Hey everybody, and welcome to Everything's Political. I'm your host, Tayo Shoemak. You can also find us online at Everything's Political dot substack dot com. Shout out to Magicman Joe Strecker, the Merle Haggard of podcast producers.
I've been a work in man named all the lad yet as long as my due hadn't been used, I've bring a little bear that even man and s work.
That's right. Merle Haggard passed away on this day in twenty sixteen. But get this, Joe, he was also born on this day in nineteen thirty seven. He was born and died on the same exact day. Now, only an excellent musician has that kind of timing. I'm just saying. Obviously, the American country music star his good lord. His career spanned for at least four decades. He had thirty eight number one hits like Mama Tried, Oki from Muskoky, and
of course Work in Man Blues. He released seventy albums and six hundred songs, two hundred and fifty of which he wrote himself. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in nineteen seventy seven and into the Country Music Hall of Fame in nineteen ninety four, six one hundred songs. That, my friends, is what we used to
call a real content producer, is it not, Joe? I mean, come on, you know, I'm not a huge country fan, but I do like the old stuff because they wrote, for the most part about real life and hard times, and most of them you could see it all over their face. And that's actually a great segue into our interview today, because Wow, we have a family that has gone through some hard times and found out how far they're willing to go and how hard they're willing to
fight to save their own reputation. So take us out, Joe, everybody, buckle up.
Save as the.
Okay. With us today is John Wilson, author of Varsity Blues, the Scandal within the Scandal, and he's going to speak with us about how his family was swept up in the college admissions process melee with USC and you all remember Felicity Huffman and Laurie Laughlin were also in that scandal, but John and his family were different, and an overreaching federal prosecution team weaponized that justice system against him and his family for their own gain and he'll also talk
with us about that ongoing battle against that federal team and USC and Netflix, all hopefully to restore his family's honor. John Wilson, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story.
It's great to be here, and I really want to get our story out there.
Oh man. Okay. So I read a lot of the documentation and it's just infuriating. It's a rabbit hole down which people must go, I think to understand the depth of corruption under which your family suffered. And I think, first of all, let me say this that all of the core convictions against you have been overturned by a federal appeals court. Is that correct?
Yeahs, they overturned.
Okay, And I think a great place to start after that is just to outline and remind our audience the college admissions scandal was I think for the most part, if not all of them, California families, because we have USC and these family Yes, they were involved in falsifying not just academic records and having people take exams for them,
the college entrance exams, but also athletic credentials. And then the business of the admissions process and what donations have to do with that process that USC ratified for you all, but then change their mind later down the road. So can we start with and Johnny was the was your son that was ultimately admitted. He was admitted to USC. He was a walk on, not a scholarship. Is that accurate?
Yeah, he was a walk on player. He played on the team the entire season in postseason.
And can you tell us his athletic career up to that point.
Absolutely, he had an extraordinary career. When he was a young child, he had a world record. He was the youngest person ever to swim from alcatratus to shore. He was on the Oprah Show. He and his fourth grade classmates raised fifty three thousand dollars And that's just a typical example of what he would do. He competed nationally and internationally for ten years in swimming. His swim times were better than Johnny Weissmuller's gold medal times in the Olympics,
So that's how good he was. He played water pool for six years on national teams. He played on the Stanford club team and his high school and middle school team, and he was always a starter on those teams. And he competed in the national Junior Olympics. Every year he won first place in one of the national Junior Olympics tournaments, and he was also selected twice for the US Olympic team for their development program. So he was the real deal.
His high school coach, who was also nationally recognized, he was a two time MVP when he played water polo in college, he was also an Olympic player. He recommended my son to the USC coaches. He called them and he testified, and he said, undoubtedly my son was a Division one athlete. My son was being recruited by the Division one schools as well, and his swim times proved he was one of the fastest players on the US's team. So most of that of this couldn't be brought into
our trial. His world record couldn't be brought into his trial. My son's coach couldn't even bring his swim time into the trial because the judge argued that that was the swim time from the swim team and he was the water polo coach and he didn't witness at time, so he couldn't bring it in. And that's how rageous the trial was. Right, So my son was a real player. He joined the team. Leslie and I traveled thousands of miles to visit him, to watch him at practices, watch
him at games, and cheer the team on. He was a red shirt like ten other red shirts on the team. Water Polo is the sport were speed is the most important skill, and he's one of the fastest. But they also only have six players on a water polo team that play offense and defense in addition to the goalie. The US team was national champions they had thirty six players,
so only about ten or twelve played. He was a red shirt like ten other red shirt players, so he practiced the team throughout the entire season in postseason, but he didn't play in games his first year. Most freshmen would rarely play on a national championship team in terms of games, so he was one of the star players. He was one of the fastest players, and yet they ridiculed him, and the federal government said falsely that he
was an alleged athlete. That's what they said to the meet, he was an alleged athlete and that he wasn't qualified to play, and who are they to judge and to say that right, They just fed the media that kind of false narrative, and you can imagine how devastating that would be for my son. He was twenty years old
at the time. His entire life he had been spent in academics and athletics, and he's spent probably five hundred to seven and fifty hours a year for ten years training in swimming and water pool at the national and international level. And to have federal prosecutors be rate you and say you're an alleged athlete or that you weren't qualified was despicable and just a horrific experience. And to this day he still lives to that stigma. Where do you go to get your reputation back, earn that back?
