March 12, 2019

Trump Jr. Has Some Thoughts About Felicity Huffman’s Arrest in the College Scam Scandal

No one asked for these ill-advised musings. We got them anyway.

Lev Radin/ZUMA

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On Tuesday, federal prosecutors charged nearly 50 people, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, in a damning college admissions scam, wherein parents sought to help their children secure admission at prestigious colleges around the country. The scheme, the largest admissions scam ever prosecuted by the Justice Department, allegedly involved wealthy parents paying college prep officials to take entrance exams for their children and bribing coaches at elite schools such as Georgetown, Stanford, and Yale.

The responses to the high-profile scheme were swift and furious, as many condemned the glaring privilege demonstrated by the parents charged in the alleged scam. One person, however, would have likely benefitted from abstaining from commenting on the scandal altogether: The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who in 2000 graduated from his father’s alma mater, Wharton. (Ivanka and Eric Trump are also alumni.) But of course, on Tuesday, Trump Jr. did so anyway:

There are not enough words to sufficiently explain why Trump Jr.’s unsolicited musings on Huffman’s alleged involvement in the bribery scheme smack so deeply with a lack of self-awareness. It should also not be lost on anyone that they come as his father’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, recently testified that the president had repeatedly directed him to threaten his former schools to not release his grades or SAT scores to the public. The Trump family has also donated to Wharton fairly regularly.

We are, however, eagerly waiting on a potential response from Jared Kushner, whose father paid a cool $2.5 million to Harvard shortly before Jared was accepted to the school.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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