Lori Loughlin’s daughter, Olivia Jade Giannulli, disabled comments on her Instagram posts on Wednesday amid her family’s bribery scandal.
Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, stand accused of paying exorbitant bribes to get both of their daughters into elite colleges. Adding insult to injury, their younger daughter has a long history of disparaging her education in social media posts. She has now gone silent online, however, prompting her fans to do the same.
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Olivia Jade boasts 1.3 million followers on Instagram, where she promotes products and shows off her self-care routines. Her posts often rack up hundreds of thousands of likes as well, but as of Wednesday, the hundreds of comments beneath them are gone. The self-described “influencer” made her last post on Feb. 28.
As the story of Loughlin’s alleged bribes broke this week, people could not help but focus on her 19-year-old daughter’s behavior on social media. In one YouTube video, she questioned how much she would even attend classes, as she would rather be making online content.
“I don’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend but I’m gonna go in and talk to my deans and everyone, and hope that I can try and balance it all,” she said. “But I do want the experience of like game days, partying — I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”
“YouTube will always be my #1 passion,” she added in a tweet last month. “I promise I’d way rather be filming 24/7 than sitting in 6 hours of classes straight but an education is also super important to me so thank u for ur patience and letting me figure out time management.”
YouTube will always be my #1 passion. I promise I’d way rather be filming 24/7 than sitting in 6 hours of classes straight but an education is also super important to me so thank u for ur patience and letting me figure out time management . Ily bbs
— Olivia Jade (@oliviajadee) February 6, 2019
As Olivia’s posts seem to imply, it was her parents who stressed the important of education. According to a federal investigation, they also paid the prices for it. In court documents obtained by CBS News, Loughlin and Giannulli are allegedly “agreed to pay bribes totaling $500,000 in exchange for having their two daughters designated as recruits to the USC crew team — despite the fact that they did not participate in crew — thereby facilitating their admission to USC.”
Federal agents arrested Giannulli at home on Tuesday morning, while Loughlin flew home from Canada to turn herself in. The Full House star went a step further than disabling comments, actually deactivating all of her social media accounts.
Loughlin and Giannulli were among 33 parents and 16 coaches and administrators arrested in the bribery scandal. All had worked through a “college admission consultant” named William Rick Singer, who was also arrested.
