Baltimore state’s attorney taps former federal corruption prosecutor for witness leak investigation

The Baltimore state’s attorney’s office has tapped a former federal corruption prosecutor to investigate the leak of witness information in a high-profile murder case.

The Baltimore City Circuit Court clerk’s office posted images on Facebook on Aug. 19 of Christine Goo being sworn in as a new assistant state’s attorney, something it does regularly, and commended her for “this incredible career achievement.”

But Goo is not a routine new hire. Sources say she has been brought on as a special assistant state’s attorney to investigate how sensitive evidence in a murder-for-hire trial ended up on the internet. She previously worked for the office for 11 years and then served as a federal prosecutor for six years. The Banner is not naming the sources because they were not authorized to discuss the appointment publicly.

The Baltimore state’s attorney’s office declined to comment, as did Goo. The post from the court clerk’s office has since been taken down.

Last month, prosecutors were alarmed after confidential documents in a contract killing case were displayed in a YouTube video. The documents, under a court order to be kept secret, identified once-rising local rapper Keith Ambush, also known as YNE Sosa, as a government witness in the case against Keith Brian Russell and Cornell Moore. The video chided him for cooperating with authorities.

Prosecutors sought an emergency hearing to question defense attorneys Natalie Finegar and Brandon Taylor about whether they had violated the court order. Both denied producing or sharing printed copies of the confidential material.

Goo worked for the state’s attorney’s office from 2008 until 2019, when she joined the Maryland U.S. attorney’s office, where she eventually prosecuted public corruption before leaving in 2025.

Since then, she has been working as a partner with Nathan & Kamionski, a firm that Baltimore City pays to defend police officers in wrongful conviction lawsuits. Goo was part of a team of lawyers who won a not guilty verdict for officers at a federal trial this summer in a lawsuit brought by Clarence Shipley, who spent 27 years in prison for a murder he said he did not commit and was exonerated in 2018.

Moore and Russell are scheduled to go on trial this fall, accused by federal agents of a murder-for-hire plot connected to as many as 19 shootings and homicides between 2020 and 2022. Russell has already been convicted of a related homicide at trial in Baltimore County.

The case was supposed to go to trial earlier this year. Prosecutors wrote in court documents that “disclosure of the witnesses’ identity will create a substantial risk of harm to them.”

As the original trial date approached, prosecutors disclosed the identities, as required, to the defense attorneys so they could prepare. The documents were subject to a protective order that barred their disclosure outside the defense team.

The case was investigated by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Baltimore Police Department. It was the first major case brought by the Major Investigations Unit of the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office.

Banner reporter Dylan Segelbaum contributed to this story.