Tonya Harding

On January 18, Harding was questioned by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for more than ten hours. She claimed that her ex-husband was innocent. Meanwhile, Gillooly was implicating her in the attack, and four days later a part-time sports journalist from Pennsylvania who was friendly with Harding said that the skater had called her in December and asked questions about Kerrigan and where she trained in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Further investigation found that Stant had traveled to the area, but did not carry out the attack. Finally, on January 24, Harding admitted that she knew of the plot before her competition, but was too fearful to take action to stop it. On February 1, Gillooly pled guilty in a deal that involved a two-year prison sentence and a $100,000 fine. He claimed the plot against Kerrigan originated in December, when Harding returned from a Japan competition dismayed over what she believed had been the judges' bias toward Kerrigan. "In the end, Shane and Smith attacked Kerrigan for less than $5,000, in the grandiose hope that if Harding won a gold medal at the Olympics, they would become 'World Bodyguard Service' to the stars," wrote Brownlee in U.S. News & World Report. "Eckardt exulted, 'We're going to make a lot of money.'"

The February, 1994 Lillehammer Olympic Games were imminent by this point, and a major debate raged in the media over whether or not Harding should be allowed to compete. The New York Times editorial page and even President Bill Clinton pointed out that Harding was, essentially, innocent until proven guilty, and she had not yet been fully implicated in a court of law. Others argued that Olympic athletes should be held to a higher standard of ethics. Other pundits decried the overblown media attention surrounding the Harding-Kerrigan story, claiming it was, in the end, unnewsworthy and salacious. Some corners threw their support to Harding simply as the underdog in a sport that seemed to be less about athletic ability than telegenic good looks and a demure demeanor. Pat Jordan, writing in The Sporting News, claimed that Harding epitomized the "Dirty White Girl." Such women, Jordan explained, "wake in the morning to apply new make-up over the old, have a Mountain Dew and a Clark's bar for breakfast, then go to work as a waitress. They talk tough, smoke cigarettes, have tattoos, and usually spend their weekends drinking with their boyfriends in a country-and-western bar before drag racing on the street." The sportswriter recalled the time when Harding placed sixth in her first national competition, and phoned home with the news. "Her mother told Harding she had choked and was a loser," wrote Jordan. "Harding tried to explain, but her mother wouldn't listen. When she hung up the phone, Harding turned and said, 'What a bitch! Let's order some food.' Like a proper DWG, she did not cry."

Jordan noted that such "DWG" skaters are usually far more daring on the ice than their nice-girl counterparts, taking risky jumps and skating with a great deal of verve. Kerrigan seemed to hold back in competition, but had nevertheless earned several lucrative endorsement contracts already. Just before the Detroit attack, she appeared in her first commercial for Campbell's Soups. Harding, of course, had no endorsement contracts. "Harding has been burdened all her life by the Nancy Kerrigans of the world, and if guilty, finally she must have snapped," Jordan concluded.