Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are among the 50 people who have been charged for taking part in a multimillion-dollar scam to get their children in some of the U.S.’s top universities, and as the details of the case are being released, some of their older tweets are now being seen in a new light.
Whenever a public figure makes news, people often sift through those figures’ old social media channels. It’ll often generate instant memes or showcase a person’s hypocrisy, resurface offensive material, or even a bit of irony.
The indictment alleges that parents paid other people to take standardized tests and college exams for them and bribed coaches to let their children apply to schools. Huffman and her husband, William H. Macy (who is not named in the indictment but is referred to as “her spouse” in court papers) are accused of paying a “purported charitable contribution of $15,000” and claimed that their daughter had a disability so that she could have more time taking the SATs; while Huffman considered doing something similar for her second child, she decided against it. Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Giannulli, who is also charged in the scheme, allegedly paid $500,000 to have their two daughters accepted to the University of Southern California as members of the crew team (even though neither of them participated in the sport).
In the wake of the indictment, several of Huffman and Loughlin’s old tweets are being resurfaced. For Huffman, that includes asking Twitter for back-to-school hacks back in August 2016 (more than a year before Huffman first allegedly participated in the scam), one of several tweets posted that month where she asked Twitter for advice ahead of the new school year.
“What are your best ‘hacks’ for the back-to-school season?” she wrote.
https://twitter.com/felicityhuffman/status/768888270772064256
She’s also used the phrase “partner (or partners) in crime” several times on Twitter—most recently last month—but for what it’s worth, it’s about the most harmless thing you can say about your partner or colleagues.
As for Loughlin, her out-of-context tweets that don’t look great in hindsight arrived as she tweeted about multiple Hallmark Channel properties One was Garage Sale Mystery, a 2013 TV movie starring Loughlin. The tweet has since been deleted.
The other references Hearties, which is the name given to the Hallmark Channel series When Calls the Heart, another series starring Loughlin. That tweet, which has since been deleted, is archived online.
“There are more important things than money,” Loughlin wrote. “Like doing the right thing. Words to live by.”
While Huffman and Loughlin are two of the more well-known figures named in the indictment, some of the other alleged participants in the scheme included coaches, CEOs, and the co-chairman of a law firm.
“This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud,” Andrew Lelling, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, explained. “There can be no separate college admission system for the wealthy, and I’ll add that there will not be a separate criminal justice system either.”
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