Steve Ballmer's Sword, the DOJ's Probe and a "Road to Jail Time": Kawhi-Gate, Part XVI

As the Clippers accept the NBA's historic punishment, a "criminal dimension" looms over the fallout. Pablo talks to owners, league officials and the commissioner himself, then asks former federal prosecutors how the government would build a case against one of the richest men alive. Amin Elhassan and David Samson help follow the money — and the Trump of it all — from "podcast court" to the Department of Justice. • Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube for breaking news, greatest hits and live premieres with Pablo https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut 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 • Part VIII: Uncle Dennis, Ballmer's $50 Million Sprint and the Side Deal That Wouldn't Die https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk4YjhmZjdiYTgwY2YxZWNiMTdmZTBl • Part IX: Ballmer's Tree Money, the Whistle-Blowers and the Document You've Been Waiting For https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjlhYjA0ODliNDllZWNjMGI3YjU1Mzhh • Part X: Steve Ballmer's Victim Impact, the Man Who Prosecuted Aspiration and the Abacus of Incarceration https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NjlmOTFjOWY5YjE1MDdmYmRkZTAxZjc4 • Part XI: Ballmer's Secret I. O. U., Aspiration's "Web of Lies" and the Zenith of Fraud https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmEyMjI5NmFiMGYyOTYyYmU0ODEwOTAx • Part XII: RIFC, the Impossible Deal and Life After Aspiration https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE2YTYxMzMxN2Q3N2JmNzJhMjc3MWVm • Part XIII: The Halo, Ballmer's Bowl and a New Crisis in the Super-System https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE3NGI5YjRmM2I4Nzc5ZDllN2QyODNh • Part XIV: The Jumbotron Emails, the Courtside Cabana and Ballmer's "Highest Integrity" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE3ZTZjMGRlNzU2OGU0MmU0NjYwODY5 • Part XV: Clippers Judgment Day, the NBA's Hammer and the Investigation That Never Ends https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/NmE5OGM1Zjk5Yjg1NWExZmQzYTkwMTM5 (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.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Second row on the end of the left, Pablo.

• 0:09Pablo Torre?

  Hey, Adam. Pablo from Pablo Torre Finds Out. Right after this.

• 0:16Speaker 02

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• 0:46Speaker 03

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• 1:18Pablo Torre?

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• 2:00Pablo Torre?

  that's left is finding yours. While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Shop the winners now at dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 2:26Pablo Torre?

  The press conference I want to get to because watching people at the press conference, for me, sitting in the second row was really fun. But I don't think we can get there, David Sampson and Amin Alhassan, quite yet because like every episode in like a limited series drama, we need to do the previously on PTFO thing. And there's a lot we have to recap, it turns out, since we last hung out together.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  This is me putting undue stress on the producers and editors of the show. I feel like someone can cut the montage.

• 2:57Pablo Torre?

  If the New York Times isn't confirming, if the AP isn't confirming, if the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, like if big mainstream media outlets aren't touching your scoop, to me, that's, that's not defending Steve Ballmer of the NBA or the Clippers. That's like, is there anything here? And are you just presenting this story for your audience for clout and clicks?

• 3:18Speaker 05

  We begin today with the NBA's punishment of the Clippers for circumventing the salary cap to get more money to Kawhi Leonard. The NBA has found that the team played an active role in the violations first detailed by Pablo Torre. And so has

• 3:32Pablo Torre?

  For those, Amin, who last saw us or heard us, on September 2nd, when you and I and David were going live after the biggest punishment in NBA history got announced, how would you describe the LA Clippers owner, Steve Ballmer, in his reaction publicly that evening?

• 3:52Speaker 04

  Well, the reaction as portrayed by his attorney was, I would say, in a word, defiant.

• 4:00Pablo Torre?

  He was threatening actually to litigate, David. That was the thing. He was threatening actually to arbitrate right off the bat. And then it turns out, couldn't do that because Kawhi Leonard and the union had settled with the league. And then he threatened to sue the league. That's where we were that evening when we all hugged out.

