A criminal defense attorney believes Lori Loughlin should walk free form the college admissions scandal.
Celebrity criminal defense attorney Lara Yeretsian said in a statement that Loughlin’s acts were not “morally right” but they were “absolutely not” criminal, either.
She said, “These are two different things, and the new evidence is completely exculpatory.”
Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, are accused of paying $500,000 in bribes so their daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Rose Giannulli, could be crew team recruits for the University of Southern California. The couple pleaded not guilty to those charges.
Recently, Loughlin’s defense team has argued that the scandal’s mastermind, William “Rick” Singer, took notes that show the case should be thrown out. According to reports, Singer took notes after being interviewed with federal prosecutors. In the notes, Singer alleges the prosecutors told him to lie about the scandal.
Singer’s notes came only after Loughlin’s defense team demanded the federal prosecutors turn more evidence in the case over to them, as I wrote for the Deseret News.
According to Yeretsian, the defense lawyer, this is a key matter for the case.
“Singer’s notes are material exculpatory evidence that go to the heart of Loughlin’s defense and could make the difference between a guilty and not guilty verdict,” she said in a statement emailed to the Deseret News.
“Why did the prosecution sit on this evidence for so long? It’s been more than a year, and dozens of parents have already pled guilty. The defense shouldn’t have had to ask for it; the prosecutors were obligated to turn it over to them. It shows the lengths the government went to pressure parents to enter pleas. They didn’t outright tell Singer to lie, but they certainly pressured him to fudge the facts to their benefit.”
The notes may also prove that Loughlin thought she was donating to a charity and not involving herself in a scandal, Yeretsian said.
“It’s especially bad that they filed bribery and tax evasion charges against Loughlin while they had evidence showing she believed the money was going to charity. Prosecutors should have turned over, not concealed, evidence supporting Loughlin’s claim that she thought these were charitable contributions. If she believed they were charitable donations, she had no intent to commit tax evasion.”
Recent reports suggest that Loughlin and Giannulli remain confident the charges will be dropped, as I wrote about the Deseret News.
An unnamed source told Us Weekly that the couple is “more steadfast than ever that they did nothing illegal” in the scandal.
“Lori’s lawyers feel they have a very strong chance of having the charges dismissed because prosecutors withheld key evidence that (ringleader) Rick Singer was pressured by the FBI to lie in the course of his conversations with Lori. It was entrapment, misleading a defendant so that Rick could get a favorable sentence for his role. Rick was the mastermind in all of this,” the source said.