State Sen. Dalya Attar, D-Baltimore City, is running for re-election and facing a primary challenge – but her biggest challenge to retaining her seat in District 41 may be the U.S. Department of Justice.
Attar has been charged in federal court on eight felony counts. Baltimore City Police Officer Kalman Finkelstein and the senator’s brother, Joseph Attar, face the same charges.
The case was filed Oct. 23, 2025, and because of the complexity of the case, U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher last week delayed Attar’s trial until after Nov. 2 – the day before Election Day.
The indictment didn’t stop Attar from launching a re-election bid, as well as an aggressive defense against the charges.
“This case is about a family seeking relief from a prolonged campaign of harassment by a disgruntled former employee,” the state senator’s lawyers said in a motion to dismiss several of the charges, which the judge later rejected. “Senator Dalya Attar, her brother Joseph ‘Yossi’ Attar and their friend, Kalman Finkelstein, simply wanted to be left alone.”
The case centers on the state senator’s former political consultant, who worked on her successful Maryland House of Delegates campaign in 2018 but exited before that election.
Prosecutors allege that in January 2020, Attar, her brother and Finkelstein conspired to record the consultant having an affair with a married man and use the footage to blackmail her into not doing anything that could harm Attar’s 2022 House of Delegates campaign.
In a December 2025 request to dismiss three of the eight charges, Attar’s legal team said the former Attar employee regularly harassed Attar beginning in 2018.
However, federal lawyers said the government has not identified evidence that the former consultant stalked, harassed and threatened Attar as that document claims.
According to the state’s objection, Finkelstein’s wife was close friends with the political consultant, who stayed in an apartment belonging to Finkelstein’s son while visiting America from Israel in January 2020.
Government prosecutors alleged that Attar’s brother and Finkelstein placed a tracking device on the vehicle loaned to the consultant and installed recording devices — at least one disguised as a smoke detector — in the living room and bedroom of the apartment the consultant was staying in on Jan. 16, 2020. They also alleged Joseph Attar and Finkelstein knew the consultant would be away from the apartment because she was babysitting Finkelstein’s children.
The hidden camera later filmed the consultant with her married paramour, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors claim on April 8, 2022, after the consultant and married man were made aware of the video’s existence and warned into compliance, the consultant posted on Facebook questioning why some delegates voted against a bill. They said Attar retaliated by having someone show the video to Finkelstein’s wife, the consultant’s friend.
In a voice message from that day recovered by federal lawyers, Attar said, “I personally don’t think [Finkelstein] would like the idea of using [his wife], well I know he won’t like it, but at this point, I have an election coming up and I really don’t care. I just care about it getting back to [the consultant] and she understands that we’re serious.”
Federal lawyers acknowledged they do not have audio or videos from the smoke detector, saying they “were either deleted or placed out of reach of search warrants.”
Attar’s legal team also argued Attar’s brother was unknowingly recorded during a conversation where he purportedly showed videos to the married man, which would be a violation of Maryland’s Wiretap and Electronic Surveillance Act.
Attar and her alleged accomplices were each charged with one count of conspiracy, two counts of extortion, one count of interception and disclosure of communication, and four counts of violating the Travel Act.
Her opponent, Del. Malcolm Ruff, did not respond to three requests for comment from Capital News Service, but he recently told WBAL: ““Sen. Attar should not be representing any of our communities because we can’t allow folks that we put in position of trust and power to have this kind of conduct.”
Ruff and Attar were both delegates last year when former Sen. Jill Carter resigned from her seat, and they competed to fill the vacancy. The Baltimore City Democratic Central Committee voted for Attar, 5-3.
Now, the pair square off again in the Democratic primary, and John Dedie, a political scientist at the Community College of Baltimore County, said the winner is likely to win the general election because of the district’s Democratic lean.
Despite the ongoing case, Dedie said he believes Attar, the first Orthodox Jewish woman to serve in the state Senate, retains an advantage in her race to be re-elected. He said Ruff hasn’t run a very good campaign.
“When people look at the candidate that basically has been federally charged, but they’re willing to overlook that, what does it say about her opponent?” Dedie said.
If Attar were to be convicted of a federal crime after winning the primary and the November election, she would be forced to resign. Her replacement would be decided by the same Democratic Central Committee that appointed her to the position last year.
