Posted on 03/14/2019 3:14:41 PM PDT by DeathBeforeDishonor1
Several Democratic donors were among those charged Tuesday in a federal crackdown on a nationwide fraudulent college admissions conspiracy.
Most of the press reaction Tuesday centered on Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, two prominent Hollywood stars charged in the sting.
Huffman, when not acting, is a generous donor to Democratic candidates. Huffman has donated thousands of dollars since 2016 to Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.), according to the Federal Election Commission's site. Prior to that, she donated frequently to President Barack Obama's election efforts.
She is far from the only Democratic donor on the list, some of whom have also donated to Republican candidates at times.
Gordon Caplan is co-chairman of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, a major law firm. He lives in Greenwich, Connecticut and New York City. Caplan paid $125,000 to have his daughter's ACT exam corrected by the proctor, according to the DOJ. He is charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud in the District of Connecticut.
Caplan gave the maximum allowable donation to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. He donated an additional $25,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and $22,300 to the Democratic National Committee in 2016, months before Clinton lost to Donald Trump. Caplan began giving to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) in 2005.
During the 2018 midterms, Caplan shelled out thousands of dollars to support Democratic candidates in Connecticut, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada. His lavish political spending used to be bipartisan. In 2011 and 2012, he gave tens of thousands of dollars to both Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns.
(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...
“This went WAY further than that I’d say.”
I don’t know. I talked with a much-disturbed airline pilot who was passed over for a job in order for the airline to hire a minority pilot, to fulfill affirmative action hiring quotas, with MUCH less experience.
I only wish the public’s imagination could be captured by the thousands of tragedies caused by an unguarded border.
What the parents did does not diminish our lives. As for any students, maybe so, but not nearly to the extent as the evil of affirmative action has affected multitudes of us. And I mean multitudes.
I can’t argue with that. I happen to have a daughter in graduate school right now who will be in debt for well...a really long time. It just pisses me off, the same people that lecture us here in flyover country about our morals and ethics...have absolutely none of either. And they just don’t seem to have to follow any of the rules the rest of us do...and btw...she did not get into college with affirmative action...too white for that.
I doubt that very seriously. The "O"s are too entitled to write out a check for a bribe and frankly, the mere fact that the applying student has "O" for a last name would be enough for the school to swoon.
If there were any bribes, they probably went FROM the institution TO the Obamas.
But being long time members of the Chicago Mob, I suspect anything of that sort was well buried through clandestine channels.
His lavish political spending used to be bipartisan. In 2011 and 2012, he gave tens of thousands of dollars to both Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns.Bipartisan in name only.
Any Republicans or Republican donors?
Thank you.
“Any Republicans or Republican donors?” One so far, and he donated to both parties:
Democratic Donors Charged in College Admissions Scam!
BY: Mikhael Smits Follow @mikhaelsmits
March 12, 2019 3:13 pm
Several Democratic donors were among those charged Tuesday in a federal crackdown on a nationwide fraudulent college admissions conspiracy.
“Dozens of individuals involved in a nationwide conspiracy that facilitated cheating on college entrance exams and the admission of students to elite universities as purported athletic recruits,” according to the Department of Justice. Documents unsealed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts show fraud extending to Yale, Georgetown, and other American universities.
Parents paid William Rick Singer, owner of The Edge College & Career Network, LLC, to ensure their children’s admissions to university, according to court documents. Singer would then arrange for special proctors to fly from Texas and California for the SAT and ACT tests, correcting students’ answers, according to the court filing. He’s also accused of creating fake athletic profiles for students, even though some did not play sports at all. Singer then bribed coaches and administrators of NCAA Division I programs like Yale, Stanford, and the University of Southern California to recruit the students, all but guaranteeing their admission, according to the DOJ.
Those charged represent a “catalog of wealth and privilege,” U.S. attorney Andrew Lelling told reporters Tuesday. “The real victims in this case are the hardworking students” who were denied admissions because the children of wealthy parents “simply bought their way in,” according to Lelling.
The 33 parents paid a total of $25 million to Singer’s company as part of the scheme, ABC News reported. Also implicated were top college coaches for their alleged role in accepting millions of dollars to help admit students.
Most of the press reaction Tuesday centered on Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, two prominent Hollywood stars charged in the sting.
Huffman, when not acting, is a generous donor to Democratic candidates. Huffman has donated thousands of dollars since 2016 to Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.), according to the Federal Election Commission’s site. Prior to that, she donated frequently to President Barack Obama’s election efforts.
She is far from the only Democratic donor on the list, some of whom have also donated to Republican candidates at times.
Gordon Caplan is co-chairman of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, a major law firm. He lives in Greenwich, Connecticut and New York City. Caplan paid $125,000 to have his daughter’s ACT exam corrected by the proctor, according to the DOJ. He is charged with conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud in the District of Connecticut.
During a conversation recorded by investigators, Caplan asked how the scheme would work. A cooperating witness explained over the phone:
I just explained it to you. You get extended time, you gotta get the extended time first. Then you’re going to fly to L.A. And you’re going to be going on a fake recruiting visit. You’ll visit some schools, while you’re out here in L.A. And then on a Saturday, which is the national test day if it’s ACT or SAT, she’s going to sit down and take the test. I will have a proctor in the room, that’s why, when you have 100% extended time, you have– you get to take it at a– you don’t take it with everybody else, you get to take it over multiple days. And you get to take it at a– you can take it at your school or another school. Okay? And then this kid, ’cause she’s taking online classes, you have to go somewhere anyway.9 So you come to my school, take the test on a Saturday. She’ll be in the room for six, six and a half hours taking this test. My proctor would then answer her questions, and by the end of the day, she would leave, and my proctor would make sure she would gets a score that would be equivalent to the number that we need to get.
