Delay tactics are not unusual but if half the people including singer and the coaches have pleaded guilty (Felicity Huffman can plead with such a graceful statement), if the government obviously has the tapes, the other half know what tax returns they filed and deductions they claimed to be charitable donations for which they received no benefit and know what the payments they made were for… how is the latter half that different from the former half?
It’s true that every case is different, that they can put the burden of proof on the government, that it’s their right to do all this at the taxpayers’ expense. If they do all that, they should just expect a higher bill at their time of reckoning.
I meant a plea DEAL, to enter a guilty plea, was very fast in these cases. A plea is entered almost immediately, and it is almost always ‘not guilty’ as the pleas were in this case too. Felicity and the others all pleaded not guilty days after they were charged, bail was set, and they went home to prepare for trial. LL and husband also entered not guilty pleas days after the first charges and when they wouldn’t agree to the deal offered, were charged with more counts and had to plead again to the new charges.
No, discovery is pre-trial when the sides provide documents, witness statements, investigation reports. It is not like Perry Mason where everything takes place in a courtroom. The defense gets all the prosecution evidence pre-trial and often negotiates with the prosecutors to drop some chargers, change some, to a sentence recommendation that includes no jail time. It appears that here, it was a ‘take it or leave it’ offer, with no negotiation.
This takes months and months to complete discovery, except in this case it all took place in one month. Singer and the other principals had almost a year to get ready to enter pleas, but the parents like Felicity and LL didn’t know this was coming. They hadn’t reviewed the evidence, they hadn’t even had time to pull their own bank account records, depose Singer, depose the crew coach or the athletic director, etc. They might not even had the names of criminal lawyers with the type of experience needed for this type of case.
@bronze2 “how is the latter half that different from the former half?”
I believe the parents who gave money to a foundation to be used to pay a Harvard grad to take a standardized exam for their children are different than those who gave money to a foundation believing that it was going to make a charitable donation to the athletic department of the university so their children would get an admissions boost.
Presumably they believed that as long as the only thing given in exchange was an admissions’ boost for their kid, whose value no one can quantify, then giving to a foundation that rewarded colleges who gave special preferences to the students the foundation wanted them to give preference to was not a crime. (Although clearly ethically wrong.)
It would be sort of amusing to make a guide to what is legal and what is not if you want to cheat your kid’s way into college as an athletic recruit without going to jail if you are caught. It seems from what has been reported about the Harvard fencing parent’s actions that some behavior - while it may be questionable - is perfectly legal.
Keyword: admissions boost.
Vehicle: not a donation to the U, but to Singer’s foundation.
Laundering. (Because it was to be used for a boost, back channel.)
Clearly, the feds, versed in the law, a large team all involved, feel they have a case.
And this case does not involve H fencing. No legal precedent there for a defense. Can’t say, “But somewhere else, I think it worked.” The H situation is not on record as being judged ok.
“Clearly, the feds, versed in the law, a large team all involved, feel they have a case.”
And clearly the feds, versed in the law, believe that what the Harvard fencing dad did was perfectly legal. In fact, not only was it legal, but there is absolutely no sign that Harvard itself even believes anything improper was done. It is a great roadmap for rich parents about how to do this all in a way that the colleges and feds both will be fine with. It’s not as if there is a law on the books that says “you may not buy a college coach’s home for half a million dollars more than it is worth as a special thanks for recruiting your child – oh sorry, I mean as special thanks for being such a nice coach for your kid at college.”
I should add that if Harvard and/or the feds take any action, then I am wrong. Also, this has nothing to do with saying “but somewhere else it worked”. This is about what DOES work and is perfectly fine.
I used to be a criminal defense attorney. I would have considered it to be malpractice in most cases for a defense attorney to agree to a plea bargain of any kind without having at least basic discovery. How do I know that the prosecution even has a case without seeing what they have? (“Basic” would mean at least the key evidence).
