‘CALLING’ COLLISION
Loughlin, Mossimo draw parallel to feds’ fumbled extortion case
Actress Lori Loughlin’s “Varsity Blues” attorneys are seizing on the collapse of the “Boston Calling” City Hall extortion case, saying federal prosecutors in Massachusetts have a “fundamentally
flawed” approach to FBI records.
In a collision of two major Boston scandals, Loughlin and her designer husband Mossimo Giannulli — accused of paying a combined $500,000 in bribes for their daughters’ admission to USC as fake crew recruits — cite one of the blistering rulings federal Judge Leo Sorokin issued last week as he tossed the extortion convictions in the city’s music festival case. Sorokin chewed out U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling’s office, saying the prosecution’s handling of 302s — FBI interview records — “seriously undermines present disclosure practice.” Loughlin, Giannulli and other parents charged in the wide-ranging college-admissions scandal have been arguing for months that the feds are denying them a fair trial by withholding the 302s from interviews with college scam mastermind Rick Singer, who is now a government witness.
Loughlin and Giannulli’s attorneys said Friday Sorokin’s ruling shows Lelling’s office has a “fundamentally flawed understanding of its disclosure obligations.”
They wrote that the “Boston Calling” case “offers a troubling glimpse into the U.S. Attorney’s Office’s view of its disclosure obligations. The case shows that the U.S. Attorney’s Office has engaged in a pattern of failing to recognize, and therefore failing to produce in a manner required by the law and rules, plainly exculpatory information it has in its possession.”
They added that the “Boston Calling” case “illustrates that 302s may not be drafted until weeks after a witness interview; that they may not be reliable; and that they may not be promptly corrected by the Government (if at all).”
Lelling’s office declined to comment.
Sorokin last week threw out the extortion convictions for Kenneth Brissette and Timothy Sullivan, two former lieutenants of Mayor Martin Walsh, saying prosecutors failed to prove wrongdoing in the case involving use of union labor at the 2014 music festival.
On the same day, Sorokin also wrapped up another outstanding motion in that case that dealt with the prosecutors’ handling of 302s, penning a ruling that stopped short of imposing sanctions on the prosecution, but lambasted Lelling’s office for its actions, which he said included failure to turn over potentially exculpatory material in a timely manner — and not correcting errors in the 302 in question before handing it over.
“This considered course of action in a significant prosecution seriously undermines present disclosure practice,” Sorokin wrote. He added that the prosecution was “unable to credibly assure the Court that no other exculpatory information had been withheld.”
Also on Friday, Xiaoning Sui, another one of the parents charged in what the feds call the “Varsity Blues” probe, pleaded guilty to a charge of bribery. She admitted to paying UCLA soccer coach Jorge Salcido $100,000 for the coach to invent the fact that her son is a star soccer player in Canada, thereby getting him into college as a recruit for the Division I men’s team.
Sui will be sentenced at a later date, but both the prosecution and defense have agreed to an agreement for time served, as Sui, a Canadian resident who was picked up in Spain, has spent the past five-plus months in a Spanish jail as she awaited extradition on this charge.