• 4:17Speaker 06

  I just know that when Adam Silver went to sleep on September 2nd, he went to sleep knowing that his legal department was not sleeping, his outside counsel was not sleeping. They were preparing to be served. Literally, hi, you've gotten served. I was imagining Steve Ballmer serving Adam Silver while meeting the media after a Board of Governors meeting, which is why I figured in all of our conversations, both on and off air, that something was going to have to happen between September 2nd and his defiant, unconceding nature and the moment that the Board of Governors meeting was going to start at the St. Regis Hotel in New York.

• 5:00Pablo Torre?

  Here is the letter that Steve Ballmer's attorney wrote to Adam Silver.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  Quote, "It seems increasingly likely that Mr. Ballmer will spend years defending himself and the team against a podcaster's baseless claims. This type of witch hunt flies in the face of fundamental fairness and of the integrity of the league and of the sport that we all love. We are exploring every legal remedy to address this gross injustice."

• 5:36Pablo Torre?

  And then there was radio silence from Team Ballmer, 11 days pass, and then the richest owner in American sports, who is currently the eighth or ninth richest person in the world, worth about $170-plus billion at last check, tweeted out this, David, during the fourth quarter of Sunday Night Football this week.

• 5:55Speaker 06

  This has been a very difficult time for everybody associated with the Clippers, and for that I have sincere regrets. I want to apologize to our fans, employees, and my fellow NBA team owners for the distraction and distress this matter has caused, for which I accept responsibility as principal owner. We are committing to put this chapter behind us. We have communicated to the NBA that we are complying with the penalties assessed by the league, have paid the fine, and are moving forward. While there are still disagreements

• 6:35Speaker 06

  concerning the findings in the report, this is not where I want to focus. Team owners should support, not distract.

• 6:46Pablo Torre?

  Now, as one former NBA team executive put it to me about all of this legal saber rattling, quote, "You had no choice. The bylaws make it impossible to sue the league. As you would just be suing yourself, the Clippers are 1/30th of the league," end quote. And for what it's worth, Adam Silver, of course, gestured towards this, David. He indicated as much at his press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

• 7:13Speaker 04

  Most importantly, he indicated a willingness to accept the league's decision in this case and the accompanying sanctions. So that initially was I was most focused on, which

• 7:25Speaker 06

  The real focus there, though, guys, is what Adam said after that fact at the press conference and what Steve's attorneys, I promise you, told him as they combed through that statement that was released in the fourth quarter of Monday Night Football. And that is Steve Ballmer's being investigated by the federal government. I'm sorry, Pablo, you don't want to go there yet?

• 7:47Pablo Torre?

  Well, we're going to get to that in a minute. We're doing, we're doing the montage. We're doing the montage.

• 7:51Speaker 06

  Sorry, dammit.

• 7:53Speaker 04

  This is still the recap.

• 7:54Speaker 06

  Fine. Back to the recap.

• 7:57Pablo Torre?

  But speaking of distractions, what Steve Ballmer talked about was the distraction. This has been a distraction. This has been distressing. Owners should not distract. At no point, as Amin just alluded to, did Steve Ballmer admit to cap circumvention or the actual wrongdoing in the eyes of the league that had been exhaustively chronicled in our recap of previous episodes and in Wachtel's 36-page report. But I want to move along the NBA timeline here, specific to the league, because all of this set the scene for what the city of Toronto had been waiting for since the end of June, because what happens?

• 8:36Speaker 07

  Sources tell me that at long last, the Clippers and Raptors have both agreed to move forward and complete the Kawhi Leonard to Toronto trade and

• 8:45Speaker 04

  Well, the long-awaited Kawhi Leonard deal to the Toronto Raptors finally gets consummated. It went down pretty much as agreed to. Kawhi Leonard going in return for Grady Dick, Brandon Ingram, first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, second-round picks in 2030 and 2033, and a first-round pick swap in 2027, which, under the, against the backdrop of the sanctions that are just levied by the NBA, is a nice bit of relief for the Clippers.

