Nancy Grace, an outspoken political commentator and TV personality, recently offered her advice to Lori Loughlin in connection to the college admissions scandal.
The setup: Nancy Grace spoke with Entertainment Tonight at a holiday party from DailyMail.com, a U.K.-based news site.
Context: Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, are accused of paying $500,000 in bribes so that their daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli, would be team crew recruits for the University of Southern California, according to the Associated Press. The couple pleaded not guilty in the case, even as more charges have been slapped on them.
The advice: Grace said Loughlin and Giannulli should listen to advice from their lawyers.
“Follow the counsel of your lawyers but always, in every way, tell the truth — which is sometimes very hard to do.”
“When you don’t know a horse, look at his track record. Other co-defendants charged in similar crimes have gotten jail time — and very stiff fines. So I think with that in mind, I would try to work with prosecutors.”
The other side: Grace told Entertainment Tonight that Felicity Huffman handled her case well. Huffman completed a 14-day prison sentence in October. She admitted to paying $15,000 to have some alter test results for her daughter Sophia so she could get into college.
“I think that saying, ‘I did this, I’m embarrassed, I’ve caused my family a lot of pain,’ ... it’s not just for the public, it’s for your children. To see mom say, ‘You know what, I did something wrong. I was misguided, I was wrong.’ And when an otherwise totally wonderful and good person stands in front of a judge and says, ‘I screwed up. I did something horrible.’ It’s really hard to maintain your anger and seek retribution when someone’s admitting they did this thing.”
“I think Felicity Huffman did an incredible job. And based on that, I know she did a bad thing but I think she set a really good example for her children by telling the truth.”
Similar: Longtime Hollywood crisis manager Howard Bragman told the Deseret News that he believed Lori Loughlin “played it badly” when it came to dealing with the college admissions scandal.
- He said Huffman and Loughlin took two different paths when it came to handling the scandal and the results of each of their cases says a lot about their status.
“The way these two have played it are kind of textbook cases for how you should play it and how you shouldn’t play it with Felicity playing it pretty much spot on. It’s perfect. Exactly how, at least in my mind, I would have wanted if she was my client — and neither are my clients — but had she been my client, exactly how I would have recommended she play it,” he said.