BALTIMORE — Prosecutors and lawyers representing former Baltimore City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby are back in court leading up to her March 27 perjury trial.
In a flurry of motions filed Monday night both sides are requesting a judge to exclude two of each other's expert witnesses.
On one side the government wants to strike Jerome Schmitt and Eric Forster from testifying on Mosby's behalf.
Prosecutors argue that neither of them have ever been qualified as an expert in a federal criminal trial.
Schmitt reportedly is prepared to tell a jury that Mosby's net worth decreased by $4,500 or 12 percent between December 31, 2019 and March 31, 2020.
The government alleges that Schmitt's analysis is misleading.
"Given that Ms. Mosby was paying down her liabilities and that her liquidity improved over this period, the sole driver of Ms. Mosby’s decline in net worth, as cited by Mr. Schmitt, is the value of her [City Deferred Compensation Plan]," prosecutors wrote in their court filing.
Mosby is accused of withdrawing $90,000 from her city Deferred Compensation Plan under false pretenses and using it to buy vacation homes in Florida.
Prosecutors say that contradicts any notion that Mosby suffered financial harm during the pandemic, highlighting the $9,000 pay raise she received during that period.
The feds also poked holes in Schmitt's analysis by claiming he stopped two months prior to Mosby's first withdrawal.
Schmitt is also expected to compare Mosby's private startup travel company, Mahogany Elite, to multi-billion dollar corporations who suffered financial losses during the pandemic.
Prosecutors say that contradicts Mosby'sinitial stance that her company was non-operational.
"Schmitt’s opinions about the pandemic’s effect on Mahogany Elite are irrelevant because Mahogany Elite did not close or reduce its hours because it was never operational," prosecutors wrote.
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Mosby's defense team countered in their own filing by asking the court to strike the government's witnesses, Steven Butler and Joshua A. Johnston.
However in their argument Mosby's attorneys appear to indicate that net worth is irrelevant which would seem to go against the point their own witness, Schmitt, was trying to make.
"There is no definition of 'adverse financial consequences,' legislative or otherwise, that requires a total diminution of net worth as a condition necessary to take a withdrawal from her [City Deferred Compensation Plan]," Mosby's attorneys argued. "The CARES Act does not provide that a withdrawal can only be made if someone’s total net worth has decreased. Nor does it contemplate how the withdrawn funds should be used."
Also at issue is whether Mosby was legally permitted to rent out a property after signing an initial contract that she wouldn't. In separate filings both sides argue for and against the matter.
It's unclear when the judge will rule on these latest filings.
She's also yet to make a decision on whether the trial will be moved to another venue, if a pre-trial gag order will be imposed, and if Mosby's defense team would be sanctioned or held in contempt of court after prosecutors accused them of revealing sensitive information on juror questionnaires in one of their filed motions.
