Mom ensnared in college admissions scam hosted Gillibrand fundraiser last week

NY Post ^ | March 15, 2019 | Ian Mohr

[COUNTrecount]

Here’s a political endorsement Dems don’t want. Alleged college scammer Jane Buckingham — the marketing CEO accused of paying $50,000 for her son to get into the University of Southern California — was a co-host of a Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand fund-raiser days before the indictments hit.

Buckingham is listed as a co-host for a high-end Beverly Hills, Calif., event at the home of Los Angeles FC owner Larry Berg and his wife, Allison, last Saturday to fund Gillibrand’s exploratory 2020 presidential run.

Co-hosts also included Will Ferrell, “Scandal” creator Shonda Rhimes and her über agent Chris Silbermann, plus Harvard MBA and author Samantha Ettus. It cost donors $2,800 to be a co-host of the event.

[Liz]

A-n-o-t-h-e-r screw-up for Gillibrand. Gillibrand was outraged that Blassy Ford's story was questioned.

Senate harridans screamed their disgust. Ordered men to shut up and believe women who have been sexually abused.

FRONTPAGE.COM----"When I had the courage to speak up about my harasser, I was belittled by her office and treated like an inconvenience,” the woman said of Gillibrand in an interview. “She kept a harasser on her staff until it proved politically untenable for her to do so.”

Another women staffer said Gillibrand's employee, Malik, a Muslim, often called her fat and unattractive to her face and made light of sexual abuse. She recalled one instance in which Muslim Malik remarked that a particular woman they were talking about “couldn’t get laid unless she was raped.” The person did not report that behavior at the time but now says she wishes she had.

Two more staffers who worked for Gillibrand said the woman’s claims of Malik’s inappropriate workplace behavior matched their own experiences. They said Malik regularly made misogynistic jokes, frequently appraised what they wore, disparaged the looks of other female staffers and rated the attractiveness of women who came in for interviews.

Gillibrand’s office acknowledged it found evidence that Malik had made unspecified inappropriate comments and revoked his expected promotion, which would have come with a raise. It also moved his desk and gave him a final warning.

This was not the first time the senator’s top aides dealt with an allegation of bad behavior by Malik: According to a firsthand witness of an incident in 2015, Malik confronted a fellow aide in the office. He got in the man’s face, pushed his desk and threatened to “f***ing” hurt him, the witness said, describing the confrontation as “violent.”

[COUNTrecount]

What is the acceptance rate for USC film school?

Gus Bendinelli, USC class of ‘15 student interested in cinema, photography, design, history, and politics. It’s pretty difficult. I regularly hear figures for the acceptance rate between 3% and 5%, and I’ve heard that this fall they’re only letting in between one and four transfer students.

USC School of Cinematic Arts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USC_School_of_Cinematic_Arts

[antidemoncrat]

Birds of a feather stick together.

[KittyKares]

USC is hardly an elite school.

---

It’s also in an undesirable neighborhood.

[wiseprince]

Bill Cosby’s Mugshot was everywhere. Chris Brown’s everywhere, R Kelly, everywhere. Lori Loughlin (Full house star), they only seem to show glamour shots. Hmmmm

[carmen2017]

Birds of a Feather.

[bantam]

Don’t bet on it.
The people of NY, (at least NYC, not Upstate) have a way of ignoring such things as this scandal.

[Liz]

I read where the Desperate Housewives cheating slut was in a march defaming Trump.

The FBI stumbled on the massive college bribe scandal when an executive tipped them off that the Yale soccer coach offered to sell his daughter a place at the school for $450,000.......actresses Felicity Huffman is best known for her role on the ABC TV series Desperate Housewives. Felicity and actress Lori Loughlin, have been arrested.

--------------------------------------------

Felicity once appeared on a video decrying "education inequality."

Teaching girls was all the rage among progressives.
Gave the corrupt Obamas a $100 million scam of our tax dollars.

====================================

Then-F/L Michele, her mother and daughters in the Moroccan palace.

Look at that smile----Obama gave her $100 million tax dollars----"to teach Muslim girls in Morocco."

AND GET THIS: The $100 mill is to be held by the Obama Foundation, to be doled out when necessary (cue laugh machine here).

==========================================

NOTE WELL: The $100 million "for Muslim girls" came out of the Millenium Challenge Fund at the State Dept----Hillary's fave slush fund.

ACTION NOW: Demand the books be opened-----taxpayers demand to know where the Millenium funds are going.

Call President Trump: Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414

US CONGRESS SWITCHBOARD: (202) 224-3121

U.S. Department of Justice

Comment Line: 202-353-1555 Switchboard: 202-514-2000

To report tax-free non-profit crimes: EMAIL enforcement@SEC.gov

[HonkyTonkMan]

It cost donors $2,800 to be a co-host of the event.

Or $50,000 if you choose “side-door” admission!

[Grampa Dave]

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

[GOPJ]

I shocked I tell you - shocked... /s

[SoCal Pubbie]

Yeah but rich people never pay retail. Gotta hurt to get soaked.

[ridesthemiles]

he had been doing this for 24 years”””

That is very interesting:

IF someone commits Tax Fraud, the IRS can go back into their tax returns to the day they were born.

This man was running a “Non-Profit”, and the checks were written to that entity, and those cheating parents took CHARITY deductions on their tax returns.

24 YEARS?

That means that the IRS can audit the past 24 years of returns with all those people.

The list of ‘donors’ to the Non Profit will be in their records...so the paper trail will be long & wide.

This could also mean that those who bought their college admission might lose their diplomas ???

Could that lead to their loss of jobs due to phony diplomas???

[ridesthemiles]

Maybe the kids high school grades created a ‘sliding scale’ that was used for the ‘bribes’.

The dumber your kid, the more it costs to phony up the records.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

“Gillibrand...is toast.”

Do you really think so? This will be a minor speed bump for her. I thought E Warren was finished, but she keeps on chugging.

[ridesthemiles]

Singer ran this Non-Profit for over 24 years.

NO WAY he only took in $25 Million.

NO WAY AT ALL.

[ridesthemiles]

I went to night school accounting classes more than 10 years after I graduated high school. I was working overtime at my job, mostly on Saturdays.

I attended every single class....

I did all the homework...

I took all the tests....

I paid for my classes & materials myself.

I got 4.0 on all those night classes over 4 years.

This whole story infuriates me no end.

[JoeFromSidney]

I don't get it. Why would you want to get your kid into a college when he or she is incapable of doing the work? They'd flunk out and you've wasted your money. The whole thing makes no sense.

[Grampa Dave]

One of our smarter and younger relatives, who never got accepted to any California universities in spite of only 1 b in 12 years of school, the rest A’s and SAT’s in the 97 percentile had this to say in the past week about these crimes:

She feels that there were lower level Ponzi schemes to get the well off but not the Elitists into college. In other words the middle class kids without good academic abilities and records.

She got a $100,000+, 4 year scholarship at an out of state university.

2/3 of her class (scientific/medical STEM) has been flunked out or dropped out in two years of real classes. Those failures supposedly had good SAT scores and high school grades.

She had 3 room mates in her first semester. One dropped out at Christmas the first year. Another dropped out at the end of their freshman year. She said that it wasn’t drugs/booze, just an inability to study 5-7 days a week to even pass the weekly tests.

[Grampa Dave]

Maybe the kids high school grades created a ‘sliding scale’ that was used for the ‘bribes’.

The dumber your kid, “the richer you are”, the more it costs to phony up the records.