There are 93 comments.

1. Inactive
   DanielSterman

   @DanielSterman

   5:50 AM EDT ⋅ Mar 18, 2019

   Duane Oyen (View Comment):
   If idiot parents want to spend wads of cash to buy their kids; way into tiny private schools, by whatever means, open or secret, government, stay out of it.

   Just as the EEOC should not be auditing Georgetown admissions files for demographic matches with their preferred distribution, it should not be arresting stupid parents if Georgetown is dumb enough to dilute its reputation by admitting bad students.

   The crime was explained above:

   Tim H. (View Comment):
   Bribing an admissions official to accept your daughter as part of the rowing team and using photos of someone else in a boat is very different in purpose and effect than posting staged photos on Facebook. The intent here is to defraud and cheat the university.

   It’s not a problem with the schools’ admissions procedures. If the Georgetown admissions office itself, with the knowledge and agreement of its administrators, had said, “Oh, sure, we’ll let your kid in for $500,000 and a fake place on the swim team, wink wink,” then it would not be a crime, nor would it be the business of the government.

   What’s going on here is that Georgetown was the victim of a fraud perpetrated by parents with the assistance of some of its own employees. It’s like if you convinced an accountant working at Microsoft to transfer some of the company’s money to your bank account; Microsoft would not be happy, and would press charges against the both of you. In this case, the theft is not of money but of services: the service of enrolling your kid.

2. Member
   Jim George

   @JimGeorge

   7:15 AM EDT ⋅ Mar 18, 2019

   Jim George (View Comment):
   Bethany, your use of the words “a bit….excessive” was a masterpiece of understatement and diplomacy; in my non-nuanced world, I see both Clintons, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Sztrok, Page, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, and all the rest of those hoodlums walking around, free as a bird, and then I see the FBI sending 300 agents out to round up alleged “law breakers”, whose conduct pales in comparison to those who perpetrated the worst scandal in American history, and I ask: Why?

   I don’t know if it’s considered de rigueur to quote one’s own post, but this is a part of my #35 in which I wondered just exactly when the FBI and the Justice Department were going to start using all these awesome and extensive powers they used in this case — 300 agents? sure sounds like overkill to me — to root out and punish the corruption in their own ranks which led to the greatest scandal in American history. 

   This morning, there is an excellent article at The Federalist entitled “The FBI Shouldn’t Prosecuting College Fraud, It Should Be Rooting Out Its Own Corruption”, written by a former intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors and now a senior investigator for Judicial Watch emphasizing the exact points of, to put it mildly, disparity and outrageous favoritism shown one of the greatest (?) criminals in our history over these relative pikers compared to Felonia von Pantsuit. Here is his opening:

   “As we watch the FBI investigate and help bring criminal charges against scores of wealthy individuals for fraud because they paid some middleman to alter their kids’ college entrance exams or bribe college officials to claim their kids were recruited athletes, I can only think: What chutzpah!

   “The FBI may have committed the grossest fraud in the history of our country by trying to throw a presidential election through a fraudulent counterintelligence investigation of “Trump-Russia collusion,” using the massive legal and technological authorities at their disposal. And we’re supposed to get worked up by The Greatest College Admissions Fraud Scandal of All Time.”

   The author is William F. Marshall and I heartily recommend his fine analysis, which concludes with these pithy observations:

   “Yet that same agency appears to have knowingly used a politically manufactured, fraudulent document (the “Steele Dossier”), filled with “salacious and unverified” nonsense, to spy on and attempt to derail the presidential candidate who represented at least one-half of the American electorate. Think about that. That is the height of moral hypocrisy.”

   ***

   “In teaching his disciples about the perils of judgmentalism, Jesus Christ said: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5). I think the hypocrites at the FBI need to read their Bibles.”

   Indeed. 

3. Member
   Duane Oyen

   @DuaneOyen

   

   8:22 PM EDT ⋅ Mar 18, 2019

   Phil Turmel (View Comment):

   Duane Oyen (View Comment):
   unless there is an actual real crime, and the generic “mail fraud” does not qualify.

   Who made you lord and master of all? Mail fraud is a real crime. If you don’t like that, persuade your representatives to introduce a change, and lobby the rest of us to support it. Good luck with that.

   Duane Oyen (View Comment):
   If the institution is a state university supported directly by tax dollars, it us a different story, because specific criminal statues may well apply.

   All but a tiny handful of colleges and universities take federal dollars. They come with strings attached, including federal criminal statutes. Ergo, the FBI is involved.

   1. There are definite real mail fraud crimes.  It is also a catch-all when they are looking for a federal statute to use to nail someone and can’t prove another crime.  Sort of like process crimes created by near entrapment in politically-based special counsel investigations (Scooter Libby comes to mind).
   2. Ah, do you believe, as lefties do, that as soon as one dollar of indirect federal cash is involved, the feds have the right to run the institution?  The basic reason Hillsdale, et al, need to avoid taking any government money?  I worked for 16 years for a state university, and we got hundreds of millions in grant money every year.  You can make a definite case there that if a specific statue is violated in the admissions process the FBI may have a role.  But I still believe that the parents here need scienter RE actual fraud- obviously, faking athletic prowess would qualify, so would knowingly approving SAT fiddling such as stand-in test-takers, etc.  The specific fact pattern is key- and “mail fraud” could be triggered by mailing a check, that does not by itself really constitute fraud unless there is a lot more that is provable.

   Phil, sorry, I am a skeptic of anything involving the FBI since the first time Hoover left his office with a reporter to grandstand an arrest.  Your mileage may vary.