Attorneys Seek To Have Some Of Extortion Charges Against Sen. Dalya Attar Dismissed

By Christine Condon, Maryland Matters

December 16, 2025

Attorneys for Maryland Sen. Dalya Attar (D-Baltimore City) have asked a federal court to dismiss several of the extortion counts against her, arguing that she was the victim of harassment who “simply wanted to be left alone.”

In a filing Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, attorneys for Attar argued that the government failed to prove that she and her co-defendants — her brother Joseph “Yossi” Attar and Baltimore City Police Officer Kalman Finkelstein — sought to extort money or property from the victim, meaning those charges, three out of eight, ought to be dismissed.

“This case is not about any attempt by the Defendants to obtain money, property, or thing of transferable economic value,” reads the filing. “The Defendants sought nothing more than freedom from ‘Victim’ 1’s ongoing and well-documented stalking, harassment, threats, and demands.”

The attorneys stopped short of asking U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher to dismiss the entire case, which also includes counts of conspiracy and wiretapping.

In October, a federal grand jury indicted Attar, her brother and Finkelstein on charges that they carried out a blackmail scheme to silence a disgruntled political consultant who once worked for Attar.

Kalman Finkelstein (right) leaves the U.S. District Courthouse in Baltimore flanked by attorneys last month, including Jeff Ifrah (second from left), who is representing Maryland Sen. Dalya Attar (D-Baltimore City). (File photo by Christine Condon/ Maryland Matters)

The indictment detailed a plot allegedly carried out by the trio to capture the consultant on video having an affair and use the footage to scare her, so that she would not attempt to impede the senator’s future campaigns by spreading disparaging information. All three pleaded not guilty last month.

The senator’s attorneys, in Tuesday’s filing, said the government may argue that Attar “retained an ‘economic interest’ in winning the state delegate election,” the filing says the “alleged communications” in the extortion counts were made not to protect her job, but to “escape” the consultant’s intimidation.

In the filing, the attorneys describe a “campaign of harassment” carried out by the consultant, after she was terminated from Attar’s 2018 campaign “for misconduct.”

The filing alleges that the consultant began “relentlessly texting” Attar and members of the Attar family, “with threats to cause economic and reputational harm.”

The consultant, who is not identified in court records, also showed up uninvited at restaurants, at Attar’s parents’ home and “other unexpected locations” for the “sole purpose of haranguing Senator Attar,” according to the filing. Further, the consultant attempted to convince a school that Joseph Attar’s children attended to expel them “without any rational justification.”

Attorneys for the defendants also pointed to a text message sent to Joseph Attar by the consultant in October 2018.

“Beware,” the consultant wrote, according to the filing. “When u least expect it, expect it. Goodbye. This is my final warning.”

Attorneys for the Attars also took the opportunity to cast doubt on the government’s evidence in the case, pointing out that the government does not possess any of the alleged video footage used in the blackmail scheme.

Instead, the government relied upon one of the victims, who recorded a conversation with Joseph Attar, in which Attar is alleged to have shown a portion of the footage.

“It is Victim 2, and Victim 2 alone, who reports that this fleeting display included intimate images of him and Victim 1 engaging in intercourse nearly two years earlier,” reads Tuesday’s filing. “The Government unquestioningly accepted Victim 2’s allegation as true and relied on it to form the basis of a federal indictment, despite having no other direct evidence of the existence of the alleged illegal recording.”