Speaker 1: Bushkin.
Speaker 2: On March twelfth, twenty nineteen, the US Attorney's Office for
Speaker 2: the District of Massachusetts unsealed indictments against more than fifty people,
Speaker 2: indictments that were part of a criminal investigation code named
Speaker 2: Varsity Blues. Business leaders, celebrities, actors, rich people accused of
Speaker 2: paying millions of dollars to get their children into elite
Speaker 2: universities millions of dollars in bribes. One by one, the
Speaker 2: parents were arrested, pled guilty, paid massive fines, served time,
Speaker 2: reputations were ruined. The media ran story after story.
Speaker 3: Fifty people facing charges, and more arrests are likely in
Speaker 3: the weeks and months ahead.
Speaker 4: Actresses Lori Laughlin and Felicity Huffman are two of the
Speaker 4: dozens of wealthy parents accused in the alleged scheme, the
Speaker 4: biggest college admissions fraud in US history. Meantime, the scandal
Speaker 4: stretches from Hollywood to Boston next week.
Speaker 2: It was the largest investigation of its kind in the
Speaker 2: history of the Justice Department. Fifty six cases a home run,
Speaker 2: and then came the case at the very very end,
Speaker 2: the fifty seventh case. This is me in an email
Speaker 2: to the US Attorney's Office, of the District of Massachusetts
Speaker 2: asking about the final case in the Varsity Blues Investigation. Hello, there,
Speaker 2: I'm looking to interview any of the US attorneys who
Speaker 2: were involved in the Amen Couri case from a few
Speaker 2: years ago. Do you think that might be possible? Thanks m.
Speaker 2: A day later I get an answer three lines received.
Speaker 2: Thank you. While we greatly appreciate the invitation, we must
Speaker 2: respectfully decline at this time. At the Department of Justice,
Speaker 2: they do not want to talk about case fifty seven
Speaker 2: of the Varsity Blues Investigation. Oh but I do. My
Speaker 2: name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History, my
Speaker 2: podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is part
Speaker 2: of a little mini series I'm doing to introduce my
Speaker 2: new book called Revenge of the Tipping Point, the sequel
Speaker 2: to my very first book from twenty five years ago,
Speaker 2: The Tipping Point. If you read Revenge, and of course
Speaker 2: I really hope you do, you'll see that halfway through
Speaker 2: chapter five, the Mysterious Case of the Harvard Women's Rugby Team,
Speaker 2: I make reference to a court case called US v.
Speaker 2: Coory that's the fifty seventh Varsity Blues case. But in
Speaker 2: chapter five of Revenge of the Tipping Point, I tell
Speaker 2: only part of the story of US v.
Speaker 1: Cooory.
Speaker 2: Did I want to tell the whole story? Of course
Speaker 2: I did. I lost sleep over trying to shoehorn the
Speaker 2: whole coury case into my book because I regard usv.
Speaker 2: Coory as one of the old time most riveting, most
Speaker 2: unintentionally hilarious, most heartbreaking legal battles ever. I mean, it
Speaker 2: ticks every single one of my boxes. It involves a
Speaker 2: tantalizing philosophical puzzle, It has twists and turns, It makes
Speaker 2: elite schools look absolutely ridiculous, And if you are a
Speaker 2: regular listener to this podcast, you know how happy that
Speaker 2: makes me. Not to mention, it features a cross examination
Speaker 2: so brutal that fair warning. If you are triggered by
Speaker 2: a defense attorney disemboweling a witness in open court, you
Speaker 2: should probably turn this off right now and switch to
Speaker 2: something safe like Joe Rogan. But in the end, I
Speaker 2: could only figure out how to put half of my
Speaker 2: favorite case ever in Revenge of the Tip Point, So
Speaker 2: I thought, just to whet your appetite, I'd use this
Speaker 2: episode to tell you about the other half. What I've
Speaker 2: come to think of as the Georgetown massacre. I was
Speaker 2: actually in Boca Ratone on vacation with my family when
Speaker 2: I first heard about the Kouri case. My cousin Kyle
Speaker 2: mentioned it to me in passing, and I was a
Speaker 2: bit bored. Needed something to read, so I ordered the
Speaker 2: trial transcripts, twelve hundred pages, started reading them over breakfast.
Speaker 2: Breakfast led to lunch, lunch to dinner, then all day.
Speaker 2: The next day, the lazy River was put on hold.
Speaker 2: I sat poolside, oblivious to the children squealing happily around me.
