Just another of the plague of rats in old Baltimore.
A federal judge in Maryland sentenced author and former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh to three years in prison Thursday over a fraud scheme related to a series of children’s books she’s written.
In addition to the prison time, Pugh was ordered to serve three years of probation and pay $669,000 in restitution.
Pugh pleaded guilty last November to two counts of conspiracy to defraud the United States and two counts of tax evasion. Federal prosecutors said she was involved in a corrupt scheme involving the sales of her Healthy Holly books and used proceeds to fund her political campaign and buy a house.
She at one point sold 100,000 of the books for $500,000 to the University of Maryland Medical System, where she was a board member, and was part of a state Senate committee that agreed to partly fund the hospital system at the time.
Now Pugh is talking about rebuilding her life.
But what the media isn’t telling you is that she’s part of Baltimore’s Dem culture of corruption.
Mayor Sheila Dixon, who had been forced to resign as part of her plea agreement from a trial that stemmed from, among other things, stealing toys from poor children.
Dixon was replaced by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake who announced, during the riots over a drug dealer’s death, “we also gave those who wished to destroy space to do that as well.” Arrests were cut in half while the murder rate increased 63%, until it passed safer cities like Detroit and Chicago.
Rawlings-Blake decided not to run for reelection, even, unprecedentedly, without being indicted.
Despite being a convicted criminal, Dixon tried to make a comeback in the 2016 election. The race pitted Dixon, who had been convicted of embezzlement, against Pugh. Dixon won the black vote, while Pugh won the white vote. After Pugh was forced to step down, Dixon’s Facebook page displayed a 2020 Mayor post. Dixon blamed the post on hackers.
Cummings, the target of Trump’s Twitter barrage, had endorsed Pugh. But, before that, he had been listed as a witness in the Dixon trial. After Dixon resigned, he issued a press release praising the “long history of effective service to our city” of a politician who stole from poor children.
Charm city. These are its charms.
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