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