Judge gives board more time on Nick Mosby case
A hearing to decide whether Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby violated city ethics law has been postponed once again, this time to give the city Board of Ethics more time to respond to Mosby’s defense.
Baltimore Circuit Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill elected Tuesday to postpone the hearing after Sarah Hall, an attorney for the board, argued she had not been given sufficient time to craft a legal argument. The board asked for additional time to respond to a 26-page memorandum filed by Mosby’s attorney, Robert Dashiell, in late December. The memo argued the council president had not violated ethics law because he didn’t seek donations to a legal-defense fund, even indirectly.
Court rules require opposing parties to have 30 days to respond to such memorandums. A new hearing has been set for Feb. 13.
The delay is the latest of several in a case that became public last May. Mosby, a Democrat, is disputing a ruling by the board that called on him to cease fundraising for the legal-defense fund in his name and turn over a list of its donors. The ruling found Mosby violated the city’s ethics ordinance by indirectly soliciting for the fund, which took donations from at least two contractors doing business with the city.
Mosby initially said he would comply with the order, but in June took the issue to court. He filed a two-page motion challenging the board’s findings without the help of an attorney. In November, a hearing on the matter was delayed after Mosby said he hadn’t been unable to find a lawyer who did not have a conflict of interest.
Dashiell, a Baltimore attorney who makes frequent appearances at city public meetings, signed on Dec. 27 to the case and that same day filed the memorandum in Mosby’s defense. The deadline for Mosby to file such a memo passed in September.
Fletcher-Hill said Tuesday
that he’d hoped to avoid further postponements of the case after giving Mosby an “indulgent opportunity” to secure a lawyer. But it would be “profoundly unfair” to expect the board to file a memorandum of its own without giving it sufficient time.
In his memo, Dashiell also argued donations to the fund shouldn’t count as gifts because Mosby never received them.
The dispute is centered on the fund, which opened for donations in mid-2021 and was established for the legal defense of the council president and his wife, then-State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, as they faced a federal criminal investigation into their financial dealings. Nick Mosby is not charged with anything, while Marilyn Mosby is charged with perjury and making false statements related to early withdrawals from her city retirement account and the purchase of two Florida houses. Her trial is set for March. Marilyn Mosby, who left office this month, is also a Democrat.
In its order, the Board of Ethics called on the council president to accept no payments from the fund and ask it to cease fundraising on his behalf. Nick Mosby also was ordered to request that a list of all donors and donations to the fund be provided to the ethics board. The deadline to comply was in June.
The list of donors would be the first public accounting of donations to the legal-defense fund. Prominent supporters and community leaders encouraged people to contribute, posting on Facebook and appearing at news conferences to promote it. But Marilyn Mosby reported no gifts to the fund during her most recent ethics disclosure statement, which she filed in April. Nick Mosby’s last ethics disclosure, filed in January 2022, does not list the legal-defense fund as a business affiliation or detail any gifts.
According to the Board of Ethics ruling, the fund had received $14,352 in donations as of March 15 from 135 individual donors.