• 9:19Pablo Torre?

  What I want to point you guys to now, though, is this billboard, which I want to recall because this is, this is the seven-year era.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  Uh huh.

• 9:30Pablo Torre?

  This is how it started. Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, we over me.

• 9:37Pablo Torre?

  L.A. our way. They had a movie poster. And this is how the movie ended. And so when it comes to the me on the right, Kawhi Leonard, and how this trade was eventually cleared to proceed with the NBA assigning just a $700,000 fine for Kawhi Leonard, effectively a slap on the wrist. No suspension, no voiding of the contract, of course. A five-year ban of Uncle Dennis Robertson is the harshest thing that Team Kawhi got. Adam Silver, at this presser on Tuesday, was very conspicuously not willing to discuss how this came to be. He didn't want to discuss the $700,000 fine.

• 10:19Pablo Torre?

  In fact, what he said in response to a question from Zach Lowe at The Ringer was that he did not think any of this was appropriate to discuss.

• 10:27Speaker 04

  I don't think it would be appropriate to take you through the back and forth with the Players Association. I did meet directly with Kawhi recently, and I think we all agree it's time to move forward here.

• 10:39Pablo Torre?

  But what one high-level official directly familiar with the Kawhi Leonard settlement negotiations in this investigation told us, here Pablo Torre finds out, is, "The nuclear option of Kawhi's contract being voided could have been on the table. Anything was on the table." But what the union did was what Steve Ballmer ultimately, apparently, refused to do, at least in earnest. He refused to negotiate, and Kawhi Leonard and the union did exactly that. And an NBPA spokesperson declined to comment, but that $700,000 fine, we are told, was a negotiated number. We understand that that total came from adding up expenses, apparently. That Kawhi was okay paying back.

• 11:23Pablo Torre?

  And what this official added of Kawhi getting off relatively easy was, "To the extent that his punishment is not so heavy, the NBA can live with that. They're upholding the system protections they want, and they get those by imposing punishments on the team. And they are big ones." Which, I mean, another high-level official familiar with the Clippers punishment underscored as well.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  I don't think this is the league's stance, but I fundamentally believe players can't cap circumvent. Teams cap circumvent. So when a league wants to curtail cap circumvention, you don't lay the hammer on players, you lay the hammer on teams. Because a player cannot independently cap circumvent. That only happens in concert with a team. Avoiding Kawhi Leonard's contract, that's not going to stop teams. Teams are like, "Yeah, go, yeah, all right, oh, those players, those bad players, ooh." The way you stop teams is by hitting the team. The team say, "Whoa, I could get in that kind of trouble? Never mind, I'm not doing that."

• 12:20Pablo Torre?

  And so the focus became Steve Ballmer and his executive team. And that is a function, according to the reporting we've done here, of, yes, the apparently endless rabbit hole inside of the scope that Wachtel Lipton, Rossetti Katz had pursued over the last year, which is still ongoing, according to Wachtel Lipton. They still have not closed the book on that, for the record. But what is especially interesting right now, as it concerns the governance of, yes, an American sports league with 30 franchises totaling a valuation of some $165 billion, give or take. We still have no idea, as we tape right now, who is running the Los Angeles Clippers. In fact, while I was wandering the halls, David, of the St. Red's Hotel here in Manhattan,

• 13:05Pablo Torre?

  the Clippers, it turns out, were not. Steve Ballmer, banned for a year. Alternate governor slash president of business, Gillian Zucker, who we will get back to later in this episode, banned for a year. The other alternate governor, as we always point out, Clippers co-owner and rationally inexplicable aspiration investor Dennis Wong. Where is he at? He was not punished? Was he the name they submitted? We are waiting to discover that. And according to one NBA owner who was present at the Board of Governors meetings, talking about who the Clippers sent, quote, "Nobody. It was the strangest thing ever. 29 teams repping."

• 13:50Pablo Torre?

  End quote.