Speaker 2: The case centered on a very rich man named amon C. Koori,
Speaker 2: who is the son of an even richer man, Aman J.
Speaker 1: Koory.
Speaker 5: So if you look across industries, I mean my background
Speaker 5: is probably equity.
Speaker 2: Corey Jr. Didn't want to talk to me, but I
Speaker 2: wanted you to get a sense of his voice. So
Speaker 2: here he is speaking on a podcast called Michigan Reimagined.
Speaker 2: One of his current projects is disrupting the trailer park business.
Speaker 5: You look across industries, from pagemakers to automobiles, to jet airplanes,
Speaker 5: to helicopters to computers. The only industry that hauls materials
Speaker 5: and men to location. Think the homebuilding industry. The home
Speaker 5: building industry is archaic and it's approach.
Speaker 2: Corey is in his fifties, graying nicely at the temples,
Speaker 2: a long, narrow face framed by a pair of exuberant ears.
Speaker 2: A man who takes care of himself, and his great
Speaker 2: passion is tennis. He played varsity tennis at Brown University.
Speaker 2: He played at the country clubs of Palm Beach and
Speaker 2: Cape Cof. He played with his kids. Something about hitting
Speaker 2: a round, fuzzy ball over a net clearly made him very,
Speaker 2: very happy, And what he really wanted was his oldest daughter, Katherine,
Speaker 2: to play tennis in college, just like he had. So
Speaker 2: one day back in twenty fourteen, Amon Curry goes to
Speaker 2: his college reunion and has a boozy dinner at the
Speaker 2: Capitol Grill in Providence with his old teammates from the
Speaker 2: Brown tennis squad, one of whom is Gordon Ernst aka Gordy,
Speaker 2: who was then the tennis coach at Georgetown University. Gordy
Speaker 2: Ernst was not yet notorious, but after the launch of
Speaker 2: the Varsity Blues investigation, he would be the US Attorney's
Speaker 2: Office for the District of Massachusetts. On the occasion of
Speaker 2: Gordie's sentencing hearing said this about him, Mister Ernst was
Speaker 2: one of the most prolific participants in cheating the college
Speaker 2: admissions system. He put nearly three point five million dollars
Speaker 2: in bribes directly into his pocket and sold close to
Speaker 2: two dozen slots at Georgetown to the highest bidder. And
Speaker 2: according to the US Attorney's Office, one of those two
Speaker 2: dozen slots on the Georgetown tennis team was sold at
Speaker 2: the Boozy Brown reunion dinner to Amon Coury on behalf
Speaker 2: of his daughter, Catherine. Gordy went down and he brought
Speaker 2: his old teammate with him, case number fifty seven. Midway
Speaker 2: through my long days in Bocha, devouring the trial transcript,
Speaker 2: I realized that Koory's lawyers were based just down the road.
Speaker 2: So I called them up. I said, I'm in Boca.
Speaker 2: I'm up to page eleven hundred. They said, come on down,
Speaker 2: and I made a bee line from Miami. Met up
Speaker 2: with Roy Black, his partner Howard Shrebnick, and their two
Speaker 2: longtime partners, Big shiny office tower, conference room, stacks of
Speaker 2: documents on the table.
Speaker 6: That's free.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So Roy Black is tall, slender, usteer, almost eighty years old,
Speaker 2: an apex legal predator, completely and utterly intimidating. His nickname
Speaker 2: is the Professor. Howard Shrebnick is much younger. He looks
Speaker 2: like he's in the nineteen eighties hair metal band. He
Speaker 2: races motorcycles around Miami in the early morning hours. Oh,
Speaker 2: I nearly forgot to mention, well.
Speaker 5: Your argument next in case fourteen four nineteen Luis versus
Speaker 5: United States.
Speaker 6: Mister Shrebnick, thank you, mister Chief Justice, and may it
Speaker 6: please the court.
Speaker 2: Howard has also argued two cases before the Supreme Court.
Speaker 8: Alward is the intellectual does all the legal work as
Speaker 8: well as working on the fact. But I leave for
Speaker 8: him all that kind of stuff. That's the great thing
Speaker 8: about the way that we work. And I'll read cases
Speaker 8: all day and all night. And his only dream in
Speaker 8: life as if the case can go to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 8: But I'm trying to make sure it doesn't go into
Speaker 8: appeals by winning the trial.
Speaker 2: And Roy began by telling me what Amon said when
Speaker 2: they first talked about the case.
Speaker 8: He said, when he came here, said I want to
Speaker 8: go to trial. I don't want to take a plea.
