Kate Taylor and Julie Bosman

“I just didn’t want — I’m sorry, your honor,” she said, her voice breaking. “I just didn’t want to create the impression that the neuropsychologist had any part in this.”

Huffman, one of the best known faces among the 50 celebrities, business executives, sports coaches and others who have been charged in the nation’s largest-ever college admissions prosecution, pleaded guilty Monday to a single count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and honest services mail fraud, acknowledging that she paid $15,000 to arrange for cheating on her daughter’s SAT test.

The cheating had occurred after Huffman’s daughter left the testing facility, when a proctor corrected her answers. And while prosecutors have suggested that some parents called on psychologists to deem their children in need of extra testing time in order to facilitate the cheating, Huffman said her daughter had been legitimately granted extra time on tests for years.

But Huffman’s comments to the judge, aiming to remove any taint from her daughter and the neuropsychologist, left unanswered questions that have lingered in the case: What role had Huffman’s husband, the actor William H. Macy, played in the events? And why did prosecutors choose not to charge him?

It is uncertain what penalty Huffman will face when she is sentenced in September. The conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. However, prosecutors have said that they would recommend four months behind bars for Huffman. They also have said that they would recommend a fine of $20,000 and 12 months of supervised release.

Federal sentencing guidelines are advisory, and judges may impose sentences that are heavier or lighter than an advised range.

Huffman, who grew emotional during the hearing, is one of about 20 parents, coaches and others who have pleaded guilty or said that they intend to in the far-reaching scheme that was coordinated by William Singer, a college counselor hired by scores of parents who hoped to get their children into elite colleges.

Prosecutors have said that extra testing time — permitted with guidance from a psychologist — made it easier for Singer to arrange the cheating by bribing certain test administrators. Yet, in Huffman’s case, Eric S. Rosen, the lead prosecutor, told the judge that the government was not asserting that extra time had been inappropriately awarded to her daughter.

“We have been working with a neuropsychologist since my daughter was 8 years old and she began receiving extra time on tests since she was 11,” Huffman said, after asking U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani whether she could clarify a few points.

Talwani asked what else she wanted to clarify.

“I think — ” Huffman began, before her voice gave out and she had to stop for a moment. “I’m sorry — I think you covered it.” She said that she wasn’t knowledgeable about all the details Rosen had mentioned during the hearing, involving the amounts of money Singer had paid the test administrator and proctor involved in the cheating.

“But everything else that Mr. Rosen said, I did,” she said.

Huffman and another parent charged in the case, Devin Sloane, pleaded guilty to the same felony count during a joint court hearing Monday afternoon. Sloane was charged with agreeing to pay Singer $250,000 so that his son would be recruited to the men’s water polo team at the University of Southern California, ensuring his admission, even though his son did not actually play the sport. Falsifying sports qualifications was another element of the admissions scheme Singer arranged, along with cheating on tests, prosecutors say.

An element of the case that remained unanswered after the hearing was Macy’s role in what happened. Macy has not been charged in the case. But references in the prosecution’s criminal complaint suggest that Macy — identified in the complaint as “her spouse” or “Spouse” — was not only aware of the plans, but a participant in at least some of them.

Singer told law enforcement agents that he met with Huffman and Macy at their home in Los Angeles and “explained, in substance, how the college entrance exam scheme worked,” the complaint said. Singer said he told Huffman and Macy that he “controlled” a testing center, and “could arrange for a third party to purport to proctor their daughter’s SAT and secretly correct her answers afterward,” the complaint said, adding that Singer told investigators that Huffman and Macy agreed to the plan.

The complaint said that, in exchange for Singer’s arranging the cheating on their older daughter’s SAT, Macy and Huffman paid $15,000 to a fraudulent charity run by Singer. In a phone conversation recorded by investigators, Macy was on the line along with Huffman and Singer when plans — in the end, never carried out — were discussed for falsifying the SAT scores of their younger daughter as well.

“Are we all OK with the financial side and the actual operational side of it?” Mr. Singer asked Macy and Huffman in that phone call.

A representative for the couple did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney for the district of Massachusetts declined to comment on why Macy had not been charged, saying the investigation was continuing.

Rebecca Roiphe, a former prosecutor and a professor at New York Law School, said it was difficult to tell exactly why prosecutors would have chosen to charge only Huffman.

“The bottom line on Macy was that he seemed to have been less involved in the conduct,” she said. “There is no doubt that the conduct could have been charged, but prosecutors use their discretion all the time, and decide not to charge somebody because they consider it either unfair or not worth the resources.”

Not being charged does not absolve Macy, Roiphe added. “By not indicting people, the prosecutor is not sending the message, ‘What we think you did is OK.’”

Bradley D. Simon, a former assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted white-collar criminal cases, said he found it puzzling that prosecutors opted not to charge Macy, given the claims outlined in the complaint.

“Prosecutors have discretion as to who they charge,” Simon said. “It may be that he cooperated with federal agents and provided important information as to the involvement of others, although most likely not his wife. He also could get charged in the future.”

Macy does not appear to have suffered damage to his career. He is currently appearing in “Shameless,” a series on Showtime.

Huffman, on the other hand, has seen her career affected. Netflix said it would delay plans to release “Otherhood,” a comedy about motherhood starring Huffman. Huffman also deleted her parenting blog, “What the Flicka,” where she had publicly shared motherly angst.