And that was just part of it. The same thing with my daughters. My twin daughters were also spired foalcy by prosecutors. They worked hard, studied hard, got a perfect score on the Act and a ninety nine percentile score. Fewer than five thousand students worldwide out of one point eight million get a perfect score, so they were very talented and get the prosecutors said they were unqualified. They were sixteen years old, my twin daughters. You know how
fragile teenage girls can be. Yes, And imagine being a sixteen year old and having the federal government tell the world you're not qualified and imply that you cheated on your test when you didn't, And how do you prove to your other students and other people that you didn't cheat. The government never alleged they cheated, because we got lumped in with thirty other parents who did cheat. It was
guilt by association. They all cheated, so people in the media assumed that we had cheated when we didn't, and we were never accused of cheating, but we got lumped in and smeared anyway, And being a sixteen year old girl with all the normal peer pressure and other issues growing up as a young girl, teenage girl, having the feedow government imply that you cheated has been devastating for them. And that's why I want to spend the time to correct the record.
Now were they were they part of this?
They were, they were part of this process as well, so they were accused during the setup calls. We had known singer for ten years and had trusted him by the time we were talking about my daughters, and they tried to infuse i'll say, incriminating sound bites in the setup calls they had for six months. They tried to set me up with Singer and with the let me step back. The context is important. Singer had over three thousand parent clients.
Only one percent were ever charged. The vast majority of Singer's clients were honest, hardworking people, people like Steve Jobs even as a client. So he had many famous people, and most people were honest people like I was. And he did legitimate services. He did real tutoring through his company for kids, and his tutors helped my children a lot. He did real college counseling, He did real charity work.
I drove my son from northern California to Sacramento from the Bay Area on weekends to help him do tutoring for inner city kids. I was an inner city kid growing up myself. I grew up in Hartford in the projects, so I like that. So he did real service, real work, legitimate work, and ninety nine percent of his clients were never charged. They were innocent people. So that's the overall context that what happened about thirty parents were explicitly involved
in doing bad things. They were cheating on tests. They talked about cheating on tests. How much it cost to get this grade in that grade. They're paying people to take their kids tests, they were falsifying records for their kids, taking fake pictures and so forth. And they were also bribing coaches. They were talking explicitly about bribing coaches. I
never did any of that. The closest they got in my trial was they had thirty other parents talking about bribing coaches and doing bad things, and they played that over those tape recordings over and over for the jury. Then during my setup calls Singer says to me, are you okay if we give a check to the coach? I say, yes, We always give a check to the coach. It was a check made out to the school. Just like at USC, you have to give the check to somebody,
you give them credit. You don't just throw the check in the pool. So we said, yes, give a check to the coach. It was made out to USC, and we got a receipt for it. But the jury only hears thirty other parents bribing the coach again and again and again, and then in my recording, he says, are you okay if we give a check to the coach, and they assume that's a bribe. No, it was a check to the coach made out to the school, not a check or cash to the coach for his personal account.
And that kind of thing happened over and over. That's as close as they got to incriminating evidence on me. But they can set you up that way. So even though my son really played on the team, they also got one of the USC assistant coaches who confessed to committing fraud but didn't get arrested and didn't get fired by USC. In fact, he got promoted by USC. He testified. Yeah, so he testified that my son was only there the
first day. That was not true. We had a picture of the team picture, by the way, was taking several weeks into the season, and guests who was standing right next to my son that coach, But we couldn't bring that evidence in, right, So there could be all kinds of things the government can do in this process that would just scare the average person. For example, government witnesses can lie in the stand. The only people can charge
your government witness with perjury is the government. What do you think the odds are of the government charging one of their own witnesses who's helping them with perjury? Very very low. And so you can do all kinds of things to tilt the playing field, and that's what they did. They had people who were literally committing perjury on the stand. They brought in other people's evidence had nothing to do with me, and then they blocked my evidence six hundred
and sixty times. They blocked by evidence six imagine that. So that wasn't just irrelevant evidence. It was things like my daughter's perfect Act test store that wasn't allowed into my trial. The judge say, was hearsay irrelevant my son's swim time. That was part of the reasons that my charges all get overturned. But my son's swim time was
also blocked. My own emails showing that I trusted Singer were blocked from my trial, and USC records showing they gave donors admissions boosts more than one hundred examples of that were blocked from my trial. So they blocked ninety eight point three percent of my evidence. Literally ninety eight
percent of my office was blocked. And then they brought in all these other parents' bad acts and smeared me with that, And so it was just a totally unfair trial that was so outraged that eleven former US attorneys appointed by both Republican and Democrat presidents. Chief attorneys wrote a letter unpaid by me, to the court saying John Wilson did not receive a fair trial. That never happens, it's so rare. And then the appeals court unanimously overturned
all of my core convictions. So this process has been outrageous from day one, and it's probably we're talking about why they went after me and why I was so different than all the other parents, because it's shocking. When people hear that, they say, wait a minute, why were you even charged? Right? These other parents confessed to bad acts. They were caught on audio bribing, cheating on tests, faking photos of their kids playing sports they didn't even play.
Why were you lumped in here? Well, that's an important part of my story too, if you look back at what happened. The singer had several thousand clients. They were all primarily based in California. Ninety ninety five ye were in California. About thirty of them did these bad acts.