Speaker 8: I don't feel that I did was a crime. Now,
Speaker 8: maybe people will disagree with the way I did it,
Speaker 8: and of course that I did it in a stupid way,
Speaker 8: that it makes it look bad and all of that,
Speaker 8: but I don't feel I committed a crime, and I
Speaker 8: think it would be against my own integrity if I
Speaker 8: went in there and played guilty just to get a
Speaker 8: shorter sentence, and if they give me a longer sentence,
Speaker 8: so be it. I would rather have my day in court,
Speaker 8: let a jury make the decision and what I want
Speaker 8: to do. And this is about six to seven months
Speaker 8: before his trial. He said, I will Are you willing
Speaker 8: to take the case with an agreement? You're going to
Speaker 8: go to trial? I said, yes, that's what we do.
Speaker 2: A little digression. Many years ago, I went hiking in
Speaker 2: Portugal with a good friend of mine whose dad was
Speaker 2: very wealthy, and we got lost and I said to her,
Speaker 2: are you worried? And she said no, because I have
Speaker 2: the number. And I said what's the number? And she said, oh,
Speaker 2: my dad has these ex Massad guys on retainer, and
Speaker 2: if you're ever in trouble, you call them and they
Speaker 2: come and get you. Masaud Israel's secret intelligence service. It
Speaker 2: is entirely possible she was pulling my leg. I don't know.
Speaker 2: So why am I telling you this? Because Roy Black
Speaker 2: and Howard Shrebnik are the legal version of those ex
Speaker 2: masad Guys, if you are a very rich person in
Speaker 2: America and you find yourself in a great deal of
Speaker 2: legal peril, your best bet is to call on the
Speaker 2: offices a Black and Shrebnik. We're going to be spending
Speaker 2: a lot of time with Roy and Howard over the
Speaker 2: course of the next two episodes. Oh yeah, I'm doing
Speaker 2: two episodes on the Georgetown massacre, and they will come
Speaker 2: a point when you will ask yourself, is Malcolm Glawel
Speaker 2: totally in the tank for the law firm of Black
Speaker 2: and Shrebnik, And the answer is, of course, I am.
Speaker 2: Wait where were we?
Speaker 6: Oh? Yes?
Speaker 2: Amon Koury is charged and indicted one count of conspiracy
Speaker 2: to commit mail fraud, one count of bribery. He retains
Speaker 2: Roy Black and Howard Shrebnick, and he decides that he's
Speaker 2: not going to take a plea. Now understand that everyone
Speaker 2: else charged in the Varsity Blues investigation, all fifty six
Speaker 2: of them pled guilty. The famous actresses Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin,
Speaker 2: folded their cards, paid a fine. Some of them did
Speaker 2: short stints in prison. How could they not. They were
Speaker 2: caught paying money under the table to college coaches to
Speaker 2: pretend that their kids could play sports when they actually couldn't,
Speaker 2: and why so their kids could get into a school
Speaker 2: that they otherwise could not. That's illegal, right.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: Bribe is one of those basic crimes kind of like murder, theft, rape,
Speaker 3: by which I mean not that it's as grave as that,
Speaker 3: but it's one of those crimes that are in criminal
Speaker 3: law scholars called malum incee, meaning the earliest crimes, the
Speaker 3: ones conduct that was immoral, and that's indisputably immoral. That's
Speaker 3: why became immediately part of every criminal code going back
Speaker 3: I don't know, probably Hamlabi's days.
Speaker 2: This is Leo Katz, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2: In the midst of my infatuation with US v. Korry,
Speaker 2: I asked one of the countries leading legal experts to
Speaker 2: read up on the case so I could ask him
Speaker 2: questions about it.
Speaker 3: And then, of course there are crimes that are they're
Speaker 3: called malum prohibitum, like you know, not registering for the
Speaker 3: draft or selling illegal drugs or even not paying taxes,
Speaker 3: which only became crimes because we decided to make them.
Speaker 2: That point is that we expect to have arguments and
Speaker 2: complications and gray areas about malum prohibitum, the made up crimes,
Speaker 2: but not malaman say, the indisputably immoral acts. Those are
Speaker 2: supposed to be open and shut for Aim and Curry
Speaker 2: to say, I'm going to fight this bribery charge. I
Speaker 2: don't think what I did was wrong. Was an act
Speaker 2: of extraordinary audacity, bordering on just plain foolishness. He decided
Speaker 2: to be done Quixote and tilt at the windmill that
Speaker 2: was the US Attorney's office of the District of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: So he came to the same conference room I was
Speaker 2: sitting in to ask for help.
