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John Stamos Reveals He Told Lori Loughlin About the College Admissions Scandal Making Headlines
John Stamos revealed that he told Lori Loughlin that her involvement in the college admissions scandal made headlines.
“In March 2019, I get a strange text around 5:30 a.m. from my good friend Roger Lodge. He asks if Lori is okay. I hit him back, ‘Why, what’s up?’ Something about a college scandal,” John, 60, recalled in his memoir, If You Would Have Told Me. “I started googling, but there was very little I could find. I knew she was working in Canada, so I called to check on her.”
When John got in contact with Lori, 59, he said she seemingly had “no idea” what he was talking about.
“‘Oh that, yeah, I’m not sure,’ she answers so casually as if I just asked her if Nicky and Alex finished all their vegetables. ‘I have seen some emails lately from lawyers to Moss, but I stay out of it,’” John, who starred on Full House with Lori from 1987 until 1995, said. “Before I can process her response, I notice an odd clicking sound on the phone line. When I asked her about it, she again adopts her laissez-faire tone, ‘Oh, they may be bugging my phone.’”
John ended the call “as fast” as he could, though the news had already started circulating online. “Then, switching on the news, the story breaks big time. I immediately text Lori, ‘Are you watching the news?’ he wrote in the memoir, which was released on Tuesday, October 24. “An FBI agent is announcing the largest college admissions scandal ever handled by the Department of Justice, involving bribes to prestigious colleges for falsified student acceptances.”
The Scream Queens actor then recalled telling Lori to turn on the TV to watch the coverage. “She asks, ‘What channel?’ I text back in all caps: ‘EVERY CHANNEL!’” he said.
Lori and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, made headlines in 2019 when they were accused of paying $500,000 in bribes to get their daughters, Bella, 25, and Olivia Jade, 24, accepted into the University of Southern California. The parents were indicted in March of that year, and they pleaded guilty to fraud charges two months later.
The When Calls the Heart actress was sentenced to serve two months in prison and was released in December 2020. Meanwhile, Mossimo, 60, was sentenced to serve five months behind bars and was released in April 2021.
John previously reflected on his Fuller House costar’s scandal while talking to GQ in August 2019. “I gotta be careful,” he said at the time. “I want to wait until the trial happens, if it does, or whatever the result is, and then talk about it. … I’ll tell you one thing that has been strange is: Honestly I can’t figure it out. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Whatever happened … I’m pretty sure that the punishment is not equal to the crime, if there was a crime,” John added.
John and Lori have remained close despite the drama, while he even opened up about their strong bond in the memoir. “Lori Loughlin continues to be a cherished friend to this day. We’ve weathered storms together and stood by each other’s sides, despite life‘s hurdles,” he wrote. “We’ve seen each other at our worst.”
The ER actor even praised Lori for her resilience. “I’ve witnessed moments where giving up could’ve been the easiest way out for Lori. She could have shifted the blame and let her family, marriage, and life crumble. But she didn’t,” John added. “No matter how hard she was hit, how desperate everyone was to cancel her and throw her in with the pile of brutal criminals, she stood fast, protecting her daughters from the mud hurled at them day after day after day.”
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