Uncle Dennis, Ballmer's $50 Million Sprint and the Side Deal That Wouldn't Die: Kawhi-Gate, Part VIII

As the Clippers host NBA All-Star Weekend, Pablo's "thorough due diligence" leads down a trail of LLCs and lawsuits that Kawhi Leonard and the richest owner in sports probably don't want you to know about. David Samson and Amin Elhassan return with a new prescription and — if the Aspiration whistle blows again — judgment day. Previously on PTFO: • Part I: The Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhiN2IxMTNkNmUyY2RhYTI2MmQzNWI1 • Part II: An Argument with Mark Cuban https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhiYTg1ZTkyZDkxM2JkMzMwODFhODBi • Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhjMjVlMzJhY2EzNTIxYzc2MzhiZjNi • Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhjYjcxNzVkYzYyZjBlMWQ2NjdjMzYy • Part V: Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhkOWU1ZmIyNTUyYjcyYzIwZWQ1NTQ1 • Part VI: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjhlZDk2ODM4ODU1MjdhNDM2ZGJjNDU2 • Part VII: The Briefcase, Ballmer's Social Network and Aspiration's House of Cards https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk2MDc1MzMxMTA3M2E2MWJkOTM5Yzg1 • Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter https://pablo.show/ for exclusive access, documents and invites • Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" https://pod.link/1483011704 • Subscribe to "Basketball Illuminati" https://pod.link/1610336730 with Amin Elhassan (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  I find it hard to believe that he would want to go to that show where he would not even be, wouldn't get his name in the paper and he wouldn't be the face of the franchise, that's for sure.

• 0:18Speaker 00

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• 1:02Speaker 00

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• 1:28Speaker 00

  David has his glasses atop a thick folder, which I do not want you to touch, David.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  Two Cs.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  Amin, we have so much to get to, I just want to jump into it. What is happening this weekend? Explain for the people what is going on finally.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  We are descending upon the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, excuse me, Inglewood, California, the home of the Los Angeles Clippers for All-Star Weekend. I'll be there.

• 1:50Speaker 03

  Inglewood and Miami Gardens. It's LA and it's Miami.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Crazy, because Inglewood is closer to LAX than the rest of the...

• 1:56Speaker 00

  Okay, we didn't come here to talk about the geographic distinctions between suburbs of what? Why are you taking out your glasses right now?

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Because I want to tell you what happened to me is I had to go to 2.0 and I was asked by the doctor, "Are you reading more?" Like, is anything... Going on that is causing your eyes to disintegrate. And I said, I do this thing with Pablo where he has me reading documents on the spot. And I have to be clear, he's like 2.0. So these are brand new.

• 2:21Pablo Torre?

  Part eight of this series has required yet even more medically necessary bifocals for David Samson. I mean, Al Hassan, the party that you're going to, okay? I've been waiting for this party for like a year now.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35Pablo Torre?

  And I'm not exaggerating. I started reporting the story of aspiration in February, 2025. A year ago this month, it's the party that first off, Adam Silver, I am told, never seriously considered relocating. Even though it turns everyone's focus to the host, to the emcee of this event, Steve Ballmer, the richest owner in sports, who will personally welcome everybody in to his gleaming arena. Because an All-Star game, David, as someone who's hosted an All-Star game before, is also what?

• 3:04Speaker 03

  It is an opportunity to showcase to the world, your ballpark, your operation. And it is a great vanity play. The NBA, there are teams that don't necessarily fight over it all the time. And MLB, everyone wants to host it.

• 3:17Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  And you have to answer a huge bid document that's hundreds of pages long. And it is really your chance that in the playoffs are the two opportunities for you to shine as an organization.

• 3:28Pablo Torre?

  And the TV show the Clippers have been this season has been amazing.

• 3:34Speaker 02

  Pablo, we talked about this on Basketball Illuminati. We had Law Murray on who covers the Clippers for The Athletic. He said, you've already gone through four seasons. Season one, the aspiration stuff. Season two, Chris Paul, it's all your fault. Season three, the team is awful. Season four, the team is a lot better now. And now season five, James Harden got traded to Cleveland.

• 3:50Pablo Torre?

  Oh, and also Kawhi Leonard has been playing like an MVP, but he got left off the All-Star roster by the coaches. In part, I am told because of how egregious season one was, the aspiration scandal. I have been told this by head coaches in the NBA, also ESPN's Brian Windhorst, basically went on TV and said as much. And then the commissioner, Adam Silver, personally added Kawhi Leonard to the roster in keeping with league rules.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 4:11Pablo Torre?

  But just again, for the, for the show, it's just kind of perfect. That Kawhi is going to be there after all. Adam Silver is going to be there. Steve Ballmer is going to be there.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  There's a funny part to this where everyone's like, oh, Adam Silver's looking out for Kawhi Leonard by putting him on this team. Isn't there another side of that corner? Oh, no, now I gotta go answer questions. I gotta do the media day thing. I gotta be asked questions about aspiration.

• 4:33Pablo Torre?

  And what people will ask about, what anyone will say about aspiration during this. Momentous All-Star Weekend is in part why we're here and why David's eyes are degrading. Because the focus should be Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard now. That's the gift that we have been given. We've been given the gift of reexamining the $150 billion man who has, according to our reporting, made a mockery of the Cardinal League rules that cap how much NBA owners can spend to win, as well as, you know, the superstar who received not only a secret $48 million no-show endorsement deal, but also, we're just gonna jump into this right now, I am told, even more. Okay? So Ballmer, I mean, did not merely greenlight the side deal with aspiration in 2021.

• 5:16Pablo Torre?

  According to multiple former Clippers employees I've talked to in the last few months, at one point, a completely exasperated Michael Winger, who was the Clippers' general manager and collective bargaining rules expert from 2017 to 2023, said aloud in the office, upon discovering yet another hidden arrangement with Kawhi and his Uncle Dennis, this quote, I mean, which is the first piece of paper in your folder.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  Ooh, this one is a big font. This should have been read by you.

• 5:42Speaker 03

  Without glasses. Oh, that is big.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  All right. Quote, "How many [bleep] side deals have we made with Kawhi?"

• 5:52Pablo Torre?

  That is a large font.

• 5:53Speaker 02

  That's huge.

• 5:54Pablo Torre?

  I asked Michael Winger, who is now the president of basketball operations for the Washington Wizards, who's had a busy trade deadline himself, if he wanted to comment on this quote on the scene I'm describing, and he politely declined. And as you guys know, we continue to get ghosted, in general, on all our requests for comment to Uncle Dennis Robertson and to Kawhi's actual registered agent, Mitch Frankel.

• 6:14Speaker 03

  Don't you have to have responded once to then ghost? If they've never spoken to you at all, is it still ghosting?

• 6:20Speaker 02

  That's ghosting.

• 6:21Pablo Torre?

  But the Michael Winger side deal quote, I mean, reminds me of Michael Winger's boss and Steve Ballmer's right-hand man, Clippers president of basketball, Lawrence Frank. This was September, Clippers Media Day, and what Ramona Shelburne from ESPN, who later had the microphone taken from her by Clippers PR, dared to ask was this.

• 6:42Speaker 05

  Has Dennis Robertson, Kawhi's uncle, ever asked for any extra benefits that wouldn't be allowable under the NBA seller cap directly to you? There's been a lot coming out about his asks.

• 6:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, look, Dennis knows the rules, Kawhi knows the rules, Mitch Frankel knows the rules, and we know the rules.

• 7:00Speaker 05

  Is that a guess or another?

• 7:02Speaker 06

  Yes, we all know the rules.

• 7:05Speaker 03

  Classic.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Can I ask you a question? Would he have been better off saying no comment? Or next question?

• 7:10Speaker 03

  I'm not gonna address it. He sounds like a prize fool there.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  That's, that's, yeah, that's, that's him basically saying yes.

• 7:18Pablo Torre?

  Well, what you didn't hear was no.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:20Pablo Torre?

  So by the powers of deduction, you might think the answer is yes.

• 7:26Speaker 03

  Don't say that, because when you plead the Fifth Amendment, that does not mean you're guilty.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  He didn't plead the Fifth Amendment. He answered a different question that wasn't asked.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Well, that's what you're taught in PR 101.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:36Speaker 03

  If you don't want to answer the question asked, you never have to. Bridge to something else.

• 7:39Speaker 02

  But is it not better to just say no comment or next question, rather than to do the playful, oh, I'll ask a, answer a question?

• 7:45Speaker 03

  Well, what he did was absurd. The way to answer that question is much easier. Say, I can't speak to anything other than the Los Angeles Clippers. We're never engaged in any activity that is outside the rules. And if that's not true, then you say, there is no way I can address this. It's pending investigation or ongoing.

• 8:03Pablo Torre?

  But if Lawrence Frank was saying anything, right? He's basically saying, look, Uncle Dennis may have been asking for some wild [BLEEP], but we know the rules and he knows the rules and we, as the people asserting our knowledge of the rules, would never participate in rule breaking.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Or I know the rules and I know how to skirt the rules. To me, saying I know the rules says nothing about your desire to adhere to the rules.

• 8:31Pablo Torre?