Since charges were announced in the admissions scandal in March, Huffman has kept a low profile, announcing weeks ago that she intended to plead guilty and issuing a written apology to her family, her friends and her daughter.

“This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life,” Huffman said in the apology.

This article originally appeared in <a id="49a9e7e5-648a-392f-a8e6-b943c5f49376" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/felicity-huffman-guilty-college-admissions-scandal.html">The New York Times</a>.

Actor Pleads Guilty to Felony in College Admissions Scandal

BOSTON — The actress Felicity Huffman stood facing the judge, looking somber and subdued, in a gray dress and gray sweater. She wanted to make a few things clear, she said. Her daughter was not involved in the scheme to cheat on the SAT. And neither was a neuropsychologist who had treated her daughter since she was 8 years old. The responsibility, Huffman seemed to say, should only fall on her.

Actor pleads guilty to felony in college admissions scandal

<h1>In Kansas, officials dispensed warnings to ranchers about how to keep their horses from freezing to death. </h1>

Small towns notified residents that their plows might not keep up with the rapid snowfall, leaving streets impassable. And, in a foretaste of the chaos likely to ensnarl the country’s transportation networks, hundreds of flights were canceled at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, before a single snowflake had fallen there.

The storm was also expected to further strain the National Weather Service, where many employees have been furloughed as part of the partial government shutdown. Others — including those putting out the storm warnings that state and local officials rely on for their planning — are considered essential and are working without pay.

“I’ve been working for the National Weather Service for over 27 years — I’ve never seen the morale as low as it is right now,” said Dan Sobien, president of the National Weather Service Employees Organization.

He said that the job of making forecasts in a major storm was inherently stressful, and would be doubly so at a time when employees were also worrying about how to pay basic expenses like rent and child care. “We’re human beings,” he said.

The weather system has already deluged the West, causing power losses, flooding, mudslides and deaths. About 80 million people, from the Dakotas to Maine, were under some form of winter weather advisory, and meteorologists warned against driving during the height of the storm.

“Where you show up Saturday night, you should plan on staying there until Monday morning,” Derek Schroeter, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Gray, Maine, advised people in the Northeast.

In the Rockies and the Plains, some schools were closed Friday. The National Weather Service in Boulder, Colorado, said that avalanche danger was high in some parts of the Rocky Mountains, with winds up to 40 mph in places above timberline. Already, the storm has caused a truck to plunge off the Colorado’s main east-west highway near Vail, spilling wooden crates onto the wet ground and prompting the Colorado State Patrol to send a cleanup crew into the slushy mess. And authorities closed the airport in Omaha, Nebraska, after a Southwest Airlines plane slid off an icy runway, The Associated Press reported.

In Aberdeen, South Dakota, where temperatures dropped to 3 degrees by midday Friday, Hassan Yusuf, a manager at Banadir Kitchen, an East African restaurant, said he had not opened for lunch because he figured no one would come in.

“Our customers stay home on days like this,” said Yusuf, who is originally from Somalia. “I don’t want to be outside either. When I shovel the snow, I feel the pain in my fingers.”

As the storm sweeps east and then north, Des Moines, Iowa, was forecast to get 8 inches of snow; Youngstown, Ohio, 10 inches; Allentown, Pennsylvania, 8 inches; and Bennington, Vermont, 19 inches.

Schroeter of the National Weather Service said the area he covers, New Hampshire and Western Maine, could get 12 to 18 inches of snow, with the heaviest snowfall early Sunday morning.

The storm will be followed by numbing temperatures, 15 to 25 degrees below normal across the Plains and the Upper Midwest. Some areas near Albany, New York, were predicted to have low temperatures between minus 10 and minus 20.

“The concern would be, if you do lose power, the cold’s going to be pretty significant Sunday night and Monday,” Schroeter said, adding that he was not expecting major power failures in his area, because the snow was unlikely to be wet and heavy enough to bring down trees.

States of emergencies were declared in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania also banned commercial vehicles from some highways between noon Saturday and noon Sunday, and reduced speed limits to 45 mph on interstates and expressways.

In Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, about two hours’ drive northeast of State College, the borough manager, Scot Boyce Jr., said it was likely to be the biggest storm he had handled in his not-quite two years on the job.

With between 12 and 18 inches of snow predicted, he used the Police Department’s Facebook page to warn Wellsboro’s 3,300 residents that, at some point, the borough’s eight plow drivers would probably not be able to keep up with the snow accumulation.

“By the looks of what we’re going to get, we’re probably going to pull the plows right off the streets after a while,” to save gas and give the drivers time to sleep, Boyce said.

But in at least one place, the advent of cold temperatures was welcome news.

In Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, mild weather this winter has thwarted the efforts of workers building a giant ice castle, a tourist attraction where tickets are expected to cost as much as $18.95 a person. The opening of the castle had been delayed repeatedly because of above-average temperatures in December and January.

“They’ve melted down three different times,” said Nancy Daugherty, who works for the town’s Chamber of Commerce and also answers questions at the town’s visitor center. “They’ve had to keep rebuilding.”

Major winter storm threatens 80 million in midwest and northeast

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A major winter storm was on a path Friday to wallop as many as 80 million people in the Midwest and Northeast over the weekend with a punishing mix of heavy snow, strong winds and frigid temperatures.

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Kate Taylor and Julie Bosman

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Actor pleads guilty to felony in college admissions scandal

Major winter storm threatens 80 million in midwest and northeast