Maryland’s AG prepares to fight Trump administration amid budget deficit

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s job is about to get complicated.

After two years in office — in which his power has grown and violent crime has declined — Brown in a few weeks faces a new challenge as President-elect Donald Trump takes office, vowing mass deportations, huge cuts to the federal budget and retribution against his perceived enemies.

To face the Trump administration, Brown plans to hire six lawyers for a new federal litigation unit.

He’s already received “tons of resumes” from qualified people, but he doesn’t have the million dollars he says he needs to hire them. And as the Maryland General Assembly and Gov. Wes Moore figure out how to plug a $3 billion budget hole in the upcoming legislative session — a hole that’s expected to grow in the next few years — it’s not certain the state can afford them.

“We’ve been planning through a lot of different scenarios, and when we see an action taken by the Trump administration that harms the interests of Marylanders, we’re going to take whatever legal action we can,” Brown said in an interview.

Before winning the 2022 election for attorney general, Brown, a Democrat, served for six years in Congress, four of which were during Trump’s first term.

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“I’m not naive to think that the president is not going to do harm to Marylanders, and the question is: How do we mitigate it? How do we respond to it? How do we protect the interest of Marylanders?”

State Del. Jason Buckel, R-Allegany, the state House minority leader, said Brown’s request is a “tough sell.”

As Buckel sees it, Brown is asking for money the state doesn’t have in order to do something countless interest groups and other states are certain to do. He said the OAG could challenge the Trump administration with its current staff, and that Brown’s request is another example of the office’s “expansionist” attitude since Republican Gov. Larry Hogan left office in January 2023.

“The truth is we’re not flush with cash,” Buckel told The Daily Record.

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Expanded power

The powers of the attorney general have grown during Brown’s tenure.

The office comprises about 900 staffers, about two-thirds of whom work for state government departments, Brown said at a budget hearing in February. A bit more than 600 are lawyers, and about 200 lawyers work in the central office in enforcement arms such as consumer protection, civil rights, antitrust and more.

Having spent eight years in the House of Delegates, followed by another eight as lieutenant governor under former Gov. Martin O’Malley, Brown knows how Annapolis works.

Lawmakers in 2023 granted his request to establish a new Civil Rights Division and increased the power of the Independent Investigation Division, giving it the ability to prosecute cops; before, the IID could only refer its findings to local state’s attorneys.

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In July, the Civil Rights Division filed its first lawsuit, alleging an Eastern Shore landlord discriminated against tenants on the basis of gender.

“I’m very pleased with the work we’ve done with those additional authorities and resources to promote and advance civil rights for Marylanders,” he said.

He said that while IID cases are “difficult,” the office has investigated more than 60 cases since the division was created in October 2021, and has investigated more than 20 cases since its new authority to prosecute cases in October 2023.

In IID cases, the attorney general is the exclusive prosecutorial authority on police-involved deaths. He said it’s important for his office to have that power.

“There is a close-by-necessity relationship between the state’s attorneys and law enforcement, and sometimes that close relationship gets in the way of the kind of transparency and accountability that you need when your partner steps over the line and does something that rises to the level of criminal conduct,” Brown said.

“These are judgment calls regarding the conduct associated with carrying out the duties of the office.”

In early December, the IID brought its first charges, against two Anne Arundel County officers who were charged with misconduct in office for lying about their involvement in a chase that resulted in a crash and death last year.

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Brian Frosh, Brown’s predecessor, noted Brown has “a lot more resources than we used to have, which is terrific.”

A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department said the department values its “strong partnership” with Brown’s office, which BPD says has been instrumental in enhancing public safety and holding offenders accountable.

“Together, we are making significant progress in building safer neighborhoods by leveraging shared resources and expertise,” said Lindsey Eldridge, chief of public affairs for BPD. “This collaboration has led to a notable increase in the prosecution of violent crimes affecting our communities.”

Reducing mass incarceration and protecting seniors

In the upcoming legislative session, which begins in January, one of Brown’s priorities is to protect vulnerable adults by requiring nursing homes and assisted living facilities to install cameras in common areas within their facilities.

“Often, the vulnerable adults that we’re protecting, they’re nonverbal and/or their testimony needs to be corroborated, and nothing speaks louder than video footage showing misconduct,” Brown said.

Two days before Christmas, his office announced a caregiver was sentenced for assaulting a resident of a facility for people with intellectual disabilities; the crime was caught on a neighbor’s security camera.

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Brown said the legislative session will also be an opportunity to make progress on the recommendations of the Equitable Justice Collaborative, an alliance between his office and the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, which aims to reduce mass incarceration. Maryland has the highest percentage of Black people in its prisons compared to the state’s population, according to the two offices.

The “thorniest” recommendation, Brown said, is to limit charging children as adults. Though Brown said he would like to eliminate charging children as adults altogether, his office officially has no stance.

An ‘investment to protect Maryland’

Frosh served for eight years as attorney general — with the first four Trump years in the middle. Asked what changed when Trump took office, he said: “Everything.”

“It was an additional job, plunked down in the middle of all the regular stuff AGs need to do,” Frosh told The Daily Record.

Frosh served as attorney general when Hogan, his Republican arch-rival, was governor. He noted Hogan’s practice of leaving jobs unfilled in order to limit government spending.

Frosh said Moore and the General Assembly should approve funding for Brown’s federal litigation unit, despite the budget deficit.

“The investment to protect Maryland through the attorney general’s office is very small compared to the danger and compared to the size of the deficit,” Frosh said. “I think it makes sense to make that investment.”

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