  It does bring me, though, to something else I have not really mentioned on the show yet, which is that Steve Ballmer didn't just face an NBA investigation that fined him for offering a side deal with the team sponsor Lexus, in this case, to DeAndre Jordan in 2015. Ballmer, at the time, his quote was, "Any circumvention was inadvertent." And Ballmer also isn't just facing this current NBA investigation we've been talking about into the nearly $50 million side deal that another team sponsor, Aspiration, of course, had with Kawhi. Maybe more worryingly and far less controllably, Steve Ballmer is also dealing with the thing at the top of the folders in front of both of you. Because what you're gonna find here is a civil lawsuit filed by 11 aspiration investors, which got amended to name Steve Ballmer as a defendant alongside aspiration co-founder Joe

• 9:16Pablo Torre?

  Sandberg, who already has pled guilty to two counts of wire fraud last fall. And gentlemen, what do these 11 investors allege about Ballmer's support of aspiration, which has since been rebranded, incidentally, as Katona?

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Sandberg and Ballmer worked together to make aspiration appear to be a successful company backed by Ballmer, who is one of the wealthiest people in the world, worth over $150 billion. With Ballmer's knowledge, support, and assistance, Sandberg and Ballmer promoted aspiration to lend legitimacy to aspiration's operations, and Ballmer publicly endorsed aspiration. This enticed investors, like plaintiffs, to entrust in and keep their capital in aspiration and helped hide the rampant fraud occurring at the company.

• 10:10Speaker 03

  It also served Ballmer's interest in getting extra money to Leonard so he could circumvent the salary cap, beat out the competition, and re-sign his team's superstar player.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Plaintiff would not have invested and slash or kept their investment in aspiration if Ballmer and Sandberg had disclosed the true nature of Ballmer's investment. Ballmer thus supported and participated in Sandberg's fraud.

• 10:41Pablo Torre?

  I should be clear that I am not sure if this lawsuit, which escalates Ballmer's role in this story to allegedly aiding and abetting fraud, is gonna be successful, right? I didn't write the complaint and my sources, as you guys know, at aspiration. And the Clippers now have focused on Ballmer allegedly and knowingly breaking the rules of the NBA and not federal law. But the reason I am bringing up all of this here is because while Ballmer will presumably, David, say nothing about any of this at All-Star Weekend, he did something fascinating just last month. Because in an attempt to have his whole lawsuit dismissed and thereby preempt discovery, which would be... Christmas for us here, a public Tory.

• 11:26Pablo Torre?

  God.

• 11:28Pablo Torre?

  The number of folders on this desk. What Ballmer's attorneys finally did was write down a defense against PTFO's reporting. This is as part of their answer to the investor's amended complaint. And if I made you drink every time Team Ballmer wrote the word podcast, you would die.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Let's see it. I got my water here and I will take a sip every time I hear the word podcast.

• 11:50Speaker 03

  Plaintiff's first amended complaint adds Stephen Ballmer as a defendant based on sensational and patently false assertions made in a sports podcast.

• 12:03Pablo Torre?

  Drink.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  Ballmer and the Clippers have denied all allegations in that podcast.

• 12:09Pablo Torre?

  Drink.

• 12:09Speaker 02

  Almost it. And are cooperating in an ongoing NBA investigation.

• 12:15Speaker 03

  While conjecture and unsupported assumptions may be appropriate in the world of Tory's podcast.

• 12:21Pablo Torre?

  Hold on. Drink.

• 12:23Speaker 03

  They have no place in a sworn legal pleading.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Plaintiff's claims against the Ballmer defendants are premised on the bogus theory based entirely on speculation in a podcast.

• 12:36Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  That Ballmer and Sandberg entered into a quote corrupt deal unquote.

• 12:43Pablo Torre?

  So they, of course, never mentioned the two federal witnesses who went on a tape with us or our piles of documents or the fact that Team Ballmer has proposed zero factual corrections to our now 507 minutes. They attempted to slur us with the P word more than a dozen times. But as you look through these papers, there is an incredibly important case that I think Ballmer really does want to make here in defense of his own innocence and his own victimhood in terms of how he does business and certainly how he protects his integrity. Because it is not merely that, quote, Ballmer invested in aspiration because of its purported commitment to environmental sustainability, a passion Ballmer shared, end quote, which, you know, as a side note, I have not seen the Clippers announce a new sustainability

• 13:28Pablo Torre?

  partner to replace aspiration and do the carbon credits thing, but we'll go with it. I mean, in keeping with the theme of this episode, crucially, Steve Ballmer's lawyers also say this.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  Despite having conducted thorough due diligence, Ballmer's trust in aspiration was sorely misplaced.

• 13:50Pablo Torre?

  Thorough due diligence and what qualifies as thorough, David, we talk about vocabulary all the time.

• 13:59Pablo Torre?

  And in fact, the last time we did our own thorough due diligence on a very important adjective deployed by Team Ballmer was in our last aspiration episode from January. And the word "then" was "significant" because last October, in reference to how well Ballmer knew Sandberg before the owner of the Clippers decided to give Aspiration's founder $50 million in September 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported this.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  A person close to the Ballmer group, his investment company, said that two hardly knew each other. He said that Ballmer and Sandberg had their first significant interaction at the press conference announcing the partnership between the Clippers and Aspiration.

• 14:45Pablo Torre?

  But now, given what Ballmer just filed in court about thorough due diligence, that Wall Street Journal quote is even more significant. Because it seems pretty difficult for an investor to conduct thorough due diligence on a startup whose founder he had never spent significant time with and apparently hardly knew. But to be totally fair, of course, maybe Ballmer just directed his whole team of lawyers and his chief investment officer to thoroughly diligence any and all paperwork on his behalf. And for a $50 million investment, many founders and lawyers tell me, thoroughly vetting all that documentation would typically take at least a month, often more.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  I can get an agreement done in weeks. Sometimes it takes months in order because you're negotiating literal lines of a 200-page agreement and the most important sections are the most eye-glazing for normal people, which are reps and warranties, who knows what, when, at the time of the signing. What are you promising to do if something is discovered after the fact? Who pays for any issues that arise from a contract or from a lack of performance or an overperformance?

• 16:00Pablo Torre?

  And so maybe all that vetting happened. Maybe Team Ballmer vetted Sandberg so diligently, in fact, and for so many months, that in late 2024, long after Ballmer already knew that the feds were investigating Sandberg for defrauding Aspiration investors, Ballmer still decided to make a donation of $1.875 million to Joe Sandberg's personal charity, which the Ballmer Group did. But in order to calculate how many months Team Ballmer spent diligencing Aspiration's paperwork, which now seems incredibly relevant to Ballmer's claim in court, you'd need privileged information, something like a confidential email chain between Sandberg and Aspiration's

• 16:44Pablo Torre?

  lawyers and Ballmer's lawyers and Ballmer's chief investment officer. And this email chain just happens to be the next document in David and Amin's folders. Amin, could you please read from the internal email that starts it all off?

• 17:01Speaker 02

  This is from Joe Sandberg, sent Friday, September 3rd, 2021, 10:16 a.m. Subject: Connecting legal teams for Ballmer investment. Importance: High. And then the message says, "Please meet here Brant Vaughn, Ballmer's chief investment officer and Aspiration's newest partner in our mission. Brant is going to loop in his counsel. Thank you for how hard you and team are working so we can sign and close in the next few days."

• 17:35Pablo Torre?

  Ooh. If you're wondering- That's quick. If you're wondering why Joe Sandberg would be trying to close this deal in the next few days, of course, me too. So I called up someone in the Aspiration Finance Department, who's been right about everything they have told us for about a year now. Source number one. Just to spell it out, why was Joe rushing this? Why did they want the money in?

• 17:59Speaker 07

  Because she was broke. There was no money.

• 18:03Pablo Torre?

  So by September of 2021, in that month, aspiration was already broke.

• 18:09Speaker 07

  Yep, and they were just burning. I mean, aspiration never was profitable.

• 18:15Pablo Torre?

  And the person Sandberg sent that urgent introductory email to, to speed close on a $50 million investment from one of the richest men on earth, is Brant Vaughn, the guy I mean named there. Brant Vaughn is Ballmer's other right-hand man. You should know, he's kind of the personal finance equivalent of Lawrence Frank. And he replies to Joe Sandberg that same day, Friday, September 3rd, David.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  Thanks, all. We're aligning a few additional resources on our side. Does it make sense to jump on a call once we have had a chance to review the purchase agreement?

• 18:47Pablo Torre?

  And Friday, September 3rd, by the way, I mean, you may also recognize as the beginning of a certain holiday weekend.

• 18:53Speaker 02

  That is Labor Day weekend. Labor Day weekend is the unofficial return to facilities for most teams to start working out, gearing up in advance of the start of official training camp at the end of September.

• 19:07Pablo Torre?

  So I didn't fully realize that. So there's one pressure from Joe Sandberg, according to source number one, they need [bleep] money. And then in the NBA world, Labor Day weekend is heralding the actual arrival of the players on your team.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 19:22Pablo Torre?

