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College Scam Prosecutor Is Hard-Charging ‘Red Dot in Blue State’

College Scam Prosecutor Is Hard-Charging ‘Red Dot in Blue State’

Andrew Lelling has put almost two dozen parents behind bars in the U.S. college admissions scandal. On Friday a federal judge sentenced the most famous of them all, “Full House” star Lori Loughlin.

The massive prosecution, which also snared top financial and real estate executives as well as a Napa Valley vintner, is one of the most high-profile led by Lelling, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts and a self-described “red dot in a blue state.” Appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017, he has brought an ambitious series of controversial cases and drawn sharp criticism from liberals who say he’s sometimes more driven by conservative politics than by crime-fighting.

The 50-year-old lawman outraged top Democrats, including Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, last year by bringing obstruction of justice charges against a state court judge for allegedly helping a man slip out the back door of a courthouse to evade federal immigration agents. Last month he defended a new administration rule that barred foreign students from remaining in the U.S. if their universities offered only online classes.

And on Thursday, Lelling announced he was asking the Supreme Court to review a federal appeals court’s decision to throw out a death penalty verdict against Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Lelling declined to be interviewed while cases are ongoing.

His critics see Lelling as a self-righteous foot soldier for the Trump administration, prone to overreach and grandstanding. Nancy Gertner, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School and a retired U.S. district judge, called the federal case against the state judge “an abomination,” saying in an interview that “there were other ways of doing it without doing violence to the constitutional structure.”

Supporters portray Lelling as far more introspective, and kind, than he may appear before the TV cameras when announcing his office’s latest arrests.

“He’s a law guy. The rule of law is real to him,” said Ralph F. Boyd Jr., former assistant attorney general for civil rights, who made Lelling his deputy during the George W. Bush administration and calls him a “wise, judicious person” with a great sense of humor and “a deep and rich heart.”

Former Massachusetts U.S. attorney Michael J. Sullivan, who led the office from 2001 to 2009, said Lelling is known for his integrity.

“Politics plays no role in the decisions Andy makes,” he said. “You know exactly who he is and what he stands for.”

Raised in a politically conservative Jewish home in New York’s Rockland County, Lelling studied literature and rhetoric at SUNY Binghamton and earned his law degree in 1994 from the University of Pennsylvania. His wife, Dana Gershengorn, is a Massachusetts juvenile court judge appointed by a Democratic governor.

Lelling worked for the Justice Department for more than 15 years before becoming the U.S. attorney in Boston. He spearheaded the case against leaders of the internet telecom company Telexfree over one of the largest global pyramid schemes ever brought down by the government.

His most prominent new case, announced in June, isn’t political at all. Lelling accused former eBay Inc. security executives of a macabre cyberstalking campaign against the editor of a critical e-commerce newsletter.

On Friday he saw Loughlin -- unjustly the “face of the national scandal,” as her lawyer described her -- sentenced to two months in prison for paying $500,000 to get her daughters into the University of Southern California as purported crew stars.

But the college case has had mixed reviews, too. Some legal pundits, including Harvard’s Gertner, criticize Lelling’s decision to flip William “Rick” Singer, the corrupt admissions strategist at the top of the scheme, against nonviolent offenders with no criminal records on the lower rungs of the racket.

“The way it was handled was overreach from beginning to end,” she said.

The government made a serious misstep in the case. After many parents had already pleaded guilty, Lelling’s office admitted that it failed to give the defense notes Singer made on his phone that investigators were pressuring him to lie, though he later recanted the assertion. A federal judge ruled that the government’s delay was “irresponsible” but not enough to warrant dismissal of the case.

After the notes surfaced, prosecutors’ plea offers became more lenient in some instances, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Ten parents are still fighting the case and are scheduled for trial next year. The U.S. has yet to reveal whether it will call Singer as a witness, and face attacks on his credibility.

A spokesperson for Lelling declined to comment on the claims of greater leniency and on whether Singer will testify.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.