Operation Varsity Blues took on some additional shading on Friday after a federal judge called out some of the FBI’s methodology in the college admissions scandal. Full House star Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, are two of the 14 parents seeking dismissal, with U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton demanding more information about actions he calls “serious and disturbing.”
The issue stems from notes that Rick Singer took on his phone on October 2, 2018. After admitting to being the mastermind of the scheme, Singer worked with the FBI and began recording phone calls. Singer’s notes suggest that investigators told him to lie to his clients about what their payments were getting them in the hopes that they would restate their awareness of the bribery conspiracy. Judge Gorton wrote that “while government agents are permitted to coach cooperating witnesses during the course of an investigation, they are not permitted to suborn the commission of a crime.”
Unlike fellow actress Felicity Huffman, who has already pleaded guilty, paid $30,000, and served 11 days in jail, Loughlin and her co-defendants maintain their innocence. Their defense attorneys claim that their clients thought they were making legitimate donations to college programs, and that the government knowingly withheld knowledge of Singer’s notes, which were not turned over as evidence until February.
“Loud and abrasive,” is how Singer described the FBI investigators we was working with, who “continue to ask me to tell a fib.”
The prosecutors have until May 1 to respond to the judge.