Speaker 6: So that's really what happened.
Speaker 8: He wanted to have a trial, and we said, yes,
Speaker 8: we will do it and dedicate ourselves to get ready
Speaker 8: for this case.
Speaker 6: No, and that's how it started.
Speaker 2: So when you have a case like this, you must
Speaker 2: have a kind of gut instinct about whether it's winnable
Speaker 2: at the outset.
Speaker 6: So I'm curious about what you're.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 6: We did not at least. I didn't have that.
Speaker 8: I thought that we were behind the eight ball from
Speaker 8: the beginning, and everybody else had either lost or pled guilty,
Speaker 8: and I didn't have great optimism about the case, you know,
Speaker 8: when the client came in. But I said, listen, that's
Speaker 8: been my whole career is taking cases where things look bleak.
Speaker 8: I mean, that's what we specialize in.
Speaker 2: Black shook his head. The lawyer's nightmare is a client
Speaker 2: who will not take the easy way out. On the
Speaker 2: other side of the conference room table, Howard was shaking
Speaker 2: his head as well.
Speaker 6: He wanted to testify.
Speaker 9: In fact, it was a battle to convince him he
Speaker 9: should not testify, because he wanted the jury to know
Speaker 9: the truth that he did not bribe the coach, and
Speaker 9: that what he did was an act of generosity after
Speaker 9: the fact, not a crime.
Speaker 6: Before the fact.
Speaker 2: A man attacking a windmill, armed only with a tennis
Speaker 2: racket a lost cause. I tell you that this was
Speaker 2: my favorite legal case ever, I think I did. The
Speaker 2: first witness for the government was a man named Timothy Donovan.
Speaker 2: He was one of the former Brown tennis players who
Speaker 2: attended the Fateful Dinner at the Capitol Grill. He now
Speaker 2: runs a tennis academy in Milton, Massachusetts. There's no tape
Speaker 2: of the trial proceedings, but we've recreated testimonies for you
Speaker 2: using two loyal members of the Greater Pushkin community, Dak
Speaker 2: Shepherd and Britt Marlin. Here's Britt as one of the
Speaker 2: prosecutors examining Donovan, as played by Dak Shepherd.
Speaker 4: Are you familiar with the defendant Amon Corey?
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 4: How do you know him?
Speaker 1: We were teammates on the tennis team at Brown University
Speaker 1: in the late eighties.
Speaker 4: Did there come a time when you entered into an
Speaker 4: arrangement with the defendant concerning his daughter?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: What was the nature of that arrangement.
Speaker 1: The nature of it was, I was going to help
Speaker 1: facilitate a deal where the defendant would pay two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand in cash in exchange for a recruiting slot at
Speaker 1: Georgetown University.
Speaker 4: And who was he going to pay two hundred thousand
Speaker 4: dollars in cash to as a part of this deal.
Speaker 1: Gordon Arnst, the coach at the time at Georgetown.
Speaker 4: And what was the payment for.
Speaker 1: An admission slot on the team.
Speaker 4: And what was your role in the deal?
Speaker 1: I was essentially the middle person to help with communication
Speaker 1: back and forth between Gordy Ernst and Aim and Coury.
Speaker 4: Was that payment made it was by whom?
Speaker 1: By Aim and Coury.
Speaker 4: What was your understanding of whether the defendant's daughter was
Speaker 4: actually qualified to play tennis?
Speaker 1: She was not qualified to play at that level of
Speaker 1: college tennis.
Speaker 4: What was your understanding of whether she was actually going
Speaker 4: to play tennis at Georgetown?
Speaker 1: The defendant and I talked about how she had no
Speaker 1: plans to play there.
Speaker 2: To be specific, Donovan went to Kury's house on Cape
Speaker 2: cod picked up a brown paper grocery bag with one
Speaker 2: hundred and eighty thousand dollars in cash, got twenty k
Speaker 2: for himself, and delivered the package to Gordie Ernst's wife,
Speaker 2: who stashed it in a safe deposit box.
Speaker 4: How did Catherine's scores compare to the average scores of
Speaker 4: your clients who are admitted to Georgetown's tennis recruits.
Speaker 1: They were quite a bit lower.
Speaker 4: If we can look at page four, please we see
Speaker 4: a copy of Catherine's transcript, and in particular, her junior
Speaker 4: year average was seventy eight point five. How did Catherine's
Speaker 4: GPA compare to the average gpa of your clients who
Speaker 4: were admitted to Georgetown as tennis recruits significantly lower.