Those thirty were primarily in California. The Felicity Huffins and Laura Laughlin's the Boston prosecutors uncovered this case from somebody in Connecticut, and they wanted to have the media spotlights and the trials for this case all take place in Boston instead of being handled by the LA prosecutors. So they needed some basis to justify bringing all these trials. I was the hook they needed to justify bringing all the trials for Felicity Huffman and Laura Lauflin. I was
Singer's only client in Massachusetts. They had to charge at least one Massachusetts defendants and then say there was a conspiracy across all the parents to justify bringing all the trials. They literally to bring several hundred people from California, including all the witnesses, the coaches, and so forth, back and forth between California and Boston, with only one Boston defendant.
It makes no sense from a cost point of view, efficiency point of view, time point of view, but they needed to do it to create the career spotlights they could help boost their own careers. So they charged me even though they had overwhelming the evidence that I was innocent, even though my facts are completely different than all the other parents, and then they roilroded me through a trial that was so unfair and overturned, which almost never happens,
to really cover up the false charges against me. And so that's how we got ensnared in this horrific situation. It has been devastating. It's been almost seven years now. We had to fight to correct the record and clear our name, and they.
Cherry picked the judge, they cherry picked the venue. And clearly the three key KPIs there. The athletic credentials, the academic records, and the donations process as it relates to admissions. You all did not fit that mold in any way, shape or form. And is it accurate that USC and I think the legal documentation uses the word ratified your donation with thank you cards.
Yes, we got to thank your learn to receipt from the school.
Yes on USC letterhead and copied the coach and assistant athletic director.
Right, USC solicited a donation. We met with the school, we met with the development people, We met with the coach to verify our son's credentials, and they told us that they had walk on positions, non scholarship positions, and that if you make a donation to the school, that could help your admissions prospects. And so we talked to the donation department about that and we made a donation through Rick Singer's organization. We did that to largely insulate
us from future requests. Most people don't have the history we have. We've given a lot of donations over the years, and when you give a lot of donations, especially large donations, the development department tend to keep coming back at you again and again. So to avoid being hounded, we made our donations through Singers organization and we verify with USC was that accepted to Yes, We've done that many times in the past. They verified that, and they gave us
a receipt for our donations. Then at my trial they testified that essentially that wasn't allowed, that that was a bribe. So you gave me a receipt. I didn't know you gave out receipts for bribes. It's just crazy. It made no sense at all. And then the judge instructed the jury during my trial that, yes, giving a donation to a school can be a bribe to the coach, say
what this is the first time. Another there's a group of law professors from Harvard and other schools and also wrote a support brief saying This is the first and only time in history that theons of a bribe can be the victim of the bribe. The schools said they were the victims of the bribe, but they got the money. It's not possible for the victim of a bribe, you're the one who got the money. You bribe somebody else to have somebody else do something on your behalf. The
victim can't be the one who gets the money. And yet that's what the school was claiming. They were the victims, and they've kept my money to this day. So we have a lawsuit against USC for defraudius. They gave me a receipt and kept my money to this day and then set up my trial essentially that we were the victims and we were bribing the school, we being the USC.
Right makes no sense. And so and just to verify your son's athletic record, and obviously your daughter's academic records, none of that. For instance, Johnny would have been registered as an NCAA athlete, would he not?
He was, absolutely he was registered by the school as an NCAA athlete. He's still on the USC website showing him as a team member from the twenty fourteen team Wow, and there are medical records, but the trial blocked all of that. So in my trial, for example, he got a concussion while at school. He got taken out of the pool. He was thrown up in the pool. He got taken by one of his teammates, the goalie, who drove the team captain's car to take him to the
USC hospital. It wasn't an emergency, but they want to get him the right away. He was vomiting and they took him to the USC hospital. They diagnosed him with a concussion, and then the athletic trainer for the team was sending emails back and forth to the USC hospital when can Johnny come back into the pool to train? He was out of the pool for six weeks, but he showed up every day at training above deck during
those six weeks during his concussion protocols. All the information was blocked by the judge and by the prosecutor because it proved he was on the team. So the USC medical records and the emails from the training staff to the USC medical staff asking when can Johnny be back into the pool, that was all blocked.
And under what premise was that blocked?
It was blocked his hearsay, and the judges approved it. These were all legitimate motions, right, That's part of the reason why everything got overturned. Judge who was eighty six years old, rubber stamped every motion that the prosecutors made. We even had one of the senior prosecutors who left, and these guys got million dollar partner rules. He was at a after the trials were over. He left before
the trial. He was at a law firm reunion where another lawyer who wasn't publicly hired by me but was helping us, was meeting and with this reunion with a number of colleagues, and they happened to bump into each other and they were talking and he said, Yeah, we were even shocked how supportive this judge was. That's what he said. He instinctively rubber stamped everything we wanted. And once he did that, we just kept going. That's what he said. So they were shocked at how supportive this
judge was. The head of the office.
Now, now, Johnny, is it accurate that he after that concussion in twenty fourteen, that that was pretty much his end of his career at the in the water polo.
