On Wednesday attorneys for Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli and a dozen other parents implicated in the college-admissions scandal asked for their cases to be dismissed. Their argument remains the same as it has been throughout filings and appearances in court over the last year: Prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence, evidence that would prove these parents believed they were donating to various schools through legitimate means, they say. This allegedly withheld evidence came from a notes-app note by the mastermind of the thing, William “Rick” Singer, which says that prosecutors asked him to lie to parents after he took the plea deal.
“They continue to ask me to tell a fib and not restate what I told my clients as to where their money was going—to the program not the coach and that it was a donation and they want it to be a payment,” Singer wrote, per the filing.
The notes weren’t given to the defense until last month, the defense wrote, adding, “For government agents to coerce an informant into lying on recorded calls to generate false inculpatory evidence against investigative targets—and to then knowingly prosecute those targets using that false evidence—is governmental malfeasance of the worst kind.”
Prosecutors have said that whether Singer called the payments ”bribes” or ”donations” is inconsequential, since it’s a quid pro quo regardless, and that they didn’t hand the notes over until February because the government didn’t review them again after discovering them. (The U.S. attorney’s office in Boston, however, does not comment on ongoing trials.)
Loughlin and Giannulli are accused of paying Singer $500,000 to get their two daughters into the University of Southern California through its athletic department by falsely claiming they rowed crew (neither had experience with crew). They have pleaded not guilty.
The timing of Loughlin and Giannulli’s trial, for which they’ve been grouped with several other parents, is either lucky or unlucky depending on how one looks at it. Theirs is scheduled for October, while six more parents are not set to convene until January. Both are far-off dates that may live beyond self-quarantine due to COVID-19 measures (touch wood), so they probably won’t get postponed or prolonged. But the case also likely won’t get thrown out for any virus-related reason.
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