Taking the witness stand in the hopes of preventing a second federal conviction, former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby testified Wednesday that her trust in other people, including her ex-husband and current City Council President Nick Mosby, landed her charged with mortgage fraud.
The spectacle of the city’s onetime chief prosecutor on trial herself, and testifying in her own defense, proved riveting, drawing more of a crowd to the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt than in previous days.
“I regret not testifying before,” Mosby said, “and I want the jury to hear my truth.”
She was referring to a November trial where the jury found her guilty of perjury, determining she lied about suffering financial hardship because of the coronavirus to withdraw $80,000 from her city retirement fund under a federal pandemic relief law. Mosby, 44, used that money to buy two Florida properties, but prosecutors say she lied on mortgage applications for both homes.
Mosby’s testimony, on the seventh day of the mortgage fraud trial, followed what has been the theme of her defense: Her ex-husband handled their finances and lied to her about a tax lien on their Baltimore home and other debts.
She described several instances of being angered at her husband, whom she divorced last year, when she learned just how bad their finances were.
“I went off,” she said at one point.
“I’m not going to say what I said,” she testified at another.
Speaking clearly and calmly under questioning by her attorney, Federal Public Defender James Wyda, Mosby described marital and financial problems in the marriage, already under strain as her work as Baltimore State’s Attorney put the family under scrutiny. She depicted Nick Mosby, who as council president presides over the Board of Estimates, the city spending panel, and oversees the annual city budget process, as “a little more lax” than she was about keeping up with bills and maintaining good credit.
She said their marriage continued to falter, especially as the coronavirus pandemic “forced” them to be in a “confined space with one another” as they worked from home.
As a result, she began thinking of separating from her husband, including financially.
“What we once were, we were no longer,” the mother of two said. “I didn’t want my girls to believe that was what love was.”
Despite being what she described as the highest paid elected official in Maryland when she became State’s Attorney, she said she “had nothing to call my own.”
“I wanted to try to establish some financial independence from my marriage,” she said. “I started to look for homes.”
That was in 2020, when she made about $250,000 a year.
She flew to Florida in September 2020 for what she described as a “monumental” moment in her life: buying her first house.
Some seven miles from Disney World, where she and her husband had taken their daughters every other Christmas, a mountain of paperwork sat before her at the closing table.
“It was a great pile of documents,” Mosby said in court Wednesday. “I did not read every single document that I signed on that day.”
Among the papers she signed that day was what’s known as a second-home rider, in which she certified she would “maintain exclusive control” over the eight-bedroom house in Kissimmee, Florida. That would turn out to be problematic for the city’s top prosecutor because, before closing, she ratified a contract with a company giving it control to run the property as a rental.
That’s one of seven false statements federal prosecutors accuse Mosby of making on loan applications for the Kissimmee property and the condo she later purchased on Florida’s Gulf Coast.
“Do you remember a second-home rider?” Wyda asked her.
“I do not,” Mosby responded.
Later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Zelinsky pressed Mosby about her knowledge of the couple’s tax liabilities when she completed final mortgage applications for the Florida homes in September 2020 and February 2021. In both cases, she neglected to disclose a federal tax debt that eventually grew to $69,000.
“I did know we had an outstanding tax liability in 2020 when I signed the mortgage application,” Mosby said.
She said she believed Nick Mosby had taken care of the couple’s tax woes by the time she signed the second mortgage.
Prosecutors will continue to question Mosby when the trial resumes Thursday.
Mosby’s testimony comes after her ex-husband Nick Mosby took the stand himself earlier in the week.
Supporters who have attended the trial expressed sympathy for both Mosbys.
“I’ve had financial hardship myself,” said Sheena Smith, 62, a flight attendant who lives in Bolton Hill. “You do the best you can.”
Smith was moved by Nick Mosby’s testimony describing how he and his ex-wife, who had been together since they were students at Tuskegee University in Alabama, spoke about how he kept the depth of their financial woes secret from her.
“I wanted to cry,” Smith said. “I saw a family that I believe has been broken.”
The trial was moved, at Marilyn Mosby’s request, to Greenbelt, some 30 miles from the city where the couple rose to political prominence quickly, and now have crashed back down to earth — she on trial, he testifying he lied to her about their debts.
“There’s the old story, you get too high and the wings begin to melt,” said Clarence Mitchell IV, the WBAL radio talk show host known as C4, in an interview. “It’s Icarus, you fly too close to the sun.”
Mitchell and others say Nick Mosby’s testimony and other revelations in court do not help his reelection campaign.
Nick Mosby was elected to City Council in 2011, and his wife began joining him on weekly anti-crime neighborhood walks in the run-up to her own political campaign, for state’s attorney, in 2014, when she ousted the well-funded incumbent, Gregg Bernstein.
Taking office the following year, it wasn’t long before both Mosbys would be thrust into the spotlight, she more than he, by the unrest and rioting following the death of Freddie Gray from injuries sustained in police custody in April 2015.
The arrest took place in Nick Mosby’s district. As the city continued to simmer, Marilyn Mosby took to the steps of the War Memorial building May 1 to dramatically announce charges against the officers involved in his arrest and transport, instantly becoming a hero to those who had seen other prosecutors decline to press charges against police for the deaths of Black men.
“The city was about to explode,” Mitchell said, and her charges served as a release valve.
On the stand Wednesday, Marilyn Mosby also harkened back to that time — and its effect on her personal life.
“That thrust my office and me into the international spotlight,” she said.
Then, Nick Mosby decided to run for mayor, which she thought was bad timing given the level of scrutiny they already were under.
But in a crowded field, his candidacy failed to gain traction, and he dropped out in April 2016, throwing his support to the eventual winner, Catherine Pugh.
A Baltimore Sun-University of Baltimore poll found a third of voters saying they were less likely to vote for him because he was married to the State’s Attorney.
By the time he exited the race, the first trial of an officer in connection with Gray’s death had ended in mistrial. Three officers went on to be acquitted in bench trials, prompting Marilyn Mosby to drop all remaining charges against their colleagues.
Her luster began fading, and questions arose about her frequent travel and outside speaking engagements.
This, Mitchell said, as the city’s homicide and shootings were rising in the aftermath of the Freddie Gray unrest – not a good time for the city’s chief prosecutor to be away so often.
“You’re fiddling while Rome is burning,” Mitchell said. “Are you at the wheel?”
Nick Mosby went on to serve in the Maryland House of Delegates for several years, then was elected City Council President in 2020.
With their personal and political partnership shredded, he faces a tough reelection campaign. The primary, which in largely Democratic Baltimore tends to determine the general election winner, is May 14.
Already, one of his challengers has seized upon the trial, in which prosecutors — out of earshot of the jury — alleged Nick Mosby committed perjury in listing charitable campaign contributions on the couple’s tax returns that a forensic analysis determined they could not have afforded.
“No one should be above the law,” former city councilwoman Shannon Sneed said Wednesday in a statement. “We need a leader who isn’t battling federal prosecutors.”
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