I’d note, however, that when there are a lot of co-defendants in a case-- there can be a huge benefit to making a deal early on, especially one that is tied to being a cooperating witness. Because the holdouts can be left holding the bagg.
Also, in some cases it’s obvious enough that the criminal defendant is guilty and that the prosecution has the evidence without having to have every piece of documentation in hand. I mean, if the person is caught in the act doing something criminal, then things aren’t likely to get better.
In this case, the parents know what they paid for and what they expected to get from it, and they have their own financial records – so they may already have a pretty good idea of what the prosecution has against them. Plus, this case has the complicating factor of defendants who might be particularly worried about adverse publicity – one more factor favoring making a deal early on to get their names out of the limelight. (Note: I never handled a case with these sort of allegations – RICO, wire-fraud, etc. So there may be considerations in those cases that are different than what I would have encountered in my more run-of-the-mill criminal practice. )
Observer, are you seriously adding H fencing to THIS case? It has no bearing.
“And clearly the feds, versed in the law, believe that what the Harvard fencing dad did was perfectly legal.” Cite your source. Do you know the feds investigated this and judged it just fine? Or the fact of other incidents is just confusing you?
The defense attorneys know that the prosecution has incriminating tapes, because the indictment has transcripts from them. And presumably they also know that the prosecution has or can easily obtain the tax records of the accused people.
@lookingforward " are you seriously adding H fencing to THIS case? It has no bearing."
Yes, I agree. It has no bearing on this case because none of the parents in this case who were indicted purchased a coach’s home for many hundreds of thousands more than its market value. No parent gave a big donation to a fencing foundation that then turned around and gave some of that money to a newly created coach’s non-profit as its only outside donation.
They are completely separate and everyone seems to be certain that if Lori Loughlin gave money that she thought was going to the university athletic department to get her daughters an admissions boost, that would be illegal.
But no one has yet said that UCLA parents giving big donations directly to the athletic department in exchange for their kids being designated recruits is illegal. Is it? I find it odd that parents have to guess what is illegal or not when it comes to donating or after the fact “gifting” and getting any admissions boost in exchange. But it certainly seems reasonable to assume that if the feds are not concerned with actions that are public knowledge and reported by major news organizations, then those actions are not illegal. It would seem quite cynical to assume that a law was broken and the feds just liked the criminals too much to prosecute. And now everyone knows not to say out loud what you are doing and if your facilitator says “I’m going to do this specifically to help get your child admitted to the school” instead of saying “I’m being recorded so don’t say anything”, then you should just hang up or say “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
It is getting unreal. The feds can’t prosecute everything that happens.
If you quoyed me where the feds investigated the prior UCLA issue and deemed it not illegal, that would be different. But you seem to be trying to add 1+1 and get 3.
Why do you think they liked the criminals too much? Simplify. Focus on this case, not all the other news things you come up with. Apply law, as it is, to this case. And comon sense.
Different college hoax. But excellent insight on the whole collegiate arms race.
“Sara Stiffleman, a family therapist and author of Parenting with Presence, says that while this hoax was especially complex, she’s not surprised that a teenager would make up a lie regarding admission in response to parental pressure.
“Parents project onto kids their own need for approval,”
Stiffelman tells Yahoo Parenting.
“The kid becomes the designated representative of the family’s honor and the family’s status, and the kid can’t help but pick up on that.
The child’s achievements take on an extra importance .”
If the parent gave the payment to the athletic department, and then deducted it as a charitable donation, that would be illegal. It would be tax fraud, and probably also money laundering. If the athletic department accepted the payment, and then falsely documented it as a charitable donation, that would also be illegal, some sort of tax crime I think.
If the parent conspired with a person in the athletic department to deceive the admissions office into admitting their child, by fraudulently representing the child as an elite athlete, that would be fraud.
@lookingforward “Focus on this case, not all the other news things you come up with. Apply law, as it is, to this case. And comon sense.”