Yeah, that was his fourth concussion, and in high school he had a very severe concussion, and they measure your brain activity and brain process speed, so they have good protocols. And after his high school concussion, and it can happen to water pole a lot. The guys who are in the middle can throw their elbows when they're fighting for the ball. They can kick you when they're turning around and kicking kick you in the head. So you can get hit in the head quite a bit with elbows
and knees and feet. And so he's had four concussions up three before this one, and so in high school the last one was pretty severe and his processing speed never recovered fully, so we knew he was already vulnerable. So this fourth concussion that happened in college, he said at the end of the season, he went back into the pool and trained the end. I need to protect my brain for my future career, so I can't risk
having another concussion. So he resigned at the end of the season in a letter to the coach after the season in January of twenty fifteen and said, I need to protect my head for my future. And that was how his career was ended, and the prospector been like, well, this is also kind of planned. He was never on the team. He was never going to play, even though he played in national tournaments and he won first place in one of the national Junior Olympics tournaments. You know, just just crazy.
So, just for the timeline's purpose, this was in twenty fifteen.
He writes the letter to the coach resigning from the team.
Resigning from the team, and I'm just assuming everyone goes about their business and what happens next, John, I mean, are you aware of what's going on?
And not at all. We went to several games and practices. We were flying thousands of miles to go visit him in the school. We went and cheered the team on with the other parents and the other red shirts. So we went to multile games and practice. Everything was fine. We made a donation of the school. They gave us a receipt. Johnny went to school, he graduated from the school.
So we thought everything was fine. Then in twenty nineteen, the government find Singer in twenty eighteen and confronts him with some facts and some very damning phone calls that he was making that they had recorded, and they got him to cooperate and try to set up other parents. So that's when he started making some set of calls. This is five years later, and this is when we're talking about my daughters who are now sixteen, my twin daughters, So that's when they're trying to set them up. So
fast forward then to March of twenty nineteen. I was flying in. I was a consultant flying in from Europe to me with a client in Houston and a normal routine business meeting. I get off the plane in Houston and two FBI agents pulled me into a back room and arrest me and handcuffed me. And I said, what I'm in shock. I've never been arrested in my life, and they tell me I'm under arrest for honest services fraud. I said what, I said, what is that? What does
that mean? You'll never guess what the FBI as is arresting And he told me, we don't know, we've never heard of it before. It that it's some really unusual charge we've never heard of before, but it's some kind of fraud.
Why does that not surprise me?
I said, how can that be? I said, you must have the wrong John Wilson SAI the Res said, you must have the wrong John Wilson. I said, there's fifteen thousand John Wilson's in the US. I said, I never committed for out of my life. And they say, what was your address? Blah blah blah outside of the Boston mass Oh, you're the mats. Use this guy. They say, no, you're the right guy. And so then they proceed to
book me and it gets much scarier from here. They then bring me to a federal prison, not a jail, a federal prison. And here's what eight hundred inmates, this big fortress. They strip me down, bring me to the guards. They hand me off to these guards. They strip me down, throw me in this large shower room like a communal shower. Two guards pose me down with these power moses like
an animal, and then they give me a jumpsuit. Right, so, now I'm just about to enter into this prison cell block and it's like one you see in the movies.
It's a two story cell block. There's multile cell blocks in this large prison with about sixty inmates in this cell block in the common area mulling about, and the guard booth is all like plexiglass or bulletproof glass whatever windows looking in and I'm still telling the guards I'm talking, not worried about sharing anything, even though I don't have a lawyer, saying I don't even know why I'm here. They couldn't tell me that. Yeah, yeah right. I said, seriously,
I have no idea why I'm even here. And the guard, one of the guards finally took some sympathy, said, maybe believe me. He said, well, you better watch your back in there, you know. And he says, you're the only old white guy in the cell block, and they're going to assume you're a pedophile. I said, well, they're going to falsely assume you're a pedophile because old white guys tend to be pedophiles, and they hate pedophiles in here, and someone's probably going to try to stab you with
the ship. He says, to watch your back, So now you can imagine I'm terrified. I said, well, can you put me in to my prison cell and lock me in keep me safe? No, you can't. Lockdown's not till whatever nine o'clock tonight, and if you stay in your cell before then, they'll think you're a they'll really try to I said, what do I do? He says, watch your back? In there, if anybody comes behind you, watch your back. So now, literally, for the next day and
a half, I'm in the cell block. This is on a Sunday, before I've got arrested, before an whe else is arrested. They did this just to try to intimidate me, and so they put me in the cell block and for the next day. I have no idea why I'm even there, and I'm fearing for my life. I said, this is how insane this is. So these federal prosecutors put me in a federal prison where my life was at jeopardy to intimidate me for making your donation when
they knew I was innocent. They had all this overwhelming evidence that I just gave my money to the schools I got receipts for and to real charities. My kids didn't cheat, they were highly qualified, We didn't fake anything. It turned out that Singer did put some fake information of my son's profile. He changed my son's swim time by eight percent. Okay, I didn't even know it, but he did that. He said, that's a federal fellow me.
I said what, But I was being put into this jeopardy situation where they could have killed me because I made a donation to a school and they needed me for the venue of Boston. I was the hook for the Boston Hook. I was for the Boston trials, and they threw me In's this incredibly horrific situation. And that was just day one of how this started, and it gets worse from there, and the book goes through many other examples that are even scarier than that. They could
do you in this process. So it's just outrageous how the prosecutors can abuse the system the way they can, how they can weaponize it for their own personal gain.
I mean, were you, were you officially charged? Were you mirandized?
Were you?
I was mirandized by the FBI, but they couldn't tell me what I was being charged with except for the crime. They could say it was on a services from but they had no idea what it was. And so that was it. And I was in this federal prison for the next day. So then the next day I got my one phone call. I called my brother who's a civil attorney in Tennessee, and he came down and got a criminal lawyer from Texas from Houston, and the next day I'm a gonna have to walk in the hallways
with shackles. I got shackles on my legs, on my ankles, I got handcuffs on my hands, and I'm shackled. Go to this meeting room from the prison and they come into this meeting room through a plexivass window. And that was the first time I heard what really happened. They said, I said, what's going on here? They must have the wrong John Wilson said no, no, no, you're part of this big thing with fifty people were all being charged with fraud and conspiracy and bribing. I said, what I didn't?
Said something about Rick Singer. He was bribing coaches, and he was test cheating and all this stuff that was in this big indictment. I said, I didn't do any of that. It must be again a case of mistaken identity. And that's the first I even heard. This was about Rick Singer and about you know, some charges of cheating on tests and faking profiles and bribing coaches. I said, I didn't do any of that. So then I got arraigned, or not arraigned. I had to make a plea in
a bond. It was a bond hearing in Texas, and this is also where the government gets extremely abusive. So there's prosecutors in Houston who are in the courtroom part of this jail facility or prison facility, and they're on the phone in the back of the room talking to the Boston prosecutors. And the judge had already had her bail bondsman or whatever, talk to me, and she says, she's going to put me on a bond. Let me go on a bond, and the prosecutors in Boston, no, no, no,
we want all cash. We want a million dollars in cash before you release it. And the judge that's absurd, I said, that's excessive. This guy has never been arrested in his life. He's a family man that's been married for thirty years, he's got children, he's not a flight risk. And they said, we want to appeal your decision. Throw them back in prison. They threw me back in prison
so they could appeal her decision. And she said, I'll put them back in but only till the end of the day, and then if you don't have new information, I'm gonna let him out of a bond. So they threw me back in just to intimidate me again. They knew they had no new information, so they threw me back into the prison. And then I get called up at the end of the day again and she says, do you have any new information? No, says I didn't think you would. Why'd you put him back in? That's
our right, we can appeal it. And then she let me go on a bond. So it's just that was just the first two days of what they did and how dirty they could play, in the extreme tactics they could use against you in this kind of process. Right, they threw me back into that prison again just because they could to intimidate me, right, And it just it went from there to get work and worse and worse, and they kept piling on charges in this case, it's crazy. They knew I was the most person that all the
facts that proved I was innocent. They charged me with three times more charges than anybody else, even more than Rick Singer, the ring leader. They charged me in the end with nine felony charges. That's more than Sam Bankman free. Wow, one hundred and eighty years of prison time for making
a donation. And they kept threatning to charge They charged me four additional times, four sets a superseding charge that spread out over a year, and every time they kept saying, if you don't play guilty, and now we're going to charge with more. And they were all related to the same thing. They were like honest services fraud, than bribery, than federal programs bribery, but then wire fraud because the money went through the wiring system. And they kept doing this over
and over again. And at the end, I said to my lords, they could charge me trying to kill Kennedy and being on the grassy hole. I don't know. I'm not going to plead guilty, and so I said, you can keep charge Malijuan, I'm not gonna plete guilty. So then they finally stopped. But I was facing one hundred and eighty years of prison time. That's what they can do, dude, before to plead guilty.
Well, and they're sure, and that's exactly why they want to bully you, and they they're going to punish you. But that's how they weaponize the justice system. They're going to punish you for not doing what they want right and whether you know whether you're innocent or not, they don't care. And I think we've seen so much evidence of that especially in the last five six years, that it has gotten out of hand.
Yeah, it's totally excessive and extreme. And then they could do other things like judge shopping. They're able to prop a venue shop for Boston. But then within Boston they were able to get the right judge. They basically sprinkled some low level cases, some test takers, a couple of coaches here and there, and they got each judge randomly assigned from Boston to one of those cases. And once they had to think there were only six judges in
Boston federal judge at the time. Once they had five or the judges sprinkled, they got the judge they wanted, they preferred judge, and then they stopped. And then they amended the complaint and said, this is one giant conspiracy and we're going to put all the parents on this one judge that we want. And as soon as they judge shopped for that judge, there was a group of fifteen law firms that represented all the parents, the major law firms in the country said you can't do this,
this is judge shopping. I think twenty five lawyers signed this letter. And the judge said, no, it's fine. And he had to. He basically said no, and the magistrate judge said no, it's fine. And once they approved this judge, who was basically a rubber stamp, half of the defense immediately changed their plea from not guilty to guilty within a week because they knew this judge wouldn't give them a fair trial. And that's what happened throughout our entire
next two year journey. He ruled against us one hundred percent of the time, and our major pretron motions and our lawyers, some of the best lawyers in the world, and the other lawyers said, we have some good motions here, and we should win some of them. We won't win them all, but win some of them. We won zero points zero percent. The judge ruled against us every single time. And one of the judge's own decisions said, didn't say I was alleged. They said John Wilson hasmitted fraud and
bribery in his opinion. He said it declaratively, maybe by mistake, but it showed his mindset. He didn't say he's alleged to have had one of his opinions said he's committed bribery and fraud. He already wrote that he already concluded before our trial even happened what we had done. And then you know, during the trial, as I mentioned earlier, he blocked our evidence ninety eight point three percent of the time. He just kept blocking every motion that the
prosecutor's made. So my daughter's perfect act test course not allowed in on a trial about college admissions. A perfect act test course not allowed in right.
That doesn't make that.
Kind of thing right, It doesn't make any sense at all. That's one of the reasons they got overturned. But when you're in a trial and they can hand pick a judge like that, all you can do is lose at trial and go to appeal. The judge is the final say. And so if they pick a judge wh's very supportive like that, he's the final saying. You've got nothing to do. And the judge was saint. Was taken up on appeal multiple times, taken up on appeal.
Which is so lazy. That is intellectually and physically lazy of anyone in the judiciary, and it's antithetical to the jurisprudence that founded the country because you, according to the judge, were guilty and then you had to be proven innocent. It's the opposite. In this country, are supposed to be supposed to be.
In fact, one of these that happened at the end of the trial I have the transcripts, was just getting crazy. The judge is getting so fed up with us trying to introduce evidence that proved by innocence. At the end, he went to the prospers and said, I assume how much more evidence do you have. We said, we got another whatever, sixty or seventy pieces. He said, well, I'm just going to overrule it all on Mass. He said, what, you don't even know what it is. We said, how
can you do this? He said, well, I know they're going to object. I know we're going to just basically waste our time. I'm going to just overrule your evidence, en Mass. That's the end of the trial. So even the stuff we had at the end, we didn't let us introduce it. He said, just put it all in for the appeals court, and I'm going to overrule it all on Mass.
John, I'm assuming that In the book, and again it's Varsity Blues, the scandal within the scandal there. You also have an excellent website where people can read the rule the lawsuits, and I believe the guy did I see a video or was it the lie detector guy that said.
Yes, there's a polygraph as well. Yes, we did everything possible to prove our innocence. Here. The book is available now for pre order on Amazon dot com. It's available in the twenty second of April. All the proceeds from the book are going to nonprofits, going to charity. This is not about making money. It's about getting our story out there and clearing our name and doing what we can to help make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else.
And do you name names in the book?
Yeah, there are some names in the book, but other places you can look at, you know, and determine who the people are pretty easily.
Sure.
I think the biggest set of issues in the book is really trying to share the evidence and share the fact so share Our website does that as well. Sure, I was working hard to prove by innocence. One of the things we did is wanted. I was worried about actually dying before I got to clear our names all the stress. You know, I'm not a young spring chicken, and so I wanted to take a polygraph test and we want to do that in a way. It's very credible.
And people who said to us, the lawyers, well, there's a lot of polygraph people out there that'll give you an answer that whatever you want. They're not very high quality and that's why they're not usually admissible. So I said, Okay, let's get the best person out there. So we got the former head of the FBI polygraph program. He run the polygraph school for the FBI or the whole division, and he when he heard about this case, look, I also want to bring in the head of the CIA
polygraph program. This guy ran the school for all the federal government, taught all the federal government polygraph experts and examiners for a decade. So we had the head of the FBI polygraph program and the head of the cif CIA polygraph program, and I spent ultimately three full days taking polygraph tests, more than they've ever seen anyone take before I volunteered to do this. I passed twenty five questions, all with flying colors, and we asked every question imaginable
off this case. Did I know Singer was doing this? Did it bribe this? Did my kids cheating on their test? No? That I put in a false information. No, was Johnny a real water polo player? All these things right, We passed every single test, and we gave it to the government as we went and filed a suit against Netflix. We used it in Netflix as well, and the government had it all and at my sentence they said it's
just all self serving. Well, yes, it's the truth. They dismissed it, all self serving, and the judge dismissed it as well. So I don't even see that it's self serving. Well, it's the truth done by the head of the FBI and the head of the CIA. The government actually tests their own people fifty thousand times a year, right. They believe in polygraphs. When they're administered properly, polygraphs can be
very powerful tools. And so I had the head of the FBI do my polygraph and then have it separately quality controlled by the head of the CIA Polygraph Division, and so they verified everything, and the government just dismissed it all because it didn't fit their narrative. So we did everything we could to prove our innocence, and we volunteer to take polygraphs as well with them, and it just never happened. And they didn't care about the truth.
It wasn't about the truth to them. It was about covering up the false charges and railroading through a trial and then railroading you through the appeals process. And I'm still fighting to the day against Netflix and USC to restore our honor.
And so the USC lawsuit is regarding the well, I would say they fraud against you.
Yes, they did fraud. USC defrauded us back in twenty fourteen, when we met multiple people and they said that this was fine, this is acceptable, this was consistent school policy. And then in my trial they said no, we didn't do this. This was not a school policy. This was bribe. I said, what, And so we're suing them for fraud.
