Jo and Amy. Cain and Abel. That one 30 Rock episode where Tracy Jordan thinks his sons are going to “Menendez” him. Our stories tell us that nothing good comes from family that turns on family, like for example, picking at random here, testifying in the court of law against one’s elders, thereby helping send them to jail. We’ve all seen the Godfather II! It ends terribly.
The “will they, won’t they betray their parents” dynamic is something the Loughlin–Giannulli family is allegedly currently facing. An Us Weekly source told the tabloid that the U.S. attorney’s office plan to ask Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli’s daughters, Olivia Jade and Bella Giannulli, to testify (the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts has declined to comment since the case is ongoing).
Loughlin and Giannulli have been charged in the college-admissions scandal case, in which they stand accused of contributing $500,000 in bribes to get their girls into the University of Southern California through the athletic department. Arguably the most curious part of the scheme involved a photo shoot in which the parents submitted images of the girls on the gym rowing machine, or ergometer, in order to buttress the false claim that they were on the school crew team. The photo shoot is reportedly central to the Fed’s case against the couple. To all charges, Loughlin and Giannulli have pleaded not guilty, and the case appears to be headed to trial.
It’s just the latest wrinkle in a high-profile mess, and one the defendants would like to avoid, reportedly. Loughlin “asked if there was anything that could be done to prevent the girls from testifying,” according to the source. In most states, there’s not an evidentiary privilege between parent and child in a criminal matter, which would pave the way for prosecutors to call children of defendants to the stand (though it’s very rare that prosecutors choose to do so). Loughlin was advised that one way to prevent this would be to change her plea to guilty and accept a bargain, per the source.
So, is this merely a tactic to encourage the couple to flip? Will the girls simply plead the Fifth? What really happened that day on the ergometer? One almost hopes for a trial just to get some answers.
What would it mean for Olivia Jade and Bella, who have already been through so much thanks to their parents? Olivia Jade is probably more famous of the two daughters thanks to her vast YouTube following, though her older sister got the @bella Instagram handle—a real coup given that there’s a Hadid with the same name out there. O.J., as she is sometimes called, has more at stake with such a high-profile choice; her career depends on public perception, and she already lost sponsored-post contracts in the wake of the scandal. As she begins to rebuild her YouTube presence, while not saying much of anything about the case, it’s hard to say what this kind of testimony would do to her sponsor-ability.
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