Lori Loughlin: It's Time to Toss Charges

She and other accused parents say ringleader's notes prove they're innocent
By Newser Editors,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 26, 2020 12:20 PM CDT
Lori Loughlin in Call: 'It's All on the Up-and-Up?'
In this 2019 photo, actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, clothing designer Mossimo Giannulli, left, depart federal court in Boston.   (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

As of now, Lori Loughlin and her husband are scheduled to go on trial in October in the college admissions scandal. But on Wednesday night in Boston, Loughlin and other accused parents asked a judge to dismiss the charges against them, reports the Los Angeles Times. The request revolves around newly revealed notes written by the government's informant in the case, William "Rick" Singer. When he was working with the FBI in a sting operation against the parents, for example, Singer wrote this, per the AP: "They continue to ask me to tell a fib and not restate what I told my clients as to where there money was going—to the program not the coach and that it was a donation and they want it to be a payment." Prosecutors have had the notes for more than a year, but they only turned them over to defense attorneys last month.

The defense argues that FBI agents "browbeat" Singer into trying to get the parents to admit they were knowingly paying bribes, and that agents yelled at him when he stuck to his standard pitch—describing the payments as "donations" to school programs that would benefit underprivileged students. "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,” the defense said. Bloomberg notes that in a transcript of a call between Singer and Loughlin, she asks, “It’s all on the up-and-up … right?” And he responds, "Yeah, I have no idea. I mean, uh, I have no idea because I don’t know why they would go after the kids’ high school records." (More Lori Loughlin stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X