention of the fact that Bill H. Murphy Jr., the attorney representing the Gray family in the case, had previously donated $5,000 to Mosby’s S.A. campaign.

Mosby tried to tip the scales of justice against the police when she delayed publicly releasing the medical examiner’s report, which concluded that the officers had not intended to harm Gray, thereby undermining the homicide charges.

Mosby also claimed that under Maryland state law, it was perfectly legal for a person to possess the kind of knife which the police had seized from Gray, thus she filed false-arrest charges against three of the officers who had apprehended him. But when it was subsequently clarified that Maryland law made it illegal for anyone to own that particular type of knife, Mosby was forced to dismiss the false-arrest charges.

Mosby was aggressive in maximizing her own publicity as she presented her case to the American public — giving numerous magazine and television interviews, and even making an on-stage appearance at a Prince concert, where she received rousing applause for her efforts to prosecute and convict the police officers involved in the Freddie Gray case. According to The Baltimore Sun, Mosby, who was paid a $240,000 annual salary and had publicly claimed to be opposed to having Baltimore taxpayers cover her out-of-state travel-related expenses, was in fact the beneficiary of $3,100 worth of taxpayer-funded security services when the venue for one of her speaking engagements refused to cover those costs. She also accumulated up to $12,000 worth of gifts, rewards, and free travel in just one year, thanks to her rising profile.

As Mosby spoke extensively about the Freddie Gray case in the media, she chose not to divulge key exculpatory facts — (a) that Gray had been under the influence of opiates and cannabinoid when he was being arrested, and (b) that he had recently claimed prior back injuries, which might conceivably have played a role in his death.

In spite of Mosby’s aggressive and deceptive tactics, she was ultimately forced to drop all charges against the six police officers who arrested Freddie Gray. The city of Baltimore, however, paid the Gray family $6.4 million in a civil settlement.

Between 2016 and 2018, five of the six officers from the Gray case sued Mosby for defamation, invasion of privacy, and malicious prosecution. Their case was derailed, however, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in agreement with a lower court’s decision, ruled that Mosby had prosecutorial immunity and could not be sued.

Additional Mosby Controversies

By no means was Mosby’s handling of the Freddie Gray case the only controversy she has generated during her time as a public official:

  • In 2018-2019, Mosby was found to have been out of town for a combined total of 144 work days, during which she went on at least 15 trips that were not submitted to the Board of Estimates for proper approval. All told, she went on 23 out-of-town trips sponsored by nonprofits and other groups. Related to those trips, she accepted at least $30,672.63 in airfare, hotel rooms, and per-diem expenses – by far the largest sum of travel-related reimbursements of any elected official in Maryland.
  • Mosby has repeatedly and improperly used the Baltimore Police Department’s Executive Protection Unit to transport her to and from airports and various other destinations.
  • Mosby has used her own private LLCs for federal tax write-offs, despite having initially pledged that she would not operate them while in office.
  • When Mosby flew with her husband from a United Steelworkers Union conference in Minnesota to California, the airfare costs were covered by the union. Moreover, the S.A. Office covered her hotel expenses, and one of her LLCs (Mahogany Elite) paid for the couple’s flight back to Baltimore.
  • Mosby did not donate any of the numerous gifts she received in 2018 and 2019, contrary to what her official spokesperson had claimed.

Landslide Re-Election

In 2018, Mosby was re-elected as Baltimore’s S.A. in a landslide, capturing roughly 94% of the vote in a race where there was no Republican challenger, and where the only votes she failed to capture were write-in ballots.

Mosby Creates a Travel & Legal Consulting Company

In May 2019, Mosby founded Mahogany Elite Enterprises LLC, a travel and legal consulting company which she described as a “long-term venture” designed to “help underserved Black families who don’t usually have the opportunity to travel outside of urban cities.” Mosby did not disclose the Mohogany’s existence until she filed an amended statement to the Maryland Ethics Commission on July 2, 2020. She agreed to stop operating the company while serving as State’s Attorney.