Speaker 2: After Donovan came a parade of other witnesses, tennis people,
Speaker 2: people from Katherine Courry's high school, her guidance counselor tennis coach,
Speaker 2: all saying the same thing, Katie Coury at a school
Speaker 2: like Georgetown is a dubious proposition. Day two of the
Speaker 2: trial was not good for the defense. Day three not good.
Speaker 2: Day four comes and goes. If you are Aman Curry
Speaker 2: sitting in the defendant's chair, you're thinking, I should have
Speaker 2: taken a plea. I'm going away for years. But then
Speaker 2: came day five, the Georgetown massacre. Let's talk about Brenda Smith,
Speaker 2: which I thought was in my reading, was the highlight.
Speaker 2: On day five, Howard and Roy called a witness who
Speaker 2: worked as a fun for the Georgetown Athletic department. Her
Speaker 2: name was Brenda Smith. Smith did not come to the
Speaker 2: courthouse willingly. She was peened. All she knew going in
Speaker 2: was what the Georgetown lawyers clearly told her, which was
Speaker 2: not to worry. This is going to be easy. She
Speaker 2: wasn't on trial, Amon Courry was. The case was black
Speaker 2: and white, and she was on the winning side. Malamense.
Speaker 2: So you describe that whole moment exchange for me, because,
Speaker 2: like I said, all I can do is read it.
Speaker 6: So bring it to life.
Speaker 2: Howard sets the scene.
Speaker 1: So now Brenda.
Speaker 7: Smith, whose sole job as the quote senior director of
Speaker 7: development for athletics close quote, and development doesn't mean bodybuilding, conditioning.
Speaker 10: Fitness development is a euphemism for money raising money. She's
Speaker 10: now on the witness stand, and she's going to suggest
Speaker 10: that money doesn't matter with regard to admissions, that her
Speaker 10: job is entirely independent of the admissions process.
Speaker 2: This was the moral heart of the case. Why does
Speaker 2: am and Curry belong in jail because he used a
Speaker 2: grocery bag full of cash to corrupt the admissions process
Speaker 2: at a selective institution where the admissions process is supposed
Speaker 2: to be about merit and achievement. So Smith takes the stand.
Speaker 2: Roy's asking the questions once again, our voice actors.
Speaker 1: All right, I wanted to ask you about admissions into
Speaker 1: the university. The university has an admissions department correct or
Speaker 1: admissions office correct? And you are not an admissions officer. No, However,
Speaker 1: you would communicate with admissions officers, would you not?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: I never did would you ever get involved in attempting
Speaker 1: to influence the admission of people into the university?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 4: I did not.
Speaker 1: Did you ever lobby the admissions office the admission's office, No?
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 1: Did you ever advise the admission's office about the amount
Speaker 1: of money people had?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: Did you ever advise the admissions office that an athlete
Speaker 1: or a potential athlete came from a well positioned family.
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 1: Did you ever advise the admission office about the net
Speaker 1: worth of parents of potential recruits?
Speaker 4: I did not.
Speaker 1: Did you ever advise the Admission's office about the value
Speaker 1: of parents' homes?
Speaker 4: I did not know.
Speaker 2: Brenda Smith does not seem to have realized at this
Speaker 2: point that Howard and Roy have in their possession every email,
Speaker 2: every email she wrote in the time of her employment
Speaker 2: at Georgetown. Or maybe she does, but the implications of
Speaker 2: that fact haven't sunk in. I mean, maybe she thought,
Speaker 2: I wrote thousands and thousands of emails, ninety nine percent
Speaker 2: of them. We're harmless. There's no way they read all
Speaker 2: of them, is there? Well, yes there is, and Roy
Speaker 2: starts putting his favorites up on the screen.
Speaker 1: All right, Can we turn to Exhibit two eighty five
Speaker 1: and if we could highlight the middle paragraph. By the way,
Speaker 1: who is Let's go to the top first. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: who is David Nolan?
Speaker 4: He is the women's soccer coach.
Speaker 1: All right, and he's asking you if she is somebody
Speaker 1: you want to cultivate.
Speaker 4: Correct, that's what the email says.
Speaker 1: Good, tell me what the word cultivate.
Speaker 4: Means, develop a relationship with typically?
Speaker 1: All right? If we could, Oh, you put down there
Speaker 1: in the second one, you wrote five point six million house, right, correct?
Speaker 1: So I guess you do find out how much parents'
Speaker 1: homes are worth.