  And so on Wednesday, September 8th, this is just five calendar days, three of which are Labor Day weekend, obviously, after the suits from aspiration and Ballmer's legal and finance teams meet each other for the first time over email, as you guys just read, Ballmer's lawyer sends an email, I mean, which says this.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  So this email's from Wednesday, September 8th, 2021. So what's that, five days later? We are signed off on the form of subscription agreement. We had one comment on the version of the purchase agreement that was circulated last night, attached here. We'll review the documents that just came around as well.

• 19:59Speaker 03

  You can't have a thorough negotiation of a purchase agreement or a subscription agreement that quickly. I don't care who you're staffing it with.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  Well, it was circulated last night, the purchase agreement.

• 20:08Speaker 03

  It's too, yeah, I mean, you can have an issues list. But you cannot have a sign off unless it unless you have been told.

• 20:15Pablo Torre?

  What if they don't celebrate Labor Day?

• 20:17Speaker 03

  It doesn't matter.

• 20:18Pablo Torre?

  As a cultural preference.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  It's still five. It's only five days.

• 20:20Pablo Torre?

  They're religiously against Labor Day.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  I should point out this email was at 2:00 in the afternoon. So it was most of today. It was the last night today, this morning. They had most of the day.

• 20:28Pablo Torre?

  It was at 2:04 PM.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  You're flipping burgers with one hand and you're reading the document the other. What's the big deal? Crack open a cold one in the middle.

• 20:36Pablo Torre?

  Whomst Among Us has not reviewed a 209-page, $50 million personal investment agreement between Steve Ballmer and Aspiration, done through his personal LLC, which is called, again, Polpat, which is very different. How dare you? How dare you suggest that's the Cambodian dictator?

• 20:51Speaker 02

  Dangerous game. That's a dangerous game.

• 20:54Pablo Torre?

  It's Polpat LLC, find a new slant. And this 209-page contract, David, is of course, sitting in your folder.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Well, this is gonna take a second. You only want me to look at what you highlighted?

• 21:05Pablo Torre?

  I just want you to describe what...

• 21:07Speaker 03

  I'll do a thorough review of the whole Twitter pages.

• 21:10Pablo Torre?

  Because, look, I want to offer... See, my point is, I want to offer the most generous version of the timeline, because in five days, they're like, "We're basically good. Just fix the one thing that we saw, because we got this thing yesterday." But in fairness, please give us the timestamps here.

• 21:22Speaker 03

  "Aspiration Partners, Inc., Series C4 Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement. This Series C4 Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement is dated as of September 14, 2021, and is between Aspiration Partners Delaware Corp. and Polpat LLC, the investor. The parties are signing this C4 Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement as of the date stated in the introductory clause, which would be September 14, 2021. It is docu-signed by Brant Vaughn. He is the COO of Polpat LLC."

• 22:00Pablo Torre?

  So, most generous version of the math, right? Friday, September 3, into Labor Day weekend, into Tuesday, September 14. So just doing the math here, I mean...

• 22:10Speaker 02

  It's 11 days.

• 22:11Pablo Torre?

  Which simply means that Steve Ballmer's team spent as many days conducting thorough due diligence of his agreement with Aspiration as there are Aspiration investors now suing him. And so, this is what source number one had to say about this very timeline.

• 22:26Speaker 07

  It's insane, and it's completely unheard of.

• 22:30Pablo Torre?

  Even at Aspiration, where how many other deals closed in this kind of a timeframe?

• 22:37Speaker 07

  I have never seen an investment deal of this size or anywhere near this size be completed at that pace before.

• 22:47Pablo Torre?

  All of which reminds me now, that bomber told ESPN back in September, this.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  You're one of the richest men in America. You've obviously done very well in your career in business. Like, you didn't smell anything wrong with the company. You didn't see anything wrong. Like, you had, you obviously reviewed the financials before you got involved with the business proposal.

• 23:04Speaker 08

  I reviewed. I reviewed. My staff reviewed primarily. Fraudulent financials. Now, should I have sniffed it out? Maybe. I feel embarrassed and kind of silly that I didn't sniff it out, but I didn't.

• 23:23Speaker 03

  If these timelines of these emails, which are, they look like actual emails, that's not a lot of sniffing. That's like one little, like, snort. It's a quick one. Like, and then that's it.

• 23:34Pablo Torre?

  But as for what Team Bomber could have snorted, could have really sniffed out here if they actually did vet these fraudulent financials, and especially the list of businesses Aspiration was counting as its customers, its corporate partners. That is also worth understanding here because according to multiple Aspiration sources that I've talked to, who, like source number one, became federal witnesses in the government's investigation, this part does actually seem thoroughly embarrassing.

• 23:59Speaker 07

  Some of the businesses in 2021 that were signed up as corporate businesses were not real businesses. They were shell companies. I'd say about half. The other half were businesses that had absolutely no business signing up for the amount of carbon offsets, tree planting, revenue guarantee to Aspiration that they had committed. In many instances, these businesses weren't even making as much in a year as they were committing to Aspiration. All of that would have been very easy to look at by doing a quick Secretary of State Google search. Or, if you don't want to do that, you can do a reference call. You can call

• 24:44Speaker 07

  these corporate partnerships and see what.

• 24:48Speaker 07

  Your business is like before you invest something at that scale. Because these businesses were insane. They were either fake or they had no reason to purchase the amount of offsets and/or trees they were purchasing monthly.

• 25:05Speaker 03

  So when you start a deal, if you, as the principal, when you tell your bankers and your lawyers, we're doing this deal, they're gonna do less work than when you sit them down and say, hey, we're looking at this, let me know your thought. There's two different ways you approach it with a banker or a lawyer. And the assumption I'm making, given the timeline here, is Ballmer said, hey, we're signing this, like, we're good, don't worry about it.

• 25:30Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, Joe Sandberg is asking for a close in the next few days. Steve Ballmer is clearly authorizing a close within five to 11 days.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Given that, I am very curious to know what the one revision was. Like, even in this deal that has to go through, that we're willing to look past-

• 25:46Pablo Torre?

  Take out the cap circumvention part.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  Don't say it out loud, just-

• 25:52Pablo Torre?

  But the real kicker, of course, as you will now recall, is that Steve Ballmer did not just invest in September 2021. He also invested another $10 million in March 2023, while 19 outside investors, whom Joe Sandberg solicited for money, those 19 all said, [bleep] no, according to court filings, whereas Steve Ballmer and his friend Dennis Wong, who had never invested in aspiration before and was the only new investor in this round, said yes. We should say here, of course, that we reached out to the Ballmer Group and the Clippers' PR department, which has previously and very notably spoken on behalf of the Ballmer Group before in our previous requests for comment, and the Clippers, once again, declined to comment citing their participation in the league investigation. And Brent Vaughn from the Ballmer Group did not respond.

• 26:36Pablo Torre?

  But as for why Ballmer went along with the rush timeline and didn't do the thorough due diligence that his legal team claims, it brings us to another part of Team Ballmer's motion to dismiss the complaint from the 11 aspiration investors. Because this is how Amin, Ballmer's lawyers, described the story of the first amended complaint, or FAC.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  The FAC alleges that Ballmer invested in Aspiration solely so that Aspiration could endorse Leonard, allowing Leonard to receive more, quote, "compensation," unquote, than the NBA rules allowed.

• 27:10Pablo Torre?

  And here in the real world, in podcast court, that adverb, "solely," is funny to me. Because anyone who's listened to any of the hours that we've done in this series should know that Steve Ballmer did not solely use Aspiration to arrange this no-show endorsement side deal for Kawhi Leonard. There were, in fact, other financial sweeteners involved, as source number one, again, reminds us.

• 27:33Speaker 07

  With Ballmer's investment, Oaktree Capital Management had invested as well, with the intention of Aspiration going public through a SPAC deal, which is a merger in which an already-public company, and we know now, because it's public knowledge that that was InterPrivate, would take Aspiration underneath it, create a public entity that is Aspiration Public. We can just call it Aspiration Public. And then that company would be worth at least $2.2 billion at the time.

• 28:06Pablo Torre?

  Right. Ballmer was set to make a ton of money, and it all would have been brilliant. As we've said many times, if the guy he trusted to help him deceive the NBA, Joe Sandberg, was not also deceiving him on some level, which, again, thorough due diligence might have produced before you decided to get into this mess. But there was still another reason. Steve Ballmer was apparently so eager to do this deal, I mean. And this headline, you might recall, it's from CNBC, from that same exact month, September 2021.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  L.A. Clippers sign $300 million-plus arena sponsorship deal with Green Bank Aspiration.

• 28:44Pablo Torre?

  And you may now wonder, how much was Ballmer really motivated by that? By the fact that he was getting a guaranteed $300 million in exchange for that speed investment of $50 million in September 2021? And so the next document in your folder, David, is an internal, private email that I obtained from October 2021. This sent by the CEO of InterPrivate, the company Aspiration was set to go public with. And it was sent to Aspiration's co-founders and lawyers and bankers. They were discussing the terms that an Oaktree executive, whose name we've redacted here, was negotiating with Aspiration directly in the footsteps of Steve Ballmer deciding to invest his $50 million.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  Redacted nose Ballmer was partly motivated by the Clippers' sponsorship deal.

