Actress Lori Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli are arguing that their college bribery case should be dismissed claiming the FBI urged William 'Rick' Singer to lie about their involvement. The actress and her designer husband have been two of the most famous faces involved in the Varsity Blues scandal after it was discovered that the pair hired Singer to ensure their daughters' would be admitted to the University of Southern California.
The couple has pled not guilty to the charges brought against them including one count each of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery as well as charges of money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and honest services mail and wire fraud. They are accused of paying $500,00 to ensure the admission of their two daughters to USC as designated crew recruits.
Lawyers for Loughlin and Giannulli as well as other parents charged in the bribery scandal are claiming the FBI bullied Singer into lying as well as concealing information. “The extraordinary government misconduct presented in this case threatens grave harm to defendants and the integrity of this proceeding. That misconduct cannot be ignored,” the lawyers wrote, according to the Associated Press.
The memo filed by the lawyers states “the Government belatedly disclosed Singer’s contemporaneous written notes revealing that those recordings were a sham carefully engineered by government agents in an effort to ‘entrap’ Defendants and ‘nail’ them ‘at all costs,'” according to PEOPLE. “The Government’s extraordinary misconduct warrants extraordinary relief. The facts known so far justify dismissal of the indictment,” it continues. “At a minimum, the Court should order suppression of the tainted recordings.”
The couple is scheduled to go on trial in October along with six other parents, but in light of Singer's statements, they are looking to have the case dismissed entirely. The AP noted that Singer wrote, according to the filing, that the FBI pressured him into stating the payments he received from the parents involved were bribes. “They continue to ask me to tell a fib and not restate what I told my clients as to where there money was going — to the program not the coach and that it was a donation and they want it to be a payment.”
The lawyers argued that “for government agents to coerce an informant into lying on recorded calls to generate false inculpatory evidence against investigative targets—and to then knowingly prosecute those targets using that false evidence—is governmental malfeasance of the worst kind.”
While Loughlin and Giannulli continue to maintain their innocence, claiming they believed the money they paid to Singer and USC were donations, and look to have their case dismissed, others have pled guilty to their charges including actress Felicity Huffman, who was handed a two-week sentence.