{"id":176883,"date":"2020-02-27T19:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T00:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/02\/27\/her-honor\/"},"modified":"2020-02-27T19:46:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T00:46:00","slug":"her-honor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/02\/27\/her-honor\/","title":{"rendered":"Her Honor"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Former Baltimore Mayor Catherin Pugh <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/md-politics\/former-baltimore-mayor-catherine-pugh-to-be-sentenced-in-healthy-holly-scandal\/2020\/02\/26\/6a20c9dc-58c6-11ea-9b35-def5a027d470_story.html\">has been sentenced to 3 years in prison for fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy<\/a>.<\/div>\n<p>She self-published a children&#8217;s book and then used her position to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">In her three years as mayor, a seat she often described as her &#8220;dream job,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/legal-issues\/former-baltimore-mayor-catherine-e-pugh-charged-with-wire-fraud-tax-evasion\/2019\/11\/20\/d2b28738-0ae2-11ea-8397-a955cd542d00_story.html?tid=lk_inline_manual_1&amp;itid=lk_inline_manual_1\">Catherine E. Pugh<\/a> sought to burnish the image of her adoptive hometown, a city battered by rioting, a soaring murder rate, and a history of corruption at City Hall and in the police department.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, as she was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/public-safety\/former-baltimore-mayor-catherine-e-pugh-has-reached-an-agreement-to-plead-guilty-two-people-familiar-with-the-deal-say\/2019\/11\/21\/d3e8499e-0bd7-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html?tid=lk_inline_manual_2&amp;itid=lk_inline_manual_2\">after pleading guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy<\/a>, Pugh personified the dysfunction that has long permeated Maryland\u2019s largest city and sown distrust among its 600,000 residents.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis became a very large fraud,\u201d U.S. District Judge Deborah K. Chasanow said before punishing Pugh for using her self-published \u201cHealthy Holly\u201d children\u2019s books to generate more than $800,000 in income while failing to deliver tens of thousands of the books to youngsters.<br \/>The fraudulent sales to entities with business before city and state government helped fund straw donations to Pugh\u2019s political campaigns and allowed her to buy and renovate a second home in Baltimore.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>2 of the past 4 mayors of Baltimore have been charged with corruption while in office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Former Baltimore Mayor Catherin Pugh has been sentenced to 3 years in prison for fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy. She self-published a children&#8217;s book and then used her position to generate hundreds of thousands of dollars of sales: In her three years as mayor, a seat she often described as her &#8220;dream job,&#8221; Catherine E. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,407,466],"class_list":["post-176883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-justice","tag-maryland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176883"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}