Lori Loughlin’s youngest daughter, YouTube star Olivia Jade Giannulli, is dealing with the stresses of her parents’ legal woes by partying with her fellow internet stars.
The 19-year-old was spotted at a party held by David Dobrik Thursday night in Studio City, California, smiling in a candid photo as someone jumped onto the kitchen island.
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See the photo published by TMZ here.
Olivia reportedly asked her fellow internet celebrities to put their cell phones away during the party.
The former USC student has almost 2 million YouTube subscribers, along with 1.4 million Instagram followers. She made it clear through her vlogs that she didn’t care to go to college in the first place, although her parents are now facing series charges and jail time for allegedly bribing USC officials to allow their daughters, Olivia and 20-year-old Isabella Rose, to be designated as crew team recruits.
Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli pleaded not guilty earlier this week to charges of fraud and money laundering, after rejecting a plea deal which would have carried a minimum of a two-year prison sentence.
“They missed the opportunity for a plea bargain during the first round, and now there might not be a deal available for them to take,” legal coach and crisis manager Wendy Feldman told Us Weekly earlier this month.
The couple were reportedly “in denial” about potential jail time “based on her legal team’s confidence,” according to a different source, who told Us Weekly that “her attorney told her not to take the deal.”
After refusing the plea deal, the Full House star and clothing designer were hit with an additional money laundering charge in addition to their fraud charges.
A legal source told PEOPLE that Loughlin is “very afraid” for her and Giannulli’s daughters’ sake, should the case head to trial.
“Lori is very concerned about what a trial will do to her daughters,” the source said. “It will undermine every accomplishment they have in the future and it will be part of their story forever.”
“It’s not in their best interest for this to go to trial, and Lori knows it. Because if it goes to trial, the girls will have to take the stand, and be cross examined by a prosecution that wants nothing more than to put a notch on their belt,” the source said. “Lori is very afraid that her daughters will have to testify. That will traumatize them even more.”
Despite the fear that Loughlin allegedly harbors for the future, a separate source told Us Weekly that she and Giannulli made a “calculated decision” to partake in the college admissions scam. The $500,000 they allegedly forked over to designate their daughters as crew team recruits was just a sliver of what they could have paid, had they donated directly to USC.
“Lori and her husband made a calculated decision to get their daughters into USC, and bypassed donating directly to the university to save money,” the source said. “It would have cost millions of dollars to get the girls into USC if they had gone that path. Donating buildings or establishing scholarships has been the whispered norm to get kids of wealthy parents into universities, including USC.”
The source said that their involvement in the scheme gave them a more discreet way to get their daughters into the university, because the plan prevented them from having to make a $20 to $50 million donation to the school. “The public would have known,” the source said. “They were able to get the girls into USC for $500,000.”
Photo credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin / Contributor / Getty
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