Not sure what you mean since I am neither a judge nor jury nor do I have all the evidence on “this case” to apply law. Is it forbidden to talk about the Harvard fencing case and what UCLA itself found in an investigation and notice the similarities and differences? If so, duly noted.
@observer12, you’re arguing that if the Harvard fencing case is legal, then what Loughlin did was also legal. But there’s a problem with that reasoning. No case has been brought, as of yet, against the people involved in the Harvard case, but we can’t conclude that’s because prosecutors believe the people involved did nothing illegal.
There can be many reasons why a potential case is not prosecuted, even if investigators believe illegal activity has occurred: the prosecutors don’t have enough evidence, or they don’t think the witnesses would cooperate, or they deem the case too small and unimportant, or they’re busy with other cases, or they’re working on prosecution but haven’t indicted yet. Unless they’ve brought a case and a judge has thrown it out saying the allegations don’t amount to illegal activity, we can’t conclude much of anything.
Instead of comparing the Loughlin case, where there is already an indictment, to some random thing that happened, look at the law and previous cases. You want to say that prosecutors think what the Harvard folks did was legal, but you have no basis whatsoever for that claim, and it therefore amounts to distraction rather than persuasion.
@“Cardinal Fang” “you’re arguing that if the Harvard fencing case is legal, then what Loughlin did was also legal”
May I ask you politely not to put words in my mouth? That is not what I am arguing so I’m not sure why you need to keep saying it because it doesn’t make it true.
I am simply noticing that there are a lot of parallels and yet one is apparently legal and one isn’t and if a parent wants to legally have his child get a boost in admissions, the Harvard fencing case and what happened at UCLA that the university documented in its own report provides a template for what seems to be legal, if not ethical. While there is certainly evidence that getting caught doing those things may result in your child being expelled (or not, as in the case of Harvard so far), there is no evidence so far that doing so would put you in any legal jeopardy. Not one bit.
Not sure why you don’t agree with me. We know exactly what the bare minimum evidence is in the Harvard and UCLA cases even without having any kind of power to subpoena and investigate that the feds would have and all I am saying is that there is no reason to believe any of those practices that we already know about are illegal since no one in the fed or the college has given us any indication that they are.
Your sentence “Unless they’ve brought a case and a judge has thrown it out saying the allegations don’t amount to illegal activity, we can’t conclude much of anything.” makes no sense. By that logic, it is possible that eating an ice cream cone while driving a car could be legal or it could be illegal but we can’t conclude which one is true until a case has been brought and a judge has thrown it out. We certainly assume that the kind of donation that Jared Kushner’s dad made the year his son was admitted to Harvard was legal and we don’t say “until prosecutors bring a case and the judge has thrown it out we can’t conclude anything.” Yes we can. We can conclude that making a very big donation directly to the university that results in your child (coincidentally) getting an admissions boost is legal.
If the feds do indict in those non-Singer cases based on only the evidence that we already know about, then I am wrong and that activity can be considered illegal. Otherwise, it seems reasonable to believe that the kind of donations and gifts that were made at Harvard and UCLA by parents whose children were admitted are not illegal. And to make it clear since you seem to keep misunderstanding me – whether or not those actions by parents at UCLA and Harvard were legal has nothing to do with the Loughlin case, which the feds do believe is illegal and that will presumably be proven in court or through a plea.
In other words, parents who want to give their child an admissions boost via the athletic admissions system without running afoul of any laws should restrict themselves to doing what the Harvard fencing dad did or the UCLA parents did that was documented in UCLA’s own report and not what Lori Loughlin did. It may not be ethical, but there is no evidence that any prosecutor or university believes laws have been broken.
The existence of other illegalities, people indicted or not, tells us nothing. Ok, that it happened before. But nothing to draw conclusions from. If it’s illegal to text and drive, someone does get cited, there is no defense in, “But she did it, too and you didn’t stop her car.” The cop could say, “We’ll try to get her next time. License and insurance info, please.”
Would you plead not guilty and try to cite that you know others who text and drive? Despite it being contrary to laws?