• 13:51Speaker 04

  So Adam Silver was asked about that as well. Who is the Clippers representative? He said they were not represented. And then he said, "Whoever they pick, we have to vet them." They're in the process of pointing that person, and that person, I mean, you know, per Pablo's question, that person has to be vetted as well. So there's a bit of a process there before that person becomes official. I did not know that was the case, David. I thought, hey, it's an employee or one of the owners. We're already in the circle, we're already in the house.

• 14:22Speaker 07

  There's a strong vetting process that exists when you become a limited partner of a team, when you become a controlling owner of a team. The vetting process is even deeper and more significant. And so what I believe is going on, if Dennis Wong were going to be the alternate governor, he would have been approved quickly and would have been at that owners' meeting. I am inferring by the fact that Adam said that there were no representatives there, that Dennis Wong will not be the interim governor because his vetting process would be faster because he was already approved as a limited partner of the Clippers. So I assume it is someone other than Dennis, as I would imagine it would have to be, given the fact of Dennis's involvement in all this.

• 15:07Speaker 07

  Though not in Wachtel's report. Conspicuously absent, by the way. Name not mentioned in Wachtel's report. And so I'm not surprised there were no Clippers representatives, because who do you send? George Costanza? The assistant to the traveling secretary? You can't just stand up and vote on behalf of your team if you are not authorized by the league to vote on that particular issue. And the Clippers simply had no one authorized, so that was that.

• 15:33Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's the question of who is in charge of this multi-billion dollar franchise, as opposed to, hey, who wants to represent us at like the draft lottery, where you can send someone's kid or whatever. But all of this stuff is, it turns out, the least of Steve Ballmer's concerns at the moment. Because as one former Clippers executive told me, quote, "Fed's getting involved with the Clips. So glad I'm not around anymore." Exclamation point. End quote.

• 16:03Speaker 07

  Well, here's the problem when you're being investigated by not Pablo and not Wachtel. You're being investigated by someone where the ramifications are not PR-based. The ramifications are not financial-based or draft pick-based. The ramifications can be freedom-based. And anytime there's a freedom-based issue, it draws your attention greatly. And when it was announced by the Eastern District that they were looking into possible criminal actions by the Clippers, Kawhi, by whatever surrounded these endorsement contracts, if you're working with the Clippers, you are in immediate investigative mode. And I want to quickly explain what that means.

• 16:47Speaker 07

  When you're in litigation mode, you meet with your employees. Don't get rid of your emails. Do not shred any documents. Do not talk to the following 10 people. We will have meetings with our employees, because we were often in investigative and in legal mode. But when it's federal government and the criminal side, that's a whole different level of, uh-oh, your day is different, whether you are in ticket sales or the CFO.

• 17:14Pablo Torre?

  We are moving from podcast court, not to civil court, which we've been already. We're moving to the real thing.

• 17:38Pablo Torre?

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• 18:11Speaker 03

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• 18:48Pablo Torre?

  So I just got to remind everybody that this is far from the first time that the feds have shown up in this podcast series. You may recall the Department of Justice sentencing Joe Sandberg, the co-founder of That Green Bank, Aspiration, who the Clippers partner, to 14 years in federal prison following a multi-year investigation that was triggered, of course, by two whistleblowers who submitted a federal whistleblower complaint at Aspiration under penalty of perjury explicitly mentioning Steve Ballmer's Clippers and Kawhi Leonard and salary cap circumvention in the spring of 2023. You may also recall how we have been talking about this parallel investigation into Aspiration by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which continues to this day, according to our reporting.

• 19:30Pablo Torre?

  And you may also recall that just hours before the NBA issued its punishment of Steve Ballmer's Clippers for facilitating four secret cap circumvention schemes with a total of 14 partners, the CFO of one of those four companies, Daktronics, admitted on an earnings call that the SEC had opened an investigation into the publicly traded scoreboard manufacturer, following our previous reporting with Hunterbrook Media.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Additionally, the Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking information from us concerning the company and Mr. Leonard. We take these requests seriously and are cooperating.

• 20:06Pablo Torre?