Supporter of Black Lives Matter

On June 20, 2020, Mosby’s S.A. Office stated on its website: “Black Lives Matter protests bring new hope for fresh investigations into deaths at the hands of police.”

Misleading Claims of a Drop in Crime

Amidst the initial COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns of March 2020, Mosby initiated a temporary policy of allowing prosecutorial discretion in cases of so-called nuisance offenses that she claimed “pose no threat to public safety.” Over the ensuing 12 months, this approach resulted in the dismissal of more than 1,400 cases and the nullification of another 1,400 warrants for such crimes. When those dismissals and nullifications resulted, statistically, in an 18% decrease in new 2020 incarcerations as compared to 2019, Mosby declared that her policy had struck a valuable blow against the evils of mass incarceration.

But Mosby’s claim was filled with obfuscation and misdirection, as National Review Online explains: “”For March [2019] to March [2020], Baltimore saw robberies decline 38 percent and street robberies (the largest share of Baltimore’s robberies) fall by 48 percent. That is 1,600 fewer muggings, which alone accounts for nearly 70 percent of Baltimore’s violent-crime drop. All robberies combined make up 83 percent of the decline. This is hardly surprising, since with pandemic lockdowns and closures in place, stick-up artists had far fewer targets on whom to ply their trade. That trend is consistent with [declines] in robberies across similarly sized cities.”

Mosby Announces Permanent Prosecutorial-Discretion and Non-Enforcement Policies

Notwithstanding the inauthenticity of the figures Mosby was citing, she seized the opportunity to declare her intent to make her 2020 prosecutorial-discretion policies permanent. In a March 26, 2021 press release, Mosby’s office stated: “The policies enacted over the past year have resulted in a decrease in arrests, no adverse impact on the crime rate, and address the systemic inequity of mass incarceration. Therefore, the State’s Attorney also announced today the permanent adoption of these policies as we continue to prioritize the prosecution of public safety crimes over low-level, non-violent offenses.” Mosby, for her part, said: “Today, America’s war on drug users is over in the city of Baltimore. We leave behind the era of tough-on-crime prosecution and zero tolerance policing and no longer default to the status quo to criminalize mostly people of color for addiction. We will develop sustainable solutions and allow our public health partners to do their part to address mental health and substance use disorder.”

In the same press release, Mosby’s office boasted that, in keeping with its “progressive, common sense approach to crime and [to slowing] the spread of COVID-19 in prison and jails,” it would no longer enforce laws pertaining to the following crimes:

  • Possession of CDS (controlled dangerous substances, i.e., drugs)
  • Attempted distribution of CDS
  • Paraphernalia possession
  • Prostitution
  • Trespassing
  • Minor traffic offenses
  • Open container (of an alcoholic beverage in a motor vehicle)
  • Rogue and vagabond (actual or attempted theft of a motor vehicle or its contents)
  • Urinating/defecating in public

Lionizing Kamala Harris

In November 2020, Mosby described then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as her “inspiration” and “role model” as a “a bold, brilliant, beautiful black woman” who had “inspired” her to run for S.A.  “There would be no Marilyn Mosby without Kamala Harris,” Mosby told The Baltimore Sun.

Mosby, Citing “White Supremacy” Attitudes, Demands Censorship of Her Critics in the News Media

In a May 2021 letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Mosby’s S.A. Office filed a formal complaint against the “bluntly slanted, dishonest, misleading, racist, and extremely dangerous” coverage of Mosby by a local news outlet, WBFF Television. “The truth of the matter is I am deeply concerned that if the WBFF’s coverage is not curtailed and ceased,” wrote the Baltimore SAO’s Communications Director in a letter to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, “then someone is going to get hurt. I implore and encourage you … to enlist the full investigative and enforcement powers granted to you by the Federal government to take action against the WBFF as soon as possible.” The letter also characterized the Fox News Channel as being “infamous for its bias against people of color,” most notably “[Tucker] Carlson’s frequent endorsements of white supremacy views.” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr referred to the Mosby letter as a “chilling & direct attack on free speech & journalist freedom.”

Mosby Is Indicted for Perjury and Fraud

On January 13, 2022, Mosby was indicted under federal charges for four felonies involving perjury and fraudulent mortgage applications. The indictments accused Mosby of having falsely claimed financial hardship so she could make early withdrawals — known as “coronavirus-related distributions” — from her public employee retirement account as allowed by the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill, the CARES Act of 2020. Specifically, Mosby had withdrawn $36,000 in May 2020 and $45,000 in December 2020, and then put those sums toward down payments for two separate homes (worth a combined $1.021 million) that she purchased in Florida.

Mosby had also failed to disclose that she owed more than $45,000 in federal back taxes when she obtained mortgages for the aforementioned Florida homes in 2020 and 2021. Moreover, in order to secure a lower mortgage rate, she had falsely claimed that she intended to be the primary resident of one of those homes. But instead of moving into that swelling, she eventually used a management company to run it as a vacation rental.

Mosby downplayed the federal investigation into her financial dealings as a “political ploy by my political adversaries to unseat me.” If convicted, she could face up to 5 years in federal prison for each of two perjury counts, plus an additional 30 years for each of two counts of making fraudulent statements on mortgage applications.

Ethics Violation by Mosby’s Husband

On May 12, 2022, the Baltimore City Board of Ethics concluded that City Council President Nick Mosby, Marilyn Mosby’s husband, had violated city ethics rules by failing to disclose some $15,000 in donations to a legal defense fund that he and his wife had established. “[C]ity ethics rules require officials to disclose gifts of more than $20 given by certain individuals,” reported Fox News. “Those include lobbyists and people who do business with the city.”

Another Ethics Violation by Marilyn Mosby

On May 12, 2022, Fox News reported that Marilyn Mosby, on her own most recent state ethics disclosure form, had failed, like her husband, to list most of the $15,000 worth of gifts which had been given to the legal defense fund that the couple had set up. The only gift she listed on her form was a donation of approximately $1,000 from a contributor in Maine.

“I believe that this is an oversight with potentially criminal liability,” said defense attorney Jeremy Eldridge. “This is a form that is submitted under the penalty of perjury, and Marilyn Mosby has a history of having some difficulty filling out forms accurately. If there were any monies that were donated to the Mosby 2021 Defense Fund, that money would constitute a gift and should have been included on this form.”

Fox News noted that the Mosbys’ legal defense fund “did not vet its donors in any way.” This was evidenced when the fund made no effort to verify the identity of an Ethics Board member who, in an effort to test the fund’s adherence to proper standards, had donated a small amount of money to the fund using a phony name, a proxy email address, and a nonexistent physical address.

Mosby Loses Re-Election Bid

On July 22, 2022, Mosby’s bid for re-election was derailed when she lost the Democratic primary race to defense attorney Ivan Bates, who had previously served as a prosecutor in Baltimore from 1996 to 2002. Mosby actually finished third in the primary race, garnering 28.8% of all votes, vs. 40.9% for Bates and 30.3% for Thiru Vignarajah

Convicted of Perjury

On November 9, 2023, a federal jury convicted Mosby on two counts of perjury. Specifically, she had falsely claimed financial hardship so she could make early withdrawals — known as “coronavirus-related distributions” — from her public employee retirement account as allowed by the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill, the CARES Act of 2020. As Fox News reported following the conviction: “Mosby faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison for each of the two perjury counts. U.S. District Judge Lydia K. Griggsby hasn’t scheduled a sentencing hearing.”

Additional Resources:


Meet Marilyn Mosby, the Rogue Prosecutor Wreaking Havoc in Baltimore
By Charles “Cully” Stimson and Zack Smith
October 27, 2020

Baltimore’s Thin Blue Line Is Broken
By Maurice Richards
September 28, 2023

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