(Bloomberg) -- William McGlashan, fired by TPG after being charged in a sweeping college admissions cheating scandal, has begun to sketch out his defense strategy.

In a court filing Wednesday seeking permission to accompany his family on a long-scheduled trip abroad next month, McGlashan’s lawyers took direct aim at a central claim in the government’s case -- that McGlashan discussed a $200,000 bribe to a college athletic director to get his son into the University of Southern California.

“Mr. McGlashan did not pay for the use of a so-called ‘side door’ to obtain admission for his son at USC or any other college,” his lawyers said in the filing, in which McGlashan seeks the return of his passport.

McGlashan, who was managing partner of TPG Growth, was among 33 parents charged by the U.S. in what it called the biggest college admissions scam it has ever prosecuted, a plot that reached from entrance test administrators to college sports coaches. Other parents are accused of paying bribes to win admission to elite universities including Yale, Stanford, the University of California at Los Angeles and Georgetown.

The U.S. says parents either made payoffs to test-takers to help students cheat on the entrance exams or bought off coaches to designate the applicants as athletic recruits. Prosecutors say McGlashan did both. He’s accused of paying $50,000 to arrange for a proctor to correct the answers of his eldest son’s ACT. He’s also accused of bribing the former senior associate athletic director of USC to facilitate his son’s admission as a recruited athlete.

In arguing that McGlashan won’t flee, his lawyers say he is in a "different" position from other parents ensnared in the government’s case. They argue his son has legitimate learning disabilities that allowed him extra time to take specially proctored exams. Further, McGlashan’s son withdrew his applications to college and hasn’t even graduated from high school, according to defense lawyers.

"There is no allegation that Mr. McGlashan’s son ever attended a university based on any of the alleged conduct,” attorney Jack Pirozzolo wrote.

The government says its evidence against McGlashan includes a conversation in which he discusses creating a fake football profile for his son, according to a transcript from a court-authorized wiretap.

To contact the reporters on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net;Janelle Lawrence in Boston at jlawrence62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey

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