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Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s federal trial scheduled for May 2

Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby speaks during a news conference Friday.
Emily Sullivan/WYPR
Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby speaks during a news conference last month. On Wednesday, a U.S. judge scheduled her trial for May 2.

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby will go to trial for federal charges of perjury and making false statements on loan applications on May 2.

U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby set the date Wednesday after a meeting with federal prosecutors and Mosby’s attorneys. Prosecutors anticipate a four-day trial, according to a court report they filed last week.

In a federal grand jury indictment made public last month, federal investigators allege Mosby used money from COVID-related loans to purchase two vacation homes in Florida. They say the Democrat falsely claimed under penalty of perjury that she experienced adverse financial consequences from the pandemic in order to withdraw money from her city retirement account penalty-free under relaxed restrictions in 2020. In fact, her salary as State’s Attorney increased that year.

Mosby and her legal team have framed the charges as a personal campaign against her, waged by political enemies because of her actions as the city’s top prosecutor as a June primary election for her office nears. Her lawyer A. Scott Bolden has said the charges are “motivated by political and racial animus.”

Her legal team had asked the court for a trial date no later than April, pointing to the primary. The incumbent Democrat has not officially filed for a third term; opponents Ivan Bates, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor who ran unsuccessfully for the office in 2018, and Roya Hanna, also a defense lawyer and former prosecutor, have registered for the race.

Emily Sullivan is a city hall reporter at WYPR, where she covers all things Baltimore politics. She joined WYPR after reporting for NPR’s national airwaves. There, she was a reporter for NPR’s news desk, business desk and presidential conflicts of interest team. Sullivan won a national Edward R. Murrow Award for an investigation into a Trump golf course's finances alongside members of the Embedded team. She has also won awards from the Chesapeake Associated Press Broadcasters Association for her use of sound and feature stories. She has provided news analysis on 1A, The Takeaway, Here & Now and All Things Considered.