Baltimore Democrat Mayor Pugh: On the Lam After Feds Raid Office, Home

It doesn’t look good when the FBI and IRS both visit your home and offices with cardboard boxes and warrants. It’s bad when a cable comic mocks you and your city on international television and you decide to just up and take off.

It’s even worse when local news leaves one slightly embarrassing tidbit off their coverage: that you’re a Democrat.

You have to go out-of-state to get more professional coverage.

She’s running.

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has skipped town, following Thursday’s FBI and IRS raid on her home, according to a report.

No one has seen the Democrat, who is being investigated over sales of a children’s book she authored, since the raid and even her spokesman James Bentley said he has no idea where she is.

The Baltimore City Council has asked her to step down as mayor, but it’s still unclear whether she’ll resign.
New York Post, 4/25/19

The dollar figures involved are too impressive for Mayor Pugh to easily skate on this one and normally stubborn Democrats have thrown her under the bus.

It’s appreciated that as the mayor of a major metropolitan city these things have to be handled delicately, but if the feds raided our offices, our lawyer’s office and our homes, chances are they wouldn’t ask us to drop by when we got a few minutes to spare.

The fact she’s black and her last name isn’t Clinton is more of the obvious detriment.

UPDATE

Is this just the tip of the Pugh iceberg?

“She’s in a terrible spot,” said Arnold M. Weiner, the lawyer who defended a previous mayor, Sheila Dixon, against charges of theft, perjury and misconduct in office. “There aren’t any moves she can make at this point,” he said.

“The books might just be a shiny object,” he said. “My guess is there’s something bigger.”

Lawyers said federal agencies likely are looking for possible tax violations, such as whether she reported income from the books. And indeed, among the agents who descended on seven locations in Baltimore associated with Pugh — including her former campaign treasurer’s office, an aide’s apartment and a nonprofit job training center that she once led — were some wearing Internal Revenue Service jackets.

“When money is involved, there is potential for tax crimes,” said David Jaros, a University of Baltimore Law School professor. “And they’re easier to prove.”

“It’s easier to make a deal with state than federal prosecutors,” Weiner said. And Pugh might not have much to bargain with at this point, he said.
Baltimore Sun, 4/26/19

Yeah, the IRS was grabbing stuff. That’s never a good sign.

Following FBI and IRS raids on her two homes, City Hall and the offices of some of her allies Thursday, Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh is said to be in poor health and not “lucid” enough to make a decision as to whether or not she will resign from office amid a financial scandal and controversy surrounding her self-published children’s books.
The Root, 4/26/19

An “indefinite leave of absence” and now this.

Obviously, a Democrat doesn’t need to be “lucid” to run Baltimore.

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