Baltimore is a disaster area for its grotesque number of murders. Almost all the victims are black. The police force, at one time at least marginally effective, has been cowed ever since the Freddie Gray indictments. In that case from 2015, the State’s Attorney charged six police officers with a variety of offenses stemming from the death, in police custody, of Mr. Gray, a small-time (though repeat) drug dealer. The state obtained exactly zero convictions on any of the counts against any of the officers, but the damage to desperately needed robust policing was done.
The State’s Attorney responsible for that debacle of a prosecution and the consequent cratering of police morale is Marilyn Mosby. I blogged about Mosby’s startling incompetence and leftist political grandstanding many times (too many to go back and retrieve right now).
Today Ms. Mosby was indicted by the Biden Justice Department for lying and cheating in order to get her hands on moola sufficient to finance — ready now? — a fancy rental property in Florida.
For those of you still wondering about the true mindset of “prosecutors” who favor the interests of hoodlums over those of ordinary citizens, welcome to the window into the deeper-than-you-thought embrace of criminality that this case gives us. It shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Here’s how the story from the Baltimore Sun starts:
A federal grand jury has indicted Baltimore’s top prosecutor Marilyn J. Mosby on charges she lied on a mortgage loan application to buy a Florida property and made false statements to obtain a COVID-related withdrawal from her retirement savings that was used for the purchase.
The cloud of indictment has loomed over Mosby for nearly a year, since federal prosecutors issued subpoenas in March for a wide range of financial records from her and her husband, City Council President Nick Mosby. Marilyn Mosby is now charged with four felonies that could bring prison time, and with her election for a third term coming in five months.
I wonder whether Ms. Mosby will have the grace to withdraw. I wouldn’t bet the Florida rent, as it were.
The indictment alleges that Mosby, 41, sought a $40,000 withdrawal from her city retirement account in May 2020, citing that she had experienced financial hardship due to the pandemic. In fact, her salary that year had increased by $10,000 to $248,000.
“Mosby had not experienced adverse financial consequences stemming from the coronavirus as a result of ‘being quarantined, furloughed or laid off’ or ‘having reduced work hours’ or ‘due to lack of childcare’ or ‘the closing or reduction of hours of a business I own or operate’” – all perquisites for obtaining the loan, which Mosby attested to under penalty of perjury,” federal prosecutors wrote in the indictment.
I was a reasonably high level attorney at the Justice Department, and Special Counsel to the President during the term of George H. W. Bush. In neither job did I make anywhere close to $248,000. But, oddly, I never found it necessary to take out a loan, and still less to make up stories about what a victim I was in order to get a loan. Of course none of that makes me a hero; it makes me a normal person. Too bad we can’t get the same from one of the country’s pioneering “progressive prosecutors.”
The indictment says Mosby received $36,000, which she then put toward a down payment on a rental property near Orlando, Fla. But prosecutors say in purchasing that property, she lied about having a federal tax lien and falsely said the property was a second home, which lowered the interest rate.
She had already lined up a management company to utilize it as a short-term rental, the indictment says.
Deceit from stem to stern. But of course she was telling God’s honest truth when she assured us, as have her fellow progressive prosecutors, that her policies would keep us “just as safe,” if not safer, than the “draconian” policies of the preceding era.
You cannot make this up.
And then there’s this gem:
She could not be reached for comment; her attorney also could not be reached for comment….Supporters have said she is being targeted for her progressive policies and Black leaders are often unfairly targeted for investigations. In October a group including civil rights attorney Ben Crump called for an end to the investigation.
That’s it, ladies and gentleman. She’s a victim, you see, of all those racist thugs running President Biden’s Justice Department — thugs like Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, daughter of Indian immigrant parents and formerly head of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, a black person notable for her black supremacist writing at Columbia Law School and black supremacist advocacy thereafter; and Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite of the Criminal Division, a black man who, during his time as US Attorney for New Orleans, created the Crescent City Keepers Mentoring Program, aimed at using faith communities to mentor at-risk youth. He also created an anti corruption unit to address claims of civil rights violations and public corruption.
Gads, it does seem as if Ms. Mosby is being persecuted by the Klan itself.
On a slightly more serious note, I take off my hat to Merrick Garland. I have criticized Garland for an overly political bent in running DOJ, but it took real guts for him to sign off (as I’m sure he had to) on the indictment of a black female Democratic prosecutor in a state that voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden.
Of course Ms. Mosby has not yet been convicted of anything, and is therefore entitled to the presumption of innocence just like the January 6 defendants and Kyle Rittenhouse.
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