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 4: Well, you asked me earlier. If I share that information
Speaker 4: with admissions, I do not. This is an email with
Speaker 4: a coach.
Speaker 1: This is different, so as I understand it. Then you're
Speaker 1: telling the soccer coach that a prospective athletics soccer players
Speaker 1: parents own a home worth five point six million dollars right?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: Now, can I ask you this, What does that have
Speaker 1: to do with their ability to play soccer?
Speaker 4: Nothing?
Speaker 1: Does that have something to do with the ability to
Speaker 1: get them to donate money to the soccer team.
Speaker 4: No, it's simply the part of the family relationship that
Speaker 4: I would be interested in.
Speaker 2: The trial had ended well over a year before I
Speaker 2: met with the Coury defense team. But everyone in the
Speaker 2: conference room that day, Roy Howard and the two partners
Speaker 2: Jackie Purchek and Maria Naira, remembered the key moments perfectly.
Speaker 2: Something would come up in our conversation. They would pick
Speaker 2: up one of the stacks of transcripts on the table
Speaker 2: and just start reading.
Speaker 7: One of my favorite one of the coaches writing to
Speaker 7: Brenda Smith, the coaches will have to recruit really rich
Speaker 7: kids who can play.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I remember that one.
Speaker 8: Yeah, well yeah, rich kids who can plain?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 7: The beauty of it is that before he got to
Speaker 7: the emil, Roy.
Speaker 11: Would say to the weirdness and did you ever get
Speaker 11: an email where somebody would tell you that you need
Speaker 11: to recruit.
Speaker 9: Really rich people?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 11: Of course not, mister blah.
Speaker 7: Brenda Smith writing to the swimming coach, in an effort
Speaker 7: by Brenda Smith to get the swimming coach to recruit
Speaker 7: the student quote, this is a family who may not
Speaker 7: have seven figures, but definitely six figures. And Roy says
Speaker 7: anything in there about the splits, the times in the
Speaker 7: one hundred yard dash on the lacrosse team. Of course,
Speaker 7: our case was about tennis but it was institutional. Quote,
Speaker 7: I'm checking on this potential recruit one of my five
Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars donors, and next I'm working on a
Speaker 7: five hundred million plus.
Speaker 6: Million. Yeah.
Speaker 7: And so Brenda Smith writes back, So if the student
Speaker 7: is in your ballpark at all?
Speaker 6: Dot dot?
Speaker 2: So wait, did you describe Brenda Smith to be during
Speaker 2: that destiny?
Speaker 9: What's she doing?
Speaker 6: I wish she dealing with this. She was sort of befuddled,
Speaker 6: as I recalled.
Speaker 11: Another example of someone just denying what was obvious, losing
Speaker 11: credibility as she's sitting on the witness stand to try
Speaker 11: to pretend is if wealth did not affect the emissions process.
Speaker 8: They didn't want to ever admit that money influenced admissions.
Speaker 8: They will never admit that, even no matter how many
Speaker 8: emails we show them, they would still not admit it
Speaker 8: because they knew they could not admit that it just
Speaker 8: they thought that that would affect the integrity of the school.
Speaker 2: Is she is she defiant or humiliated or no?
Speaker 8: No, she wasn't defiant, as I said, She was more befuddled,
Speaker 8: like why am I here? And I don't really want
Speaker 8: to be here? But it's like they told me to
Speaker 8: show up. So here I am what Georgetown's mission was
Speaker 8: at the trial to look to say that development is
Speaker 8: separate from admissions. That was that was their whole theme,
Speaker 8: is that we admit people, but it has nothing to
Speaker 8: do with money. Sure will ask for money later, but
Speaker 8: there's no connection between the two. That was what everybody
Speaker 8: on direct examination testified to because they thought as a
Speaker 8: matter of integrity, they didn't want to admit that people
Speaker 8: got admitted.
Speaker 6: And he's because of their will.
Speaker 9: It's a good Catholic school.
Speaker 6: It's the parable of the coin.
Speaker 2: And Jesus answering said, unto them, render to Caesar the
Speaker 2: things that are Caesar's and to God the things that
Speaker 2: are God's. And they marveled at him. Render to development
Speaker 2: the things that are development, and to admissions the things
Speaker 2: that are admissions. And finally we come to my favorite email.
Speaker 2: It's from Gordie again, Gordon Ernst, Aiman Curry's old tennis
Speaker 2: teammate to Brenda Smith. You can imagine how much our
Speaker 2: apex predator is enjoying this moment.