• 29:30Pablo Torre?

  And this should not be that surprising, that that is in writing somewhere, that Steve Ballmer had other reasons to get into the Aspiration business, perhaps because, quote, "He was partly motivated by the $300 million sponsorship deal." But as usual, what Team Ballmer wants you to think is that the real victim here, Amin, has been the 13th richest person on earth all along, as his lawyers go on to write.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Ballmer lost his entire invested capital in Aspiration, and the Clippers terminated both the master services agreement and corporate sponsorship agreement with the company.

• 30:07Pablo Torre?

  Which now reminds me, David, of something the Clippers had told us when they were answering our request for comment way back in part one of our P-word.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I was about to take a drink.

• 30:17Pablo Torre?

  Before they knew the scope of the documentation that I had.

• 30:21Speaker 03

  Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false. The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago during the 22-23 season when Aspiration defaulted on its obligations.

• 30:43Pablo Torre?

  So they're saying they terminated the deal during the 2022-23 season, and the lawyers had just said, in what Amin read, that they terminated both the master services agreement and corporate sponsorship agreement with the company. So let's look at this timeline. Because this language about the breakup here...

• 30:59Pablo Torre?

  This timeline turns out to be provably false. The Clippers' season officially ended in 2023, Amin. In April, April 25th, they had lost to the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs. But in June of 2023, June 29th, 2023, a very convenient birthday takes place. More than two months after that. Because Amin and the Clippers then posted this.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  Happy birthday, Kawhi. And they've got a little, the emoji that's blowing like the party favor and it's got the little hat on. For every comment slash retweet, at Aspiration will plant one tree for Kawhi's birthday.

• 31:42Pablo Torre?

  And to be clear, this is not an example of Kawhi performing any of the potential services in his endorsement agreement. Unless he planted the tree. Which we are told he did not, um, personally. The bobblehead is like this that we talked about in last month's episode. It's a sponsored item that Aspiration paid to sponsor. They had previously been sponsoring the birthday posts for Nick Batum and Paul George and Norm Powell and Ty Lou and everybody else. But conceivably, that would end when you end the deal. But according to multiple high-level sources at Aspiration, the Clippers did not terminate their corporate sponsorship agreement at the end of June either. The deal very weirdly lingered on into the offseason, very un-terminated, even though it was also pretty obvious to everybody by then that the company was pretty [BLEEP].

• 32:28Speaker 02

  This kind of reminds me of the quote from the movie Terminator. You guys remember this?

• 32:32Pablo Torre?

  Of course.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  It's Kyle Reese. He's warning Sarah Connor, trying to tell her about the Terminator, she doesn't believe him and says, "The Terminator's out there."

• 32:39Speaker 09

  It can't be bargained with, it can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Ever. Until you are dead.

• 32:55Pablo Torre?

  You're saying that this deal, much like the Terminator, was hard to terminate?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  It was not gonna die.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Kyle Reese, played by Michael Bean.

• 33:03Pablo Torre?

  The amount of time we're wasting here.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  You've got problems.

• 33:05Pablo Torre?

  All of this points to how anxiously Steve Ballmer, though, and Lawrence Frank would have worried for years about protecting their secret side deals, plural, per Michael Winger, with Kawhi Leonard. And this is a worry that I think was best exemplified by a 2019 quote in the LA Times from then Clippers head coach and Steve Ballmer's fellow Aspiration investor, Doc Rivers, who had the year before visited the nearby offices of Aspiration for a motivational speech. This was, I mean, not long after Kawhi signed with the Clippers in free agency.

• 33:38Speaker 10

  I was at home in Malibu and Lawrence called me and told me, "Look, it looks like he's either going to Toronto or the Lakers." A Lakers part just threw me over. I told him, "That can't happen." I remember I kept telling him, "We can't allow that to happen." I actually told Steve jokingly that, "If that happens, we're moving the team to Seattle." It was a joke, but I was actually serious about it. I really believe that.

• 33:59Pablo Torre?

  David, Steve Ballmer's commentary from the day that his franchise introduced Kawhi, this is July 2019, I would call it similarly restraint.

• 34:09Speaker 08

  I have these notes, but I gotta say, I'm just fired up to be here today. Pretty cool, pretty damn cool.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Love it. Listen, I'll be very critical of the business things that he's done, but that's excitement, man. You want, don't you want your owner to be that excited?

• 34:30Speaker 02

  I think that's the sad part about all this. We're doing eight episodes and we're deep diving, ripping apart all these claims and stuff. But I gotta say, I wish I worked for an owner like him.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  Well, you're also coming from Phoenix, man. You were at the bottom of the barrel. Sorry.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  No offense.

• 34:49Pablo Torre?

  You wish you worked for the other owner under investigation by Wachtel.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  He's, that's goofy. I'm not gonna lie to you.

• 34:58Pablo Torre?

  I think it's, I think his enthusiasm is cool. I do. That's not what I'm making fun of. I'm merely pointing out that Kawhi Leonard made that man and Doc Rivers, these two aspiration investors, react in that way. But I do now want to point out something else that I personally think is cool. Because as it turns out, the complaint filed by those 11 aspiration investors is not the only lawsuit that Team Ballmer is facing and fighting in court on the down low, right now.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  There's another lawsuit.

• 35:32Pablo Torre?

  There's a lawsuit in direct connection to hidden side deals for Kawhi Leonard. And David, I know you're fingering that folder. But this other lawsuit is gonna allow us to pressure test everything we've been talking about here and also look even further behind the curtain of how Steve Ballmer has secretly run the Clippers. And yes, David, put on your bifocals.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  They're not bifocals. Could you stop?

• 35:55Speaker 02

  They're just focals.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  They're just, they're one focal. 2.0.

• 35:59Speaker 09

  That's it.

• 36:00Pablo Torre?

  We do, though, have a second lawsuit after the break.

• 36:12Pablo Torre?

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• 37:54Pablo Torre?

  I mean, in fairness to the Clippers, right? And Steve Ballmer, this owner that you kind of wish you worked for. I do want to start this part of the story by showing you what Lawrence Frank, the president of basketball, told reporters on the fateful day that the franchise introduced Kawhi. If you can please read this transcript from Ben Goliver of the late, great Washington Post Sports Department. He says this.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Quote, "We didn't recruit. What we did was, we went to many games to scout and research. We never had a conversation with Kawhi or with any of his people. We always felt by doing it out in front, we were being very, very transparent. We weren't doing anything behind the scenes. We know the rules. We follow the rules. We feel very, very good about how we did everything. With Steve, in terms of how he does business, his integrity is number one. We're always going to be above the line. That's what we did. Are we going to be aggressive? Yes. Are we going to be transparent? Yes. Are we going to follow the rules 100%?" Marked departure from the way he answered Ramona's question a few years later.

• 39:00Pablo Torre?

  But the phrase in this story that I need to get to here, it actually starts years before Kawhi gets introduced. And this one starts with a different voice. It belongs to a guy named Randy Shelton. And Randy Shelton happens to know Kawhi Leonard really, really well.

• 39:19Speaker 13

  So you are Kawhi's strength trainer, or it's from the days at San Diego State? I am currently the strength and conditioning coach for SDSU men's basketball. But I also, yes, I am Kawhi's personal, like what Kawhi liked to say is I'm like his Tim Grover. I've been with him since he's been at SDSU. And on the offseason, he comes and he trains with me down in San Diego. We try to keep everything discreet. If you try to Google stuff or look stuff up, we kind of try to keep everything on the down-low.

• 40:00Pablo Torre?

  So this tape of Randy Shelton, you may recall the voice of his interviewer. This is PTFO correspondent Tom Haberstro back in 2016. And 2016 was an interesting year for Kawhi Leonard. He had already won a championship with the San Antonio Spurs, had been named Finals MVP. And I mean, you just heard Randy Shelton mention that Kawhi thought of Randy Shelton as his Tim Grover. Who was?

• 40:23Speaker 02

  Tim Grover was Michael Jordan's trainer. So every offseason, Michael Jordan would go train with Tim Grover. They'd bring in other NBA pros for these high-level pickup games in Chicago at Hoops the Gym. Was the name of the gym.

• 40:36Speaker 13

  You know, my goal is to get him to be the greatest athlete on this planet, move it, was. And like, I like to say is he's a human avatar. There was a cutout at Staples, and up in the stands, there was a picture of Kawhi's head on the avatar body. And I looked at that and I just said, like, that's exactly how I want Kawhi to perform. Like a human avatar.

• 41:03Pablo Torre?

  There is, I realize now, a lot of James Cameron in this episode. But if you're wondering, David, have you seen the avatars? Not the latest. Well, this is from the first one. And this is a picture of Kawhi Leonard as referenced as a Na'vi from Avatar. Because they actually did make this thing at San Diego State. And of course, Kawhi Leonard, like the Na'vi, both love trees, as we all know. But I mean, what happened, beginning in that 2016-17 season, between Kawhi and the San Antonio Spurs, his actual employer, as his physical health was concerned, was what?

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Kawhi has a marvelous season and they are the team that people say, well, you know what? This might be the team that can unseat the unstoppable Golden State Warriors that now have Kevin Durant in their midst. And game one is going very much in the Spurs way until Kawhi Leonard has a catch and shoot opportunity in the corner. Zaza Pachulia closes out and his size-whatever foot slides right under Kawhi's landing area. Kawhi lands, rolls his ankle, is hurt, does not return for the rest of the series. The Spurs end up losing all the games.

• 42:14Pablo Torre?

  This is the origin story of Uncle Dennis Robertson, although he didn't realize it at that very moment.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Pablo, if I may, the origin story starts a little earlier, because watch this. Not a lot of people remember this, but I'll always remember this. Long, long time ago, talking with Mark West, who I used to work with in Phoenix. And Mark said, whenever a guy's eligible extension, but the team opts to not extend and wait to restrict a free agency, the player never forgets. The player, even if it's a, hey, it makes sense financially for us and the way the cap works and we'll have more space and you'll still get your money. Being told to wait for your money is an experience that players never forget. Kawhi Leonard, prior to the 14-15 season, was eligible to be extended.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  This is coming off his rookie extend, basically his rookie extension eligible. And the Spurs said, no, no, no, wait, because I think we can get LaMarcus Aldridge or whatever the next offseason. So he waited. He got his money as a restricted free agent the next summer. But that, I'm told, was the first

• 43:22Pablo Torre?

  The seeds.

• 43:23Speaker 02

  The first salve of like, wait a second, if they love me like they tell me they love me, why aren't they taking care of me immediately? Why am I told to wait?

• 43:31Pablo Torre?

  So, so word around the league is trickling out, by the way, that given this backdrop and given this injury, that there is a difference of medical opinion.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  Yes, because there had been several smaller injuries that happened throughout his Spurs tenure where the medical staff of the team said, you're fine.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  And Kawhi said, "I don't feel fine." And then had to get reevaluated and then found out that there was something else going on. The ankle roll against the Warriors, that wasn't his first ankle injury. He had had that ankle injury earlier that season, early, I think, early in the postseason, and was told, "You're fine to play on it." And then he gets hurt and obviously misses the rest of the conference finals. That also was an event that was like, "I don't know how much I can trust these people."

• 44:25Pablo Torre?

  And the Spurs, of course, are famously cloistered. They do things their own way. And in this case, this began to spill out into the public, even though it has, of course, a very understandable dynamic. And the reason I'm bringing all of this up is because the guy who was tending to Kawhi Leonard's body, his personal trainer, his Tim Grover, Randy Shelton, provides more context here. Because as now ESPN is describing, Kawhi is distant, disconnected from the organization. This is obviously now happening in public. And so what Randy Shelton, the man responsible for Kawhi's body, says is that Team Bomber starts recruiting Kawhi Leonard through Randy Shelton. Okay, so we're now in August of 2017.

• 45:09Pablo Torre?

  This is a couple of months after that worrisome ankle injury that gets all of this stuff going. And the Clippers hire a guy named Mark Hughes as their assistant general manager. And this assistant GM, among other NBA front office jobs he's held, had something in common with Randy Shelton in their employment history. Mark Hughes had also worked at San Diego State, Kawhi's alma mater, years prior as an assistant coach. And according to an active lawsuit that Randy Shelton filed in 2024 against the Clippers, what the new assistant GM started doing after getting that new job was reaching out to Randy. And I'll explain this lawsuit further in a second, David, but would you mind reading this excerpt first?

• 45:51Speaker 03

  In 2017, Assistant General Manager Mark Hughes began pursuing Leonard through Shelton. Hughes repeatedly emphasized the need for discretion as Hughes sought private health information about Leonard. And Hughes discussed the Clippers' desire to obtain Leonard and the likelihood of attracting Leonard to join the Clippers. Hughes set up numerous meetings with Shelton beginning in 2017 while Leonard was still under contract to attempt to find out Leonard's contractual requirements and medical situation.

• 46:29Pablo Torre?

  Now, this is allegedly thorough due diligence.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  I mean, it's just tampering.

• 46:35Pablo Torre?

  So can you please explain tampering and how this is actually kind of interesting in that regard?

• 46:41Speaker 03

  It's hugely simple. When a player is under contract with Team X, no other team can talk to him or his representative about playing for Team Y. That is very simply what tampering is.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  To illustrate, Magic Johnson, when he was president of basketball operations for the Lakers, once went on the Jimmy Kimmel Show and said something to the effect of, "Oh, I'd love to have a player like Giannis." That was deemed to be tampering by the NBA, and he was fined, fined six figures for that. So I think we can agree that if this occurred, kind of goes far above and beyond going on Jimmy Kimmel and saying, "I'd love to have a great player on my team."

• 47:19Speaker 03

  Amin, are you gonna sit here and tell me that in all your years in the front office, that you or someone else you knew of was not in contact or engaged in the act of tampering? Are you gonna say that?

• 47:31Speaker 02

  I'm not... Wait, hold on. How did... We know the rules. We know the rules, David.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  I know the rules, Amin.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  I know the rules.

• 47:39Speaker 03

  I know the rules, too.

• 47:40Pablo Torre?

  The rules in question, right? I am not scandalized by tampering, but what I am pointing out here is that Randy Shelton claims that the Clippers assistant GM ultimately called him at least 15 times, met him at least seven times in person, starting in 2017, years before free agency. And according to Shelton's lawsuit, the assistant GM, Mark Hughes, is also repeatedly telling Randy Shelton something else, Amin.

• 48:03Speaker 02

  As part of these discussions, Hughes discussed bringing Shelton into the Clippers organization as a strength and conditioning coach, given the personal relationship and trust that Leonard had in Shelton.

• 48:14Speaker 03

  I'm laughing because this is great. It's what players do when they've got leverage. They will say, hey, hire my guy. I've had that so many times. Hire my strength guy. Hire my mental guy, my masseuse. Bring in my masseuse. Bring in my trainer.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  Security.

• 48:31Speaker 03

  Oh, God, that's a good one. Bring in my security guy. Like, whatever, we're fine on that.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's, I'm getting my guy work and I'm not having to pay for it. That's what it is.

• 48:41Pablo Torre?

  So Randy Shelton, spoiler alert, would in fact get hired by the Clippers as an assistant coach, a full-time assistant coach, on the performance staff in 2019, once Kawhi signed with them as a free agent. This lawsuit is actually Shelton claiming that his eventual termination by the team was wrongful. And you should know that the Clippers have denied both the tampering claims and the wrongful termination. And they've said that Shelton just wants more money. Again, as with the 11 aspiration investors, I didn't write this lawsuit, not involved in it, can't vouch for its outcome. But the legal proceedings have been heating up behind closed doors. And information keeps shaking loose, which provides me with more leads to check, David. For instance, back in 2017, okay, this is months after the Clippers hired the assistant GM Mark Hughes

• 49:25Pablo Torre?

  and allegedly assigned him to recruit Kawhi Leonard through Randy Shelton. Here's something else I found. Shelton also filed some paperwork of his own that fall with the Secretary of State in California. And this is not mentioned in the lawsuit at all. But we found it in our research, in our due diligence. And David, you might notice that the title of this new company sounds a little familiar.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  Limited liability company name, KL2 Performance LLC, filed October 5th, 2017.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  Agent for service of process Randy Shelton.

• 50:07Pablo Torre?

  Now, you may of course recall that KL2 Aspire LLC founded in 2021 is the entity which kicked off the prison that I'm currently still trapped in. And that is how the Clippers were allegedly getting money to Kawhi through a third party in violation of the NBA salary cap. And Kawhi, just as we zoom out here for a second, along with Uncle Dennis, would go on to form 16 of these KL2 LLCs. There's KL2 Content LLC, there's KL2 RIFC LLC, there's KL2 RIFC Real Estate LLC, and on and on and on, almost as many times as we were called a podcast by Steve Blommer's lawyers. But KL2 Performance LLC is historic in its own way because KL2 Performance is the first

• 50:53Pablo Torre?

  KL2 variant ever registered.

• 50:56Speaker 02

  The patient zero of KL2s.

• 50:58Pablo Torre?

  Four years before KL2 Aspire, KL2 Performance becomes the patient zero. And at this point in October of 2017, as you may notice, there's no mention in this filing of Uncle Dennis. And by June 2018, as Amin you were alluding to earlier, the medical drama with the Spurs escalates to the point where Kawhi formally demands this trade, a trade to Los Angeles, and instead gets sent to...

• 51:24Speaker 02

  The great white north, Toronto.

• 51:26Pablo Torre?

  Hell, yeah. At which point, according to Randy Shelton's lawsuit, Clippers president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank met with Randy Shelton as well, David.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  Frank himself met personally with Shelton in San Diego in or around February 2019 to discuss Leonard's willingness to join the Clippers and assuring Leonard through Shelton that the Clippers would provide all necessary provisions for his success at the highest level in free agency and all of the vital members who could have an impact on sick Leonard's decision. Frank personally assured Shelton that he would have a position with the strength, condition, and performance department for the Clippers if Leonard decided to join the Clippers in free agency. Still, during... Leonard and the Raptors championship run. Shelton again was asked to meet with the Clippers regarding Leonard's willingness to

• 52:22Speaker 03

  sign with the Clippers. In this meeting, Shelton met with John Mayer, the director of medical and performance for the Clippers.

• 52:30Pablo Torre?

  Not that.

• 52:31Speaker 03

  And Lee Jenkins, director of research and identity.

• 52:36Pablo Torre?

  But Randy Shelton was far from the only person allegedly getting the full court press from the Clippers as Steve Ballmer suddenly found himself competing head to head in 2019 against who, I mean? The Los Angeles Lakers. The big brother Lakers who already had LeBron James. And I know this part because of yet another lawsuit that got filed against the Clippers. This one from 2020 and this one filed by a long, long time friend of Dennis Robertson by the name of Johnny Wilks. Johnny Wilks was teammates with Uncle Dennis on their basketball team in high school. And Johnny Wilks was presented as the plug to Uncle Dennis. And the plug claimed that the Clippers promised him something in return for helping deliver Kawhi to the Clippers.

• 53:21Pablo Torre?

  And Wilks recently described this to a friend on a YouTube video that has been viewed at last check by 175 people. What?

• 53:30Speaker 14

  How much did you ask for? Let me ask that. 2.5 million. And that was cheap for Kawhi Leonard. I should have asked 10 million.

• 53:38Pablo Torre?

  I should say that an LA judge dismissed this case in 2022. They pointed out that the plug, Johnny Wilks, did not have a written contract with the Clippers and Wilks lawyer also did not respond to multiple of our requests for comment. But the reason, again, I bring this all up now is because in the course of this lawsuit, the other, other lawsuit, we also get access to verifiable information. I'm just doing my due diligence. Thorough. And I keep on getting information that we wouldn't know otherwise. And it also indicates directly what Team Ballmer was taking time to thoroughly sniff out about Team Kawhi Leonard. Because text messages obtained by Pablo Torre Finds Out show that Johnny Wilks, the plug between Team Kawhi and Team Ballmer.

• 54:21Pablo Torre?

  Was communicating specifically with Clippers consultant and executive board member, Jerry West, the late, great.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 54:29Pablo Torre?

  Jerry West. A former Laker and basketball Hall of Famer, who left a similar job with the Warriors to join the Clippers in 2017, the same year they hired assistant GM Mark Hughes. I mean, this is how the New York Times explained the hiring of Jerry West by the Clippers.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  "The idea to pursue West came from Ballmer's former Harvard classmate turned Clippers minority shareholder, Dennis Wong, who was once part of Golden State's ownership group. He kept saying, quote, 'We need a guy like Jerry West,' unquote, unquote, Ballmer said."

• 55:00Pablo Torre?

  And then on July 1st, 2019, this is the first full day free agency was officially open for business. Ballmer and Lawrence Frank and Doc Rivers officially pitched Kawhi Leonard and Uncle Dennis in person at the house of, of course, Doc Rivers. And that day, the logo left Johnny Wilks a voicemail.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  This is Jerry calling. You know, I really want to thank you a lot for, you know, trying to help. I heard this morning that everyone over in the Lakers camp thinks they're going to get him. I just find it hard to believe that he would want to go to that [BLEEP] show where he would not even be, wouldn't even get his name in the paper, and he wouldn't be the face of the franchise, that's for sure. He might be the best player on the team, but I hope things are well and will, again, I really, really appreciate everything you've done.

• 56:00Pablo Torre?

  Johnny Wilks YouTube channel is pretty wild, by the way. That's where we're pulling this out.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  That's where the voicemail comes from.

• 56:06Pablo Torre?

  No one was watching this stuff, but...

• 56:07Speaker 02

  They are now.

• 56:08Pablo Torre?

  That's Jerry West. That is verifiably Jerry West. And again, I think it speaks to the fear, the actual fear of losing out on Kawhi that Doc Rivers, in that quote that I mean, you read before, spoke to, when he said the team might as well move to Seattle if they don't get him? Because this is Jerry West also now texting Johnny Wilks to follow up. And so, David? You get to be the logo with the gray bubbles. Amin, please be Johnny Wilks. Sure. The Plug with the blue bubbles. And we'll start with David.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  Just wanted to thank you for your help. If he would go to the Lakers, he would be LeBron's caddy.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  Hey, Mr. West. I was with Dennis this morning when you called. I know you guys are meeting at 3:00 PM at Doc's house. Good luck.

• 56:52Pablo Torre?

  And later, The Plug, Johnny Wilks, followed up with another reply to Mr. West.

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Dennis is kind of excited about this meeting with Mr. Ballmer. Good luck, Mr. West. Ballmer spelled B-O-M-B-E-R, by the way.

• 57:04Pablo Torre?

  That's right. To which Jerry West says,

• 57:07Speaker 03

  When can we expect a decision? Don't want to be a pest and frankly, don't want to bother Dennis anymore. If you hear anything, please let me know. Thank you for all your help.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Should be noted that the communication between Jerry West that David led with and the responses from Johnny Wilks that I read occurred on July 1st, 2019. That last response from Jerry West, "When can we expect a decision?", happens July 4th, 2019.

• 57:39Speaker 03

  That's very good because what I was noticing is that the guy's phone was at 1%.

• 57:45Pablo Torre?

  I unfortunately missed both of those details. Well played by both of you. But yes, speaking of Mr. Ballmer, sealed within the filings in the case of Johnny Wilks v. LA Clippers are text messages. First described by the Washington Post Sports Department, R.I.P., but we now have obtained the screenshots. Because this is Jerry West and Steve Ballmer himself now, trying to speed close on their most important superstar. For instance, this is one on July 5th, and Mr. Ballmer says,

• 58:14Speaker 02

  Where did your guy think he is leaning?

• 58:17Pablo Torre?

  To which the logo, Jerry West, who has been again plugged into Team Kawhi via The Plug, responds,

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Could not get indication. I would hope that with everyone involved on his side who are pro Clippers, they are telling him that this is a chance of a lifetime to be involved with you and our organization.

• 58:35Pablo Torre?

  All which means that Steve Ballmer was diligencing. And also that despite what Randy Shelton, the Avatar Whisperer, and the Uncle Dennis plug, Johnny Wilks, and the Clippers' full-court press, and the offer to trade five first-rounders and two pick swaps, plus future MVP Shay Gildes Alexander for Paul George, which Kawhi Leonard also demanded, it remained unclear what the decision would be until the very end. Like, that's how much leverage Team Kawhi had on the richest man in all of sports. And this helps further explain, I think, how Mr. Ballmer felt at that introductory presser in July 2019.

• 59:14Speaker 08

  But most of all, I'm pumped to say hello as Clippers to Paul and Kawhi. Come on, come on, come on, get up. Come on, get up if you were tight as I am. Get up. Yeah. That's why we're here today.

• 59:51Speaker 02

  One conference finals. The only one in franchise history, though, so...

• 59:55Pablo Torre?

  Raise the banner. To quote Lawrence Frank again, quote, "We never had a conversation with Kawhi or with any of his people."

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  We always felt by doing it out in front, we were being very, very transparent. We weren't doing anything behind the scenes. We know the rules. We follow the rules.

• 1:00:12Pablo Torre?

  With Steve in terms of how he does business, his integrity is number one, end quote. And in August of 2019, the month after Lawrence Frank gives that quote about following the rules, knowing the rules, the San Diego Union Tribune reports officially that Randy Shelton is hired away from San Diego State's basketball team by the Clippers as a full-time assistant coach on the performance staff, as allegedly promised. But not long after that... November 2019, there was a more subtle change in the business life of Randy Shelton, the trainer, and his Na'vi, Kawhi Leonard. Because according to, again, the California Secretary of State's database, the LLC Shelton had started in 2017, the same year he was being recruited by the Clippers and their

• 1:00:55Pablo Torre?

  assistant GM, KL2 Performance LLC, received a notice, the first in a series of delinquency notices. And by the following year, September 2020, with Kawhi and his trainer both employed on the books by the Clippers, KL2 Performance LLC was officially suspended from operating as a business in California, indicating that the person behind it, for some reason, no longer needed it anymore. The patient zero of LLCs had functionally expired.

• 1:01:31Speaker 10

  Hasta la vista, baby.

• 1:01:33Pablo Torre?

  To quote another political figure from the California State House.

• 1:01:49Speaker 15

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• 1:02:57Pablo Torre?

  So this now brings us back to the year 2021. This is the year Steve Ballmer and his staff would do their comically brief due diligence of aspiration in September. And around that same time, I mean, something very curious happened, and it is the next document in your folder.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  This employment agreement is made and entered into as of July 1st, 2021 by and between LA Clippers LLC team and Randy Shelton, employee.

• 1:03:27Pablo Torre?

  This is a fully executed copy of the three-year contract Randy Shelton, Kawhi's trainer, had signed with the Clippers to remain their full-time assistant performance coach since 2021. And again, in this legal back and forth, I'm not picking sides here. I don't know who's gonna win this case. ESPN has actually covered some of this stuff already. But there is one part of this document that's been so far overlooked, and it's not the arbitration clause in Shelton's contract, David. It's the thing in your folder. What section is this?

• 1:03:58Speaker 03

  This is section 13, notices. All notices or other communication required or permitted to be given under this agreement shall be in writing and shall be sent via electronic mail to the email address set forth below and delivered personally or sent overnight courier to the addresses set forth below. If to team, Lawrence Frank, LA Clippers, with a copy to Nicole Duckett, LA Clippers.

• 1:04:30Pablo Torre?

  Nicole Duckett was the Clippers' chief legal counsel representing Lawrence Frank. That makes sense. But Randy Shelton's equivalent, who is also receiving every legal notice, is who?

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  If to employee, Randy Shelton.

• 1:04:46Speaker 03

  With a copy to Dennis Robertson.

• 1:04:50Pablo Torre?

  So this speaks to something else that Randy Shelton has claimed in this lawsuit, which is that his employment contract was personally negotiated between Lawrence Frank, the president of the team, and Dennis Robertson, an unlicensed NBA agent, who was so unlicensed that Adam Silver, you may recall, changed the league rules in response to an investigation of his dealings in 2019 to prevent people like him from negotiating deals like this ever again. I remind you, I mean, of course, that this contract is from 2021. But nonetheless, could you please keep reading from Randy Shelton's lawsuit?

• 1:05:30Speaker 02

  Moreover, plaintiff alleges that Mr. Robertson threatened him with exclusion from the Clippers unless he agreed to pay 10% of his compensation, a demand that raises serious questions of duress, coercion, and procedural unconscionability.

• 1:05:46Pablo Torre?

  This all means, to translate it, that allegedly, Uncle Dennis threatened to fire Kawhi's personal trainer from his job with the Clippers if the trainer didn't pay Uncle Dennis the agent fee.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  The kickback, yep.

• 1:05:59Pablo Torre?

  10% of the salary in his employment contract. This would be weird, if only because Uncle Dennis did not work for the Clippers and supposedly does not dictate what they do with these shady side deals because they all know the rules.

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  Uncle Dennis could claim that he is acting as Randy Shelton's agent. Randy Shelton's agent, whoever that is, does not need to be certified by the MBPA, so it could be literally anyone.

• 1:06:26Pablo Torre?

  Well, what I am told reliably by sources close to this situation is that the Clippers were not only totally aware of this arrangement, allegedly, they agreed to this practice as a way of getting more money to Uncle Dennis directly. Randy Shelton's the person who allegedly is like, "Uh, I don't love this." And so, again, we're evolving the question of like, what do the Clippers know and how do they do business behind the scenes?

• 1:06:57Speaker 03

  It's very interesting to me because there's some of these. So Steve Ballmer, as an example, an owner, would not see this employment contract as part of his everyday job as owner. It's way too far below him. But you have instructions. Get Leonard Dunn. And then Lawrence Frank would have to go to Steve Ballmer and say, hey, we're gonna need to do the following. We need someone in strength. We're gonna have to have this guy and that guy. And Steve Ballmer, that is only approved by the owner. You would never have a GM who would agree to hire people outside of on the court players without speaking to the president or the owner of the team. In my experience, that would be very rare.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  I'm still stuck on the 10% that comes out of Randy's contract. Doing that would allow the Clippers to compensate Dennis Robertson without actually having a direct financial paper trail. It's like, oh no, we had nothing to do with it. That's Randy kicking back to his agent or his representative.

• 1:07:55Speaker 03

  It's why I was looking at what his pay was.

• 1:07:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, so yeah, I looked at that too.

• 1:07:59Pablo Torre?

  Couple hundred thousand dollars.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  Listen, it ain't nothing.

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  It ain't nothing.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  That is a shocking amount to get paid. It was a three-year deal, 225, 230, 235, but take the 10% out.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:08:11Speaker 03

  And so he's still getting, in theory, you know, 200 grand, just for purposes of ease.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  And also, don't forget the playoff bonuses, which at this moment, they're believing they're gonna have some deep playoff runs and the playoff bonuses escalate as you work through the playoffs.

• 1:08:25Pablo Torre?

  But there's another part of the contract that I want to draw your attention to because the start date is July 2021. This is a month before Kawhi signed his first extension with the Clippers in August of 2021. But when was his contract actually signed, David?

• 1:08:40Speaker 03

  11/11/2021.

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  Well, that's good luck, so I hear.

• 1:08:45Pablo Torre?

  Randy Shelton signs at 11/11/2021. Lawrence Frank signs at the next day, 11/12/2021. And this date in November 2021 brings us back to, again, a familiar point in our grand timeline here. Because November 11th, 2021, happens to be just 11 days before Uncle Dennis Robertson filed new paperwork for a new organization, which was, according to Team Ballmer, again, totally independent of the Clippers. I mean...

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  KL2 Aspire LLC. File date, November 22nd, 2021.

• 1:09:22Pablo Torre?

  The document, the LLC, we started this godforsaken series with. Whose legal notice, this section also, for the record, lists Uncle Dennis Robertson with the same exact Palm Beach address listed on Randy Shelton's contract. And so again, just to quote former Clippers general manager, Michael Winger, "How many [bleep] side deals do we have with Kawhi Leonard?" And this also brings us back, once again, to the side deal that Steve Ballmer and Lawrence Frank want you to think they had no oversight of, no awareness of, nothing to do with, even though Steve Ballmer did go on ESPN to admit that something happened that's notable in the month of November of 2021.

• 1:10:02Speaker 08

  We even found the email that makes the first introduction. It was early November, I won't remember the exact date. So where, where could any of this circumvention have happened? It didn't, it couldn't have. The introduction got made, and then they were off to the races on, on their own. We weren't involved.

• 1:10:23Pablo Torre?

  And that is the closest thing that Steve Ballmer has produced to, let's call it, an anti-smoking gun, even though this email actually proves that Steve Ballmer personally knew that Aspiration was asking to do business with Kawhi Leonard, with the implication being that despite how incestuously intertwined all of this [bleep] is, the Clippers and Aspiration, especially sponsorship deal, carbon credits, ownership groups, personal investments, Team Ballmer had no idea about the millions of no-show endorsement dollars secretly flowing into KL2 Aspire LLC, even though the only logical reason they'd be secret in the first place is because the deal itself broke NBA rules. And so in fairness, to bring it all together, you may now be thinking, we started this

• 1:11:05Pablo Torre?

  part of the story about these LLCs, the KL2s, the Patient Zero, with 2017 and Randy Shelton's registration. But we also haven't mentioned the name of Dennis Robertson in connection to KL2 Performance LLC in the way that he was with KL2 Aspire. Well, I told you that KL2 Performance LLC was suspended by the California Secretary of State in 2020, sat dormant for several years, neatly matching the timeline of Randy Shelton getting paid on the books by the Clippers. Hasta la vista, baby. Exactly right. Except, just a few months after the Clippers finally terminated Shelton, July 2023, the event that sparked the whole lawsuit, something else happened that nobody seems to have noticed.

• 1:11:50Pablo Torre?

  Because on September 27, 2023, KL2 Performance LLC was revived. I'll be back. God. That's good. Thank you. And a new statement of information was filed with the California Secretary of State, a filing that named for the first time as new manager David who? Dennis Robertson, Pablo. With the same Palm Beach address as on the KL2 Aspire LLC paperwork and on Randy Shelton's contract. And if I am Wachtel Lipton, the NBA investigators, one question I'd personally want to know the answer to is why? Why would that happen? Why did he care about reviving a defunct LLC started by a former trainer, Randy Shelton,

• 1:12:35Pablo Torre?

  who Dennis was charging 10% of his salary? Why would he want to do this once Randy Shelton had left the Clippers? Just asking questions. Why?

• 1:12:46Pablo Torre?

  That's a good question. Why? Why would he do that? Well, by the end of September 2023, I am told, Aspiration's relationship with the Clippers was finally officially terminated. This was later now than the team wanted to admit. We went over this timeline before. But I am told that the franchise's deal was over at least by the time the new NBA season started. And by then, there was a full-on federal investigation, ultimately involving the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the SEC. All of that was underway now, looking into Joe Sandberg and Aspiration for months. Meanwhile, a few months later, I mean, in the basketball world, there was a new headline. January 10, 2024.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Kawhi Leonard signs three-year, $153 million extension with Clippers, sources say.

• 1:13:36Pablo Torre?

  Three years, 153, sounds like a lot of money.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  It is. It is not quite what the maximum allowable salary for him would have been at the time.

• 1:13:45Speaker 03

  Nine million below.

• 1:13:47Pablo Torre?

  Which is interesting. Why would Kawhi Leonard leave money on the table in a way that is totally antithetical to his entire ethos that we've covered extensively? Why would he do something so inexplicable, so conspicuous, given how Team Kawhi has behaved? In fact, it was so conspicuous that this was kind of the first thing that multiple NBA executives pointed out to me when we published our first episode on this whole thing six months ago. And so I've now been spending the last several months chasing down a number of pretty interesting tips about this moment in the timeline.

• 1:14:25Pablo Torre?

  All of which raises this question about what happened once the Clippers finally terminated the Aspiration deal. And still, according to the bankruptcy filing, had to deal with the fact that Aspiration owed KL2 Aspire LLC at least $7 million. Right? And so, again, I don't know if our friends at Wachtel Lipton, the NBA's private white shoe investigators, have been looking into this part. But for now, let's just keep scrolling through the California Secretary of State database. Because I mean, you'll notice that in the days before the Clippers announced Kawhi's submax extension on January 10th, 2024, a few new LLCs were born.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  KL2 Content LLC, that was December 28, 2023. KL2 RIFC LLC, January 2nd, 2024. And KL2 RIFC Real Estate, January 2nd, 2024.

• 1:15:19Pablo Torre?

  January 10th, I will remind you all, 2024 was when that extension was signed. And unlike KL2 Aspire LLC and KL2 Performance LLC, the patient zero, KL2 Content LLC, KL2 RIFC LLC, and KL2 RIFC Real Estate LLC all remain active through this day. And you will be surely shocked to learn that the person who is listed as their manager on all these filings is a certain relative.

• 1:15:48Speaker 03

  It starts with uncle and ends with?

• 1:15:51Speaker 02

  Come with me if you want to live.

• 1:15:57Pablo Torre?

  If I walked out of Lipton, I have questions about all of this.

• 1:16:01Speaker 03

  I would just like to mention to you guys that starting LLCs is very common. Having them with names that you can keep track of for what they're for. So you'd have an LLC, if you want to put your house into an LLC, which you should, it would be named after the people, maybe the house address. And the reason LLCs become dormant, also very common, is it is a pain in the ass. All the filing requirements in New York, in Delaware, or California, wherever you have the LLC. And if there's no activity, you can let it go dormant, you don't pay the fees. But then, when you want to get it back going, basically what you do is you revive it Terminator-style, and then you're allowed to use it again as the LLC.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  A neurocomputer.

• 1:16:47Pablo Torre?

  And all I am pointing out is that when I look at the dates here, the timeline, why did he start these LLCs days ahead of his submax contract extension? And why is it that KL2 Aspire LLC and KL2 Performance LLC, Patient Zero, are the only two of these LLCs that are now non-functional, are now suspended? And these are questions that I simply would recommend that someone who had the power to compel people to sit down for an interview, involved with the NBA, might take interest in. And all of this, as information is concerned, brings us to another fun headline that I think is pretty cool. I mean, this is from a couple weeks ago.

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  Resurgent Clippers give executive Lawrence Frank multi-year contract extension. This comes to us via Joe Varden and Sam Amick of The Athletic slash New York Times. January 27, 2026, the L.A. Clippers and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank agreed to a multi-year contract extension, four league sources told The Athletic. Contract details were not disclosed, though the extension is believed to be for four years. The Athletic reported in December that Frank and his senior staff were on track for contract extensions. Extensions for other front office staff are still expected to be developed per league sources.

• 1:18:10Speaker 03

  Well, I can totally understand. We stayed with our GM even when we stunk, and so Ballmer may be comfortable with Frank. Frank may know exactly where bodies are buried and the skeletons, and you keep signing those GMs. So that, again, in and of itself, there is loyalty between owners and GMs that can happen, where you'd sign an extension to a guy where the results just aren't there.

• 1:18:31Speaker 02

  So I know a lot of people are saying, well, of course, the Clippers are playing a lot better than them. They didn't start their winning ways until December 20th. Up until that point, the team was 6-21 on December 18th. So whenever that conversation started, it was not with the expectation that they would go on this miraculous run.

• 1:18:48Pablo Torre?

  This was season one, two, like, horror show era Clippers.

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  There are teams who keep their GM when you have losing seasons.

• 1:18:57Pablo Torre?

  Sure.

• 1:18:57Speaker 03

  We did, many times.

• 1:18:59Speaker 02

  If you're being sued, and if, yes, you're being investigated, and you didn't know any of this, it would be pretty hard for me to say, you know, the guy who's responsible for doing all this behind my back, give him a couple more years, just to make sure. Maybe he had a plan here. If I, if I knew...

• 1:19:18Speaker 03

  Hush money.

• 1:19:19Speaker 02

  And I'm not gonna say hush money.

• 1:19:20Pablo Torre?

  Well, that's the concept. So I should say that what multiple NBA executives tell me is that they view Lawrence Frank's four-year extension as, quote-unquote, Ballmer hush money.

• 1:19:31Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:19:33Pablo Torre?

  And so, and, and look, these are people observing it from the outside, right? So in fairness, again, maybe there's a chance. LLCs are revived for fun. You send your president, who's at the center of all of this, because you just really have faith in him, and the timing just happens to be coincidentally terrible.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  And you're complicit, whether there's something dastardly or not happening, right? Maybe Steve Ballmer thinks, we're just [BLEEP] who won't leave him alone, but he thinks Lawrence Frank has done a good job throughout that, and that these lawsuits and this investigation are all frivolous in nature.

• 1:20:08Pablo Torre?

  And I mean, to that point, this is what Lawrence Frank told the Athletics Law Murray just yesterday.

• 1:20:15Speaker 16

  We haven't learned anything more than we have back in September. And to be honest with you, it doesn't impact anything we do. We know it's out there. We know at some point there'll be a decision made. We very much feel the same thing that we told you back in September, that we're on the right side of this. And then whenever they make the decision, they make the decision. But it really doesn't impact anything we do on a daily basis.

• 1:20:39Pablo Torre?

  But before I let you guys go here, there is one more thing that I think people need to know about here as we do more due diligence. Because the whole reason we've been able to dive into Aspiration is not just because of the bankruptcy filing, which confirmed the existence of KL2 Aspire LLC as a creditor. It's also because there has been that full-on federal investigation with the DOJ and the CFTC and the SEC, which resulted in the FBI arresting Joe Sandberg and another one of Aspiration's board members, too. And this helped lead to further questions and pressure and litigation. And just the other week, by the way, Joe Sandberg's long-awaited sentencing hearing got rescheduled to the end of April.

• 1:21:21Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:21:22Pablo Torre?

  Just in time for the NBA playoffs.

• 1:21:24Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:21:25Pablo Torre?

  Fun. What Sandberg's lawyer, who also represents Chauncey Billups in the NBA gambling scandal, has said...

• 1:21:31Speaker 03

  Pablo Torre worlds colliding.

• 1:21:33Pablo Torre?

  Much like the Terminator universe, there's just a lot of interdimensional travel. Quote, "Other matters may play out in the future. We'll see." End quote.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  Well, you know, with the delayed sentencing, guess who's not talking? To anyone at Wachtel.

• 1:21:49Pablo Torre?

  Who?

• 1:21:50Speaker 03

  Joe.

• 1:21:51Pablo Torre?

  But here's the thing, is that after a year of my reporting on this, what multiple sources at Aspiration now tell me is something even more interesting, which is that they believe that the reason the federal government got seriously involved in the case of the tree planting fraud and the NBA team is because there is at least one whistleblower...

• 1:22:12Pablo Torre?

  A government whistleblower from inside of Aspiration, who went to the feds to report what they knew about alleged criminal activity by Joe Sandberg and others, presumably in writing and presumably under penalty of perjury. And so I have one more big question for NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and everyone involved in investigating this story, involved in thoroughly doing due diligence, including, by the way, the multiple congressional offices pushing Silver to testify about the gambling scandal, as well as the richest owner in sports under oath. And my question is, if this Aspiration whistleblower, who tipped over that first domino of a federal

• 1:22:52Pablo Torre?

  criminal investigation, exists, did they explicitly mention Steve Ballmer, an NBA salary cap circumvention to the government?

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  That's a good ass question.

• 1:23:09Pablo Torre?

  Because that would feel like a smoking gun, as close as we can get to one in this whole story.

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  If they want to come to a conclusion one way or the other, that's a question you have to ask and then get answered.

• 1:23:23Pablo Torre?

  And if anyone can get to the bottom of that question, I do think it would change a certain declaration of innocence into something that sounds even more obviously like the opposite.

• 1:23:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, look, Dennis knows the rules, Kawhi knows the rules, Mitch Frankel knows the rules, and we know the rules.

• 1:23:42Speaker 05

  Is that a guess or another?

• 1:23:44Speaker 06

  Yes, we all know the rules.

• 1:23:47Pablo Torre?

  And I would make an "all be back" joke at the end here, David, but I mean, already stepped on that.

• 1:23:53Speaker 02

  Well, Judgment Day is inevitable.

• 1:23:57Pablo Torre?

  You went T3 at the end?

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:00Pablo Torre?

  Rise of the Machines?

• 1:24:01Speaker 02

  That one was not directed by James Cameron.

• 1:24:03Pablo Torre?

  It wasn't?

• 1:24:04Speaker 02

  I don't believe so, no. Nor was Batman and Robin. We'll kill the dinosaurs, the Ice Age!

• 1:24:19Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 1:24:25Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

• 1:24:47Speaker 17

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 1:24:53Speaker 09

  Love the crown molding.

• 1:24:54Speaker 17

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 1:24:58Speaker 09

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet.

• 1:25:02Speaker 17

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 1:25:05Speaker 09

  No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you.

• 1:25:09Speaker 17

  Don't you want to see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 1:25:12Speaker 18

  Get Verizon FiOS because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:25:16Speaker 12

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