Baltimore City Council President Nick Mosby called on President Joe Biden to pardon his ex-wife Marilyn Mosby, saying she was selectively prosecuted.

Making his final remarks as chairman of the city’s Board of Estimates on Wednesday, Nick Mosby made the plea to Biden and called on his colleagues across the state to join him, part of an effort to clear her that has been re-energized following the president’s pardon of his own son.

“The last thing I’ll say before we close it out is Marilyn Mosby, my ex-wife, was selectively prosecuted, politically prosecuted, wrongfully prosecuted, and I call on my colleagues across the state, I call on anyone else throughout the state to ask President Joe Biden for a pardon,” he said.

The council president’s daughters stood behind him as he delivered the brief speech.

Marilyn Mosby, 44, a Democrat, is serving a year of home detention with electronic monitoring as part of her sentence for being convicted at separate trials of two counts of perjury as well as one count of making a false statement on a loan application related to her purchase of two luxury vacation homes in Florida.

Nick Mosby himself was accused by federal prosecutors of “repeatedly committing perjury” on tax returns, claiming deductions for charitable contributions when he owed tens of thousands of dollars in federal taxes, but he was not charged with a crime.

From the beginning, Marilyn Mosby has maintained her innocence and argued that she was being targeted. In the lead-up to her sentencing, she and prominent allies mounted an aggressive bid for a pardon.

Hunter Biden’s prosecution was led by the same assistant U.S. attorney, Leo Wise, that brought charges against Marilyn Mosby. Wise prosecuted former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh and the Baltimore Police Gun Trace Task Force scandal while in the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, and was detailed to the special counsel team of David Weiss and has taken the lead on the Biden case.

No pardon application for Mosby appears pending in the online database of the Office of the Pardon Attorney, but political strategist Angela Rye said it was indeed filed in May and suggested there was a backlog. Rye and civil rights attorney Ben Crump released a statement earlier this week saying that “while Hunter Biden was selectively prosecuted, he’s not the only one.”

“Marilyn Mosby is on house arrest right now with her law license hanging in the balance over purchasing property with her own money,” the statement continued. “We welcome a conversation with President Biden to discuss ways to use his pardon power to free those ‘others’ who deserve justice also.”

Biden said his son was “singled out” for “selective prosecution.”

“Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further,” Biden said.

The judge in Hunter Biden’s tax case blasted the president’s comments in a five-page order Tuesday, saying that “representations contained” in his pardon announcement “stand in tension with the case record.”

“The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States … but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history,” District Judge Mark Scarsi wrote.

Marilyn Mosby served two terms as Baltimore state’s attorney during 2015-2023 and finished third in a bid for a third term.

In his comments at the Board of Estimates, Nick Mosby spoke of the impact of his wife’s case and his own shortcomings on their daughters. He took the stand at his wife’s trial, detailing how he fell behind on mortgage payments, experienced the garnishment of his wages for student loans and the repossession of his car, and hid the troubles from his wife even as they became public when a federal lien was placed on their Bolton Hill home. They filed for divorce in July 2023.

“The level of courage and the level of determination that you have embedded in you is more than most humans,” he said to his daughters. “You’ve had to sit back and watch a public spectacle of your parents for several years. You’ve had the federal government use millions and millions of dollars to trample into your lives for several years. And you’ve done it with a face of courage. You’ve done it with a face of determination. And not allowed it to impact your schooling or anything else.”

Asked if he will join the council president in calling for a pardon, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott stopped short and said it will be up to the president to make that decision. “We’ve seen transgressions far worse than hers” get a pardon, he said.

“I have no issues with the council president using his last moments to advocate for that,” Scott said. “That’s him advocating not just as the council president, but also someone thinking about his family. Even though they’re not together anymore, they still share those two beautiful girls.”

Banner reporter Dylan Segelbaum contributed to this article.