Lawyers for indicted state Sen. Nathaniel T. Oaks argue in a new court filing that the FBI entrapped their client after pursuing him relentlessly for years.
“The government hatched, designed, and engineered a crime in this case, and then spent more than two years in a coordinated, unrelenting, and multifaceted campaign to try to induce Senator Oaks to commit it,” wrote federal public defenders Lucius T. Outlaw III and Rebecca S. Talbott, who represent Oaks.
The filing sheds new light on the breadth of the federal investigation. According to the defense lawyers, documents provided by federal prosecutors make clear that they also pursued Baltimore City Council members and used a former high-ranking county official to secretly record politicians.
Federal prosecutors declined to comment on the filing.
Oaks, a Baltimore Democrat, is accused of taking $15,300 in cash payments from an FBI source he believed to be a wealthy businessman from Texas called Mike Henley.