[…]
That’s how simple it is. She doesn’t know. Nobody knows what happens. It happened, she feels great about herself. She got a test a score, and now you’re actually capable for help getting into a school. Because the test score’s no longer an issue. Does that make sense?
Caplan gave the maximum allowable donation to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. He donated an additional $25,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and $22,300 to the Democratic National Committee in 2016, months before Clinton lost to Donald Trump. Caplan began giving to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) in 2005.
During the 2018 midterms, Caplan shelled out thousands of dollars to support Democratic candidates in Connecticut, Indiana, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada. His lavish political spending used to be bipartisan. In 2011 and 2012, he gave tens of thousands of dollars to both Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns.
Robert Flaxman, the owner of Crown Realty and Development, was also charged. The Beverly Hills, California resident paid for assistance with both his son and daughter’s admissions, according to the DOJ. For a fee of $250,000, the fraudulent college consultant had ACT tests falsified and arranged for a varsity coach at the University of San Diego to claim Flaxman’s son as an athlete, according to the charges.
During the 2016 election cycle, Flaxman donated to Clinton’s campaign and gave thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party in states including Colorado, Maine, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin. He also donated to several Republicans, albeit on a far less frequent basis. Several years earlier, in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, he also spent upwards of $125,000 supporting Republicans.
Agustin Huneeus is a winemaker in California. He paid $50,000 to administer a false SAT test to his daughter, according to investigators. He is also accused of conspiring to bribe USC athletic staff to accept his daughter as a water polo recruit. During the 2016 cycle, Huneeus gave $33,400 to Clinton’s super PAC. He’s given over $150,000 the DNC and DCCC, $60,000 the Nancy Pelosi Victory Fund, $10,000 to Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) and thousands more to various other California candidates.
Jane Buckingham is the founder and president of Trendera, a boutique marketing firm. She agreed to pay $50,000 for her son to take a false ACT test in Houston, according to investigators. At the test site, a co-conspirator faked her son’s handwriting and took the test for him, investigators say. Buckingham’s son received a 35 out of a maximum 36 points. She later expressed interest in arranging the same for her younger daughter, according to the charges.
Buckingham is also a generous donor to the Democratic Party. She gave $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund and $30,800 to the DNC in 2012. She gave more than $22,000 to support Gillibrand’s races.
Of the 50 people charged in the college scandal, the Washington Free Beacon found only one gave consistently to Republican candidates. Mossimo G. Giannulli, founder of the clothing company Mossimo, Inc., is married to actress Lori Loughlin. He and his wife gave over $500,000 to secure admission to USC for his two daughters via the crew team. Neither daughter rows. He supported Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) in 2016, and Romney and John Boehner before that. He has also donated to Democrats.
The scandal comes at a pivotal moment for admissions policies nationwide. A Massachusetts district federal court is currently determining whether Harvard University’s admissions policy of affirmative action unfairly discriminates on account of race. Though the legality of athletic recruitment is not at issue in the latter case, both threaten to pull back the curtain on the secretive process of admissions at America’s most selective institutions.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JNNRl7EPXYNyDkxacbEQa3cOfZ9-xtXlZNTkXqGgXUw/edit
I think it’s this: we all realize there are buckets set aside for colleges for certain groups: AA, legacy candidates, athletes, true scholars, etc.
These buckets are more or less accepted, but in none of this is cheating supposed to be happening. If someone gets a spot on a track team who wasn’t even an athlete in HS, that means someone else for that bucket was not offered that spot.
One of my kids runs distance track for the NCAA right now, Division 1. He loves his school and he’s in the right place, but what if Stanford may have offered him a running spot, but didn’t because a rich parent cheated and superimposed their kid’s head on an athlete’s body and sent in fake running times?
Who this scam screwed is not the average high schooler, but actual athletes set aside for the bucket of athletes. The fact that that bucket exists at all is another question. It might not be fair that it exists (my son would not have made it to that college via his grades/SAT alone), but at least the athletes had to actually be star athletes in HS to get recruited. That’s a lot of work, even if not academic work.
College coaches aren’t paid that much so perhaps they are easy to bribe unfortunately.
I just say it when I see it.
OK, I didn’t realizing they were writing off the bribes as charitable contributions. Yes it is unethical, but what else is new. If college administrators of prestigious universities were jailed for a lack of ethics, there would be no administrators left.
My FB friend former Marine Robert Rose JR uses this word a lot. You are the only other person I’ve seen use it. https://www.facebook.com/groups/vets.fight.back/?ref=bookmarks
Definition of schadenfreude - pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.
I did an FEC search on some of the perps.
Didn’t find a single Trump donor.
Did find some money going to Republicans: Romney and McCain.
Go figure.
The MSM calls that "bipartisan"
btt
Thanks for your response, FRiend Gail.
You’d be surprised how much this German word is cropping up in English prose here and there.
I wouldn’t say “schadenfreude” has become trendy, but many writers are finding it a useful concept. We don’t really have any equivalent in English.
And I must admit that I am enjoying these scandals — and even more, the prospect of many more revelations still to come.
Anything that discredits elite universities can only benefit us yokels here in Flyover Country.
I remember back when I was a teenager in the 1970s, my father — a wise and decent man — opining that there were many places to get a good education and that the Ivy League had lost some of its cachet.
Well, I think Dad was right on the first point but made an honest mistake on the second.
Competition for places in elite universities seems to have become more vicious than ever since Dad and I had those conversations around 1974-75.
It’s my hope that these scandals will reveal how admission to Harvard or Stanford is basically nothing but a status symbol — and also a device for the bicoastal elites to maintain their caste exclusivity.
Personally, if I had been blessed with a son, I would want him to go to my state’s land grant university. Any campus with cows on it is a good place to be.
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