Marilyn Mosby, the Former Baltimore Prosector, Found Guilty of Perjury

Marilyn Mosby, a former Baltimore prosecutor who rose to national prominence for pursuing charges against police officers in connection with the death of Freddie Gray, was found guilty in federal court on two counts of perjury for falsely claiming financial hardship to withdraw money from a retirement fund.

The verdict, coming after a brief, three-day trial, is a low point in a long fall from grace for Ms. Mosby, 43, once the youngest top prosecutor of any major American city and a star of the police accountability movement.

She faces up to five years in prison for each conviction, though typically sentences are far below the maximum.

Her handling of Mr. Gray’s case put her in the national limelight, but a cascade of problems began shortly afterward. None of the prosecutions she brought against the officers in connection with Mr. Gray’s death were successful. In early 2022 Ms. Mosby was indicted by federal prosecutors on the perjury charges, most likely dooming her attempt at a third term, which ended with a loss in the Democratic primary that summer. And this July, she and Nick Mosby, the president of the Baltimore City Council, announced that they were getting divorced, ending a marriage that had been a formidable force in city politics.

In the indictment, prosecutors accused Ms. Mosby of falsely claiming financial hardship tied to the coronavirus pandemic to withdraw money from her city retirement account. While typically a person cannot withdraw money from this type of account until retirement, the CARES Act permitted withdrawals for “adverse financial consequences” tied to the pandemic, such as the loss of a job or reduced work hours.

In 2020, Ms. Mosby requested funds totaling $90,000 from her retirement account, indicating on federal forms that she had been facing financial hardship. But government prosecutors said that Ms. Mosby was not eligible for the disbursements. Instead, payroll documents showed that, in her job as Baltimore City state’s attorney, Ms. Mosby continued to collect an annual salary of nearly $250,000 during the pandemic and had no reduction of her work hours. Prosecutors said that Ms. Mosby used the money to fund down payments for vacation homes in Florida.

“Telling the truth especially matters when public officials are looking to access funds for their own personal use,” Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney, said during closing statements. “We should not allow her to lie and commit perjury to purchase Florida vacation homes in the worst pandemic in 100 years.”

Statements Ms. Mosby made in mortgage loan applications for those homes also drew federal charges of fraud unrelated to the CARES Act. She will be tried on those in a separate trial.

Ms. Mosby’s defense team argued that she did face financial hardships, struggling to grow a business she formed in 2019 called Mahogany Elite Enterprises, a company her lawyers said was intended to organize “retreats for successful Black women.” The defense said that travel restrictions related to the pandemic had caused the business to lose money.

“For Ms. Mosby the pandemic meant the crashing of her dream,” James Wyda, a federal public defender, said in his closing argument. “These are not the actions of a greedy, lying thief. They are the actions of someone acting responsibly.”

But an F.B.I. forensic accountant testified at trial that the company never had any revenue nor clients, making the question of financial hardship irrelevant.

While the trial had initially been slated to be held at the federal courthouse in Baltimore, it was moved after the defense successfully argued that negative publicity had made the local jury pool biased against Ms. Mosby. According to polling of prospective jurors, 45 percent of those in the Northern Division, which includes Baltimore, had described the defendant as “somewhat” or “very” corrupt.