In a February legal filing, Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby blamed her husband, City Council President Nick Mosby, for her statement on a mortgage application that failed to disclose a $45,000 IRS lien.

Defending herself against false statement charges in her federal indictment, Mosby said her husband had lied – telling her the tax lien had been paid off when it hadn’t been.

Now federal prosecutors are saying, in a motion filed prior to next month’s trial, that Marilyn Mosby’s claim to be an “innocent spouse” is a lie.

They say that in January 2021 Mosby’s personal lawyer sent to the Maryland Attorney Grievance Commission an installment agreement with the IRS covering the debt the couple jointly owed for unpaid taxes.

Mosby was copied on the letter, part of the back-and-forth over the commission’s confidential investigation into Mosby’s finances.

Yet just eight days later, Mosby was signing a mortgage document for a $476,000 condominium at Longboat Key, Florida, in which she said she did not owe any federal debt.

“Far from believing that her husband had paid everything off, the Defendant’s counsel’s statements . . . show the Defendant was well aware of the tax debt she and her husband owed the IRS and the existence of a plan to repay it,” prosecutors wrote in a filing last Friday before U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby.

The payment plan called on the Mosbys to make monthly payments of $776 to the IRS starting in February 2019. This followed years of letters from the IRS calling on the couple to pay taxes owed from years 2014, 2015 and 2016.

Mortgage Timelines

Only a single $669 payment was made by Nick Mosby before the IRS slapped a lien on their property on March 3, 2020, prosecutors said.

Four months later, in July 2020, Mosby signed a purchase contract, in her name alone, for a sprawling $545,000 house in Kissimmee, Florida. On a subsequent mortgage application form, she answered “no” to the question: “Are you presently delinquent or in default on any federal debt or any other loan, mortgage, financial obligation, bond or loan guarantee?”

In October 2020, the Mosbys’ outstanding tax bill and property lien was disclosed by The Baltimore Sun.

Nick Mosby, then running as the Democratic Party candidate for City Council president, promised the issue would be “resolved in the coming days,” while his wife said she was “unaware” of the lien and declined to discuss the matter further.

After winning the Council presidency in November, Nick Mosby announced that the debt was fully paid. In a response to her indictment, Marilyn Mosby’s lawyer claimed that her husband had “lied” to her about the repayment of the debt.

Court records show that the $45,000 tax lien was finally paid off in June 2021.

That happened four months after Mosby had filed a second mortgage application – to buy the Longboat Key condominium – that she said was not encumbered by any federal debt.

Mosby’s defense lawyers are seeking to block the admission of her counsel’s statements to the Attorney Grievance Commission, among other matters.

Her trial, on two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements in connection with the purchase of the Florida properties, is scheduled to start before Judge Griggsby on September 19.