And then Netflix was also warned. Netflix came out with a movie several months before my trial, even about this case, and they took all the worst parents who had already played guilty, who had really bad facts, people talking on the phone about cheating and bribing and taking fake photos, and they lucked me in with them. And we thought there was a risk of that, so I had my lawyers write them a letter before the movie came out to warn them and said, look, we gave them a
five hundred and fifty page warning letter. Right had all of our facts. They said, we're totally different than every other parent in Varsity Blues, and here's why. So it gave him my son's all of his facts, and true water polo pictures and all the swim times, my daughter's perfect act test scores. All these things were in there, and Netflix ignored it all and just put me in their movie. And they basically interspersed me in their movie multiple times with all these other parents bad acts to
make me look bad again, guilty by association. And they also excerpted certain sound bites to make it sound incriminating. So, for example, in one of the conversations they show, I say to singer trying to clarify where the money's going. I say, so, I don't give the money to the schools. I give it to you. He says yes, and they play that, and then they play somebody else's sound bite where they're talking about bribing a coach at the school,
and so it makes me sound really bad. What they didn't show, what we have in our lawsuit is that the very next sentence out of my mind, out of my mouth is oh and then you give the money to the school. Well that's different than a bribe. But they didn't play that sound bite, right, So they just selectively at things like that, and they did that over
and over throughout their movie. And they took a picture of a kid standing in the shallow end of the pool, and then they show them editing that picture, and they show my voice when the guys editing that picture the beginning of the movie, implying that my son was standing in the shallow into the pool. It wasn't a water polo player, right, So they did that kind of thing over and over throughout the movie, and so we filed a suit against them for defamation, and we actually have
prevailed so far against usc. We won the very first big hurdle, you have to win his emotion to dismiss, and we won, and the judge said, no, no, no, John Wilson wasn't a fake athlete. He was a real athlete. You could argue he was a good athlete or bad. He was a real athlete, and the movie depicted him as a fake athlete. And my son was John Wilson, Johnny Golston. And so we've prevailed so far. Now we're in Discovery. But again, these guys USC and Netflix, they
drag things out. They'll drag it out for five years to try to deplete you of resources and willpower to continue fighting. Thank god, I've got the primary law firm on contingency on both those because they've depleted us. The government has forced us to spend. You won't believe how much money we had to spend. We had to spend over ten million dollars my entire life savings. They gave
us millions of documents. It costs over three hundred and fifty thousand dollars just to scan the documents that the government gave us so we could put them in a readable form. Think about that. To go through five years of trial and trial prep and then to go through the appeals court process. They just bury you in financial costs and in this entire time and not been able
to have a job. So I've lost my job at the peak of my career, had to spend my entire life savings fighting this and we're still not out of the woods yet. And it's just how devasiting it can be. And they weren't counting on that. But I'm a fighter. I've been a fighter my whole life, and so they were probably underestimating me because everyone else just came. Everyone else just caved and pled guilty. Now their facts were worse. They had facts where they were talking about on the
phone bribing or cheating on tests. We didn't do that. But most people, even if they're innocent, can't afford to fight the government. So even as bad as it's been, I'm actually fortunate I had the resources. I've been successful. I'm a self made person. I grew up in poverty. I grew up with a single mom in the projects, public housing projects of Hartford, Connecticut, so I wasn't given anything. I picked tobacco for four years from the age of twelve to sixteen to help my family straight by. So
I wasn't born with a silver spoon. I've been born to fight for everything I've got, and I've had to live and fight for everything I've got, And so I'm a fighter, and I'll fight to protect my kids to my last breath and my last dollar. And you know that's just the way I am. And they didn't count on that. So I'm going to continue to fight, even though now with this book, I'm sure there's a high
risk of retaliation. They can continue to come back to me for any little minor thing and my taxes or whatever. Even the tax charge that remains, the fourteen hundred dollars charge. It's absurd, It would never be a federal felony, but they try to stick it to you as part of this overall process. And so my wife is worried about us, you know, facing more retaliation. They can be very vindictive
this process. Even at my sentencing for this fourteen hundred dollars tax charge, they had four government lawyers attend that four lawyers a ten sentencing hearing, and they recommended spent almost an hour with the judge recommending that because I was wealthy, I deserve to be made an example of and that I should serve fifteen months in prison for this you know, fourteen and twenty five dollars tax mistake. Wow, And the judge overruled that. But that's how vindictive they
can be. It's like really wow.
So there, I mean, this is government that can print money, right, they don't they live off our money. I just I think government is just full of looters who use our money to bully us in many cases. And this is this is a great example of that. And this is ridiculous. This, if you are a self made person, you have to be punished and so anyone, you know, we and we have a general, a sweeping generalization out there that anyone with any means didn't earn it, and so we should
be able to take it away. And you know, it's frustrating that government plays on that and then promotes themselves as the hero for the little guy and not the promoter of an actual producer of society's It was sad.
Yeah, As I said earlier, I came very humble beginnings, picked tobacco for years and years. Education changed my life. Education transformed my life, and I wanted to give back and I was very successful. I hope that it was successful. I ran companies. I was the COO of Staples, I was a president of Staples International, of was CEO of Gaping. And I was successful and I made money, but I made it dual fashion. I worked seventy hour weeks for
years and years. I've traveled and worked in ninety five countries. I worked internationally. So I had a tough life, working very very hard, and I earned everything. And I know the value of a dollar. I was working for less than a dollar an hour picking tobacco, sweating out in the hot fields forty hours a week. So I know the value dollar. And when I was donating one hundred thousand dollars to USC, I knew just what it could mean in terms of making a difference. I got a
scholarship that helped get me out of poverty. So I was giving money for more scholarships. And to take that and use it and weaponize it against me and to say I was pure evil for donating to give a tiebreaker boost to my kids who were qualified. By the way, our kids were very different. It's one thing to give a donation to get an unqualified kid in, which could then in turn bump a more qualified child. It's hard to have a more qualified kid than someone who got
a perfect testcoo. And so we were giving a tiebreaker boost to highly qualified kids. That's what we were told. That's what we're misled by the schools and by Singer and by the federal government. Did they set up calls with me? So we weren't doing like the other parents are doing, is getting unqualified kids in onto a team or into a college. We were giving money to help those schools and to help our kids get a tiebreaker boost.
It's something that continues to this day. Most schools out there have still favorite programs where if you're a donor, you get special if you're a legacy you get special admissions. If you're a VIP, a political VIP, if you're able to ford full tuition, if for family has high enough income to forge full tuition, they can give a boost. They give boost to faculty children. There are many categories where schools to this day give boosts and admissions. It's not illegal.
Yeah, the correct one of ours. To be eligible for an academic scholarship or legacy program, one of the boxes you had to check was you had to join this particular group at x amount. Yeah, I mean it was a donation right for every year. And so you know, I don't even think you can argue degree that. I think the issue is that is part of the admissions process, whether they want to admit it or not. I mean, that's just crazy.
The USC at the trial said no, that wasn't and that was what was shocking, and that's our basis for filing the lawsuit for defrauding us. At my triale. They basically said that was a bribe, even though they gave me a receipt for it.
That's that's the kicker, right there, is the receipt. And John, I'll tell you I could talk to you for another four hours and I so appreciate it. But let me ask you this as we close, is how your family is doing now.
They're still struggling. You can imagine you imagine if you were a teenage girl at sixteen years old, my twins and you're being bullied not by a school yard, you know, someone holds a grudge, but by the federal prosecutors of the United States government and basically telling people that you
were unqualified. Or my son who was twenty years old at the time and have his entire life geared around sports and athletics since he was nine years old and he had the world record, you know, he's been active in sports his whole life, playing at the national and national level. Had the federal government saying you're an alleged athlete. They called them an alleged athlete, you must say he's alleged human being, right right? Absurd. So that's been devastating
for them and they're still struggling. I think the unfortunate thing is the instrument makes their scars both deep and permanent. Sure, and so the amount of media covers for this case has been horrific, and so we're trying to build more counterbalancing media coverage here, but it's hard. No once, just like when I was accused in the beginning, it makes front page news when they put some false information and corrected it, it's page thirty four and a foot right
seven days later. And so where do you go to get your reputation back is a classic question, and that's what we're struggling with, and they're struggling with that to this day. And it's been more painful than I can ever imagine and explain as a father, to see your innocent children suffer at the hands of the federal government, the way they smeared them, it's just despicable and it's
devastating because you can't do anything. All I can do is try to get the truth out there, to try to correct the record put To see the federal government attacking my innocent children has been devastating. To watch my poor wife for almost seven years now cry yourself to sleep just about every night worrying about our children. And
worrying about their reputations. It's just horrific beyond words. And all I can do is rededicate myself to try and get the truth out there and help make sure it doesn't happen anybody else.
Yes, one hundred percent. And I think you know that's a that's a reciprocal thing. So the more we get the truth out, the more people are aware, and we'll hope hopefully fight. I mean, I can't imagine, you know, we're brought up to we're told to trust government. Now I'm I don't trust authority, just that's my nature. I
think I was born that way. But boy, I mean, as time passes, John, it is it's difficult, especially after hearing stories like yours, to put faith in and well, they're people, they're falling, just like everybody else, right.
Well, believe or not. I still do trust government, maybe talking to you, and I do trust law enforcement. I think most of them are pretty good people, hard working, dedicated people. I think, like any large organization, there could be some bad actors, right, So I don't think everyone in government is bad by any means, and I don't think everyone in the judicial process or the criminal justices are bad. I just think there could be some bad actors and they can abuse that power in a way
that is just shocking and devastating. So I believe still in the system, and I'm still fighting the system, but I think there are some bad actors that need to be rooted out.
Reined in. Okay, amen, I hear that, all right? John. I can't thank you enough for being here today. We will We'll push this far and wide. I wish you well in God's speed and including your family, and please come back anytime.
Well. Thank you so much again. The books available on Amazon dot com. So the Scandal within the.
Scandal Scandal within the same and that is an excellent website, Scandal within the Scandal dot com. Thank you, fantastic, Thanks John. What a harrowing story. This is just further proof that there are two sides to every story, and whatever we see on the news or hear from government or some big beer bureaucracy or whatever, we need to check that before we make a decision or a judgment. I mean, holy cow, And I told John off the air, I'm going to repeat it here if nothing else, what a
blessing he is to his family. He is not backing down. He has spent everything and his family and his wife understands that Dad's got their back. And that's what a man does. He steps out in front of his family and says, you're not getting to my family. In this case, that was being bullied by federal prosecutors who wanted to make a name for themselves. And I know we've all we've all known about the college admission scandal. So I'm going to encourage you again to go to his website,
Scandal within the Scandal dot com. And then the book is Varsity Blues the Scandal within the Scandal that's available again on Amazon, and I would just encourage you to prouse that website. It's excellent. You can read the briefs, you can read the lawsuits, you can hear the testimony. The videos from the polygraphers, the FBI and CIA polygraphers very powerful. So again, weigh the evidence. We should do that for ourselves, regardless of who is claiming guilt or innocence,
and so I wish them godspeed. Okay, we're going to stop there. I want to thank you all for listening. Thanks as always to magic Man Joe Strucker. Until next time, who will stand at either hand and keep the bridge with me. Have a great day,