Speaker 1: Now let me show you, he said, end you this
Speaker 1: email in which he says no idea if he has
Speaker 1: do or not. He struck me as a bit of
Speaker 1: a tire kicker, but who knows. Sometimes those are big hitters. Now,
Speaker 1: why in the world would he be asking you or
Speaker 1: telling you he has no idea if the kid has money.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I don't know what this term is about.
Speaker 1: You responded, he has no money at all, Right.
Speaker 4: I do say that.
Speaker 1: Why would you be telling that to the describing a
Speaker 1: potential recruit like that to the tennis coach.
Speaker 4: Well, I believe because I was trying to get him
Speaker 4: back on track. If you see his previous comment, it
Speaker 4: was about money, and I was trying to talk to
Speaker 4: him about whether or not this kid was a recruit.
Speaker 4: The previous emails are about this parent wanting to hold
Speaker 4: his kid out of college for a year to you,
Speaker 4: a gap year, but with the hopes that the kid
Speaker 4: would be able to play for Gordy, And I was
Speaker 4: trying to get to the heart of the conversation. Looks
Speaker 4: like which is how he would not be a recruit.
Speaker 1: But your actual statement is he has no money at all.
Speaker 1: Show me the money.
Speaker 4: That's a joke, like that was a joke in our office.
Speaker 4: Show me the money, Show me the money, like it
Speaker 4: was just a joke in.
Speaker 1: The office, and then you end it by saying he
Speaker 1: sounds dreadful.
Speaker 4: Yes I do.
Speaker 1: Why would you say that?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Oh dear, So let us imagine that
Speaker 2: you are sitting in the jury during the eight long
Speaker 2: days of usv.
Speaker 1: Kurry.
Speaker 2: You might begin with a very straightforward thought that rich
Speaker 2: people should not be buying their children's way into Georgetown University.
Speaker 2: But then by day five, after the Georgetown massacre, you
Speaker 2: begin to think, oh, wait a minute. In a kind
Speaker 2: of roundabout way, Georgetown allows rich people to buy their
Speaker 2: way into Georgetown University, only they are a little more
Speaker 2: circumspect about it. I mean, no one is making donations
Speaker 2: to Georgetown in a brown paper bag. But what exactly
Speaker 2: is the difference between what Amon Kurry and Gordy did
Speaker 2: and what the Georgetown Development Office did every day? Isn't
Speaker 2: it just that Gordy and Amen's arrangement was a bit
Speaker 2: too obvious. This was the point that my legal expert
Speaker 2: Leo Katz made that suggested a hypothetical scenario to make
Speaker 2: sense of this. Suppose that after that boozy dinner at
Speaker 2: the Capitol Grill, Corey and Gordy had gone to a
Speaker 2: lawyer and the lawyer said to Gordy, you should start
Speaker 2: a tennis camp.
Speaker 3: And the lawyer says, you know, you could just you know,
Speaker 3: charge an arm and a leg or maybe sort of
Speaker 3: a sliding scale for getting admitted to the tennis camp,
Speaker 3: and then you predominantly choose people from your tennis camp
Speaker 3: to be admitted, which you could justify. Right, You've seen
Speaker 3: them play, you know the strengths, and if you do
Speaker 3: it that way, you know, then it's it's I think
Speaker 3: you ought to be okay. And then then the puzzle
Speaker 3: right as well. Gee, if it could have been done
Speaker 3: that way but just happened not to be done that way,
Speaker 3: they did it in a more direct way with the paperbag.
Speaker 3: What's the big deal? It comes to the same thing.
Speaker 2: You're missing one component though, which I'm curious what you
Speaker 2: make of this. I would add a third if I
Speaker 2: was him, I would say, and the goal of my
Speaker 2: tennis camp is not to produce elite tennis players, but
Speaker 2: to instill in the campers a love of the game
Speaker 2: and to build character among those you know who have
Speaker 2: chosen tennis's. I mean, if he.
Speaker 3: Does much better at this than I am, I just
Speaker 3: that's right. I think he'd want to get a lawyer,
Speaker 3: and the lawyer would probably want to bring in a
Speaker 3: PR person who can then answer.
Speaker 2: But he just needs to be frank about the fact
Speaker 2: he's not interested in turning out Roger Federer. That's not that's.
Speaker 3: Important to specify that, know your objectives. That that makes
Speaker 3: it even easier because they bypassing people who are maybe
Speaker 3: better tennis players. Then becomes particularly unobjection.
Speaker 2: In the evening, after we've hit backhands for two hours,
Speaker 2: we'll sit and we'll discuss great works of legal philosophies,
Speaker 2: such as books books written by Leo Katz. Yes, patron
Speaker 2: sate of this particular arrangement. Yes, yes, yes, that would work.
Speaker 2: This is the hypothetical scenario that would have saved Gordy
Speaker 2: Ernst and Aim and Curry a tennis camp. But wait, wait,
Speaker 2: Gody Ernst actually had a tennis camp. You know, he
Speaker 2: has one he's running at the Georgetown and the arrangement
Speaker 2: he has with the university is that he was running
Speaker 2: it on university property during the summer and he was
Speaker 2: allowed to keep one hundred percent of the proceeds from
Speaker 2: the camp. That was so they had signed off on that. Wow,
Speaker 2: makes it particularly interesting and The other thing that's fascinating
Speaker 2: is that in all aspects of the decisions about who
Speaker 2: to admit both to his tennis squad but also his camp,
Speaker 2: he has discretion. No one is the university is not
Speaker 2: interfering in a substantial way without of If he wants
Speaker 2: someone on his tennis team and gets them on his
Speaker 2: senness team, and he definitely in his summer camp, he
Speaker 2: gets to admit absolutely whoever he wants, so, say, Gordy
Speaker 2: Ernst made it clear that he wasn't actually trying to
Speaker 2: recruit great tennis players. Then wouldn't the crime of letting
Speaker 2: someone on the team who wasn't a great tennis player
Speaker 2: look less and less like a crime. As I was
Speaker 2: talking to Leo Katz, I suddenly remembered, Oh, there was
Speaker 2: an email on this right in the middle of the
Speaker 2: Georgetown massacre. It's about a big time Georgetown donor who
Speaker 2: was a friend who is a kid who likes to
Speaker 2: play tennis. Roy made a meal out of this one
Speaker 2: while examining Brenda.
Speaker 1: Smith, and then it says, his good friend in a
Speaker 1: well positioned family. What does that mean? A well positioned family?
Speaker 4: I think it means that the family has the potential
Speaker 4: to be donors should they become involved with the university.
Speaker 1: All right, And what they're saying here is that the
Speaker 1: person wants to come to the campus and meet with
Speaker 1: Gordon Ernst.
Speaker 4: Correct, that's what it says.
Speaker 1: You tell Gordy Earnst that, But if she he is
Speaker 1: in the ballpark, it wouldn't hurt us. Now does that
Speaker 1: mean that it wouldn't hurt us to recruit the person?
Speaker 4: No, Gordy is asking me if I want him to
Speaker 4: meet with the kid, and so I'm saying it wouldn't
Speaker 4: hurt us if he met with him.
Speaker 1: And what he responds to you another mediocre player. That
Speaker 1: is my strike zone. What is he telling you there?
Speaker 4: That his team is not a very well performing team.
Speaker 2: Gordy, you idiot. You could have made all this go
Speaker 2: away so easily. And that's what I have to imagine.
Speaker 2: The Jerry is thinking, why are we going through all
Speaker 2: this trouble, sitting here for the better part of two
Speaker 2: weeks to stand in judgment of two people who are
Speaker 2: just too stupid to conduct their business with the right
Speaker 2: number of nudges and winks. The Georgetown massacre was when
Speaker 2: the first cracks appeared in the government's case, and then
Speaker 2: the whole thing goes south because right after Brenda Smith
Speaker 2: is disemboweled on the stand, Howard and Roy call a
Speaker 2: mystery witness, and the mystery witness has a very big
Speaker 2: surprise for the prosecutors of the District of Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: That's next week in Part two.
Speaker 8: In terms of poise and speaking, she had such authenticity.
Speaker 8: She came across very well as a witness.
Speaker 2: Vision's History is produced by Nina Bird Lawrence with Ben
Speaker 2: ded Af Haffrey and Lucy Sullivan. Our editor is Karen
Speaker 2: Schakerji fact checking by Sam Russick, Original scoring by Luis Gerra,
Speaker 2: mastering by Echo Mountain, Engineering by Sarah Bruger and Nina
Speaker 2: Bird Lawrence. Production support from Luke LeMond. Our executive producer
Speaker 2: is the incomparable Jacob Smith. Special thanks to Sarah Nix.
Speaker 2: Voice acting by Dak Sheppard and Britt Marlin, who had
Speaker 2: so much fun working together on our Little Mermaid episodes
Speaker 2: a few seasons ago that they re upped for another
Speaker 2: tour of duty. I'm Malcolm Blodwell.