Interesting spin. Michael Avenatti should try a version of it for his own criminal troubles: “I haven’t done anything that any sh*theel celebrity lawyer wouldn’t have done.”

The fact that others would have been willing to commit the same crime you did feels like … not a great reason to reject an offer of leniency in exchange for a plea. Try using that as a defense to cheating on your taxes, for instance. Still, there’s something charming about the honesty of her (alleged) outlook on this. “America is teeming with rodent-like shysters scheming to gain any illicit advantage they can by hook or by crook,” she seems to be saying. “Let he who wouldn’t hand a fat envelope to the crew coach to get their child into a dream school cast the first stone.”

We are a shady bunch. Who can fault her for believing that buying people off is simply how business is conducted in this country? Look who we elected president, for cripes sake.

“She is very concerned about what a guilty plea would do to her daughters, who may not have grasped everything that was going on,” the source says.

“Yes, she can think about the public perception of her, but that’s nothing compared to what her daughters think of her. So that is something that has understandably made her less likely to enter a plea…

“It’s just taking some time for it to sink in that what she was allegedly doing could be considered illegal,” says the source. “To her, it wasn’t egregious behavior. Was it entitled and perhaps selfish? Perhaps. But she didn’t see it as being a legal violation.”

“From the beginning, she didn’t want to take a deal, because she felt that she hadn’t done anything that any mom wouldn’t have done, if they had the means to do so,” the source continues. “So this wasn’t her being obstinate; this was her truly not understanding the seriousness of the allegations.”

If she fears her daughters think poorly of her now, imagine what they’ll think when she’s taken down for money laundering at trial and is suddenly facing the prospect of missing their entire young adulthood.

Still, let’s give Aunt Becky her due. When she says that other moms would have been willing to bribe their kids’ way into USC, she’s not wrong. Remember this poll?

Fully one quarter admit they’d pay bribes to help their kids. God knows how many others would do it and simply won’t admit it to a pollster. Promise them somehow that they absolutely, positively wouldn’t get caught if they did it and you might see a clear majority in favor of bribery. Loughlin’s silly to think what she did wasn’t a crime, if in fact that’s what she believes per the source quoted above, but it’s not that silly for her to have believed the feds might have let her off without jail time for doing something many parents can relate to. And not for her own benefit either, but for her kids’. (Although, really, it was for her own benefit.) “Their fame isn’t doing them any favors this time around,” said a source to In Touch about the feds wanting to make an example of Loughlin and her husband. That’s the core irony of this case and doubtless another reason why she assumed they wouldn’t ask for jail time. Her wealth and celebrity seems to have lined her up for a harsher, not lighter, sentence. How often does that happen in American justice?

Speaking of celebrity defendants, enjoy the Free Beacon’s tribute to the love affair between the media and a guy who’s likely to still be serving time long after Lori Loughlin is out and back at home in Bel Air.