  And then, last Thursday, this is days before Ballmer laid down his sword against the NBA, this happened. It's breaking news. Federal prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into the L.A. Clippers. That's according to The New York Times. The New York Times is today reporting that the scandal has caught the attention of the Department of Justice. Quote, "The investigation is in its earliest stage." And is being conducted by the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, which has a long history of investigating the NBA and professional sports.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  Look, the Justice Department often wants to look into high-profile matters in which there may be some potential wrongdoing.

• 20:44Pablo Torre?

  One other immediate note, David, from the Times reporting, beyond the fact that at least one subpoena has been issued already, is that this probe started before the NBA ruling came down as well, which means that, as always, I appreciate whoever is out there liking and subscribing.

• 21:03Speaker 07

  Yeah, just know that the probe that has started was not made any more or less important by five draft picks, $30 million, and a five-year suspension for Uncle Dennis and one-year suspension for Ballmer. The critical part of a probe like this is you have to find something criminal and you have to find something that a grand jury will carry forward as an indictment. And while we can talk all we want about the penalties given by Adam Silver and the NBA to the Clippers, none of those are in any way part of what would be presented to a grand jury. It's not proof of anything. It's not evidentiary of anything. So what they're doing is looking for things that are actually criminal

• 21:47Speaker 07

  in criminal court, not NBA, sports, or podcast court.

• 21:51Pablo Torre?

  Which is extra strange, all of this podcast court and real-life court intersection, because one of us happened to have on their Twitter header a photo. I mean, do you recall the photo of a certain cast member of The Dan Lebatard Show, after doing an episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, investigating the NBA's gambling scandal, in which that cast member was dressed up as FBI Director Cash Patel?

• 22:22Speaker 04

  As a matter of fact, I do, and you can bet on that.

• 22:27Pablo Torre?

  The fact, David, that the FBI and the DOJ are listening to a podcast and Amin is doing Cash Patel impressions is a bit much even for me. But what this current DOJ probe into Steve Ballmer and the Clippers does, back in this story, is help to explain crucially how and why the ninth richest man in the world has been waving the white flag. And he has not admitted to anything that we and the investigators at Wachtel Lipton have now exhaustively chronicled still. And this is something the commissioner himself acknowledged after a question by The Athletic's David Aldridge at the St. Regis Hotel.

• 23:06Speaker 06

  There are other inquiries that have nothing to do with the NBA that Clippers and Steve Ballmer are now dealing with. And so my assumption is, in some cases, he, you know, has to choose his words, you know, carefully in terms of what he's saying, but.

• 23:24Speaker 07

  That is the biggest understatement of the press conference. One, Steve Ballmer didn't choose his words in that letter that talked about how he's a distraction. That was lawyered up in a very significant way. Because when you're under investigation, there's one thing you learn. You do not say anything that can in any way be used by prosecutors as evidence to help build a case against you. And nothing about being a distraction to other NBA owners by saying that we've paid the fine. None of that in any way furthers the probe or frankly dampens it or lessens it, but it just becomes wholly irrelevant to the federal prosecutors.

• 24:08Speaker 04

  So David, I mean, this is a report about an inquiry into perhaps launching a criminal probe. It's a lot of if, ands, and buts, but what exactly is the risk that Steve Ballmer is inheriting here? What could they actually charge him with in criminal court?

• 24:28Pablo Torre?

  So David, I want to, I want to jump in here because what I've been doing, and I know you've been doing something similar, is I've been asking people who might know the answer to this question. And so the first thing I did, actually, Amin, was I asked a former federal prosecutor, who requested anonymity to speak freely about their intimate knowledge of the workings of the US Attorney's Office out of the Eastern District of New York, which is reportedly probing the Kawhi fallout. I asked them that question. How much worse is all of this for Steve Ballmer personally, just at a high level, now that the DOJ specifically is investigating these alleged schemes in addition to the SEC? And what this source said was, quote, "Oh, much worse.

• 25:10Pablo Torre?

  Not truly staring into the abyss, but this is a whole different sport. Even in 2026, a creative theory could map out a road to jail time," end quote. And what another attorney who worked for the SEC explained to me is that the SEC, David, you can help me out here, the SEC is forward-looking, in generally seeking to deter future violations of securities laws. They're looking for violations so that they can signal to the public, we are regulating the market. Whereas the DOJ, essentially, is backward-looking. What it's doing is it is seeking, somewhat competitively, perhaps, to prosecute criminal behavior that's already allegedly been done.

• 25:51Speaker 07

  Well, we don't leave a Minority Report. You can't investigate and prosecute criminal activity that has not taken place because you think it's going to take place. I mean, that would be quite a system where you may have to change out your eyeballs. That's the Minority Report reference, Pablo, that may have just right by.

• 26:08Pablo Torre?

  I'm familiar with pre-crime.

• 26:09Speaker 07

  Okay, thank you.

• 26:10Pablo Torre?

  I'm familiar with that's of goo.

• 26:14Pablo Torre?

  But I do want to introduce here, to help us out, a different character that the audience might recognize, who has been a guest on multiple episodes of this unlimited-run series that we've been doing. And this guy happens to be the recovering DOJ fraud attorney who launched the initial investigation into aspiration in 2023.

• 26:34Speaker 07

  I can only assume that what you would do, Pablo, as a Pulitzer-winning podcaster, is speak to Lou Manzo, who actually is the person who was right there at ground zero of this investigation, wondering, where do we go to see if something can stick here? And did not necessarily believe that salary cap circumvention at that time was the route to take.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  I started in DOJ under Obama. I was under Trump. I was under Biden. And typically, nothing changed. For most of DOJ, it's, it's much less political than anyone thinks on the outside. And so that's going to be interesting to see. Is there a political dimension to this? Does, does Trump want to come after a major Democratic donor? Or is there this kind of billionaires' club where the people at the top don't really, you know, they just look out for each other? And I could see that happening, too. That's the very cynical side. The non-cynical side is, is maybe some, you know, enterprising prosecutor in, in, in the Eastern District of New York has some goods.

• 27:42Pablo Torre?

  And so the first thing I want to start with is the last thing Lou mentioned, which is, what could be the goods here? What might be the potential creative legal theory in front of us and in front of Steve Ballmer's very expensive attorneys, David, that could ostensibly put the ninth richest man on the planet behind bars? And so I just want to remind people that, on its face, the circumvention of a sports league salary cap itself has never before been successfully prosecuted as a federal crime, to my knowledge. David, you know, in this case, the owners, the other billionaires, they might be the victims under this first theory.

• 28:19Speaker 07

  So you have to look for a crime, and, and fraud is a good place to start. And the question is, who was defrauded? And what was the harm? What was the injury? And I could make a cogent argument that the 29 owners got harmed by the salary cap circumvention because they were not in a position to sign Kawhi Leonard unless they broke the NBA rules, which they didn't want to break. And then I could try to assign a monetary value to that harm, though the Lakers selling for $12.5 billion, in theory, as an enterprise valuation, it's going to be hard to prove that there's any harm that the Lakers got by not signing Kawhi. I could try to go more granular and say

• 29:02Speaker 07

  that the owner of the local bar establishment outside an arena, which is a Kawhi Leonard love affair bar, got harmed because Kawhi didn't play for that particular team when he could have but for salary cap circumvention. But what I'm really thinking about and why the DOJ focused not on the salary cap circumvention, what they were focusing on were the endorsement contracts, the manner in which the salary cap circumvention happened. Because if you are a company and you are not properly disclosing what you are doing with your money, both money coming in and money going out, then you may be participating in a fraud upon the investors of that company.

• 29:47Speaker 07

  That's why Joe Sandberg is in prison. Not because he didn't plant a tree outside the Great Western Forum, because he defrauded investors who thought they were getting X and they ended up getting nothing instead.

• 29:59Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is, what you just said, David, is, according to our latest ongoing reporting, the far more plausible chapter of this saga that we are staring in the face of, which may well be securities fraud. And you will recall, Amin, that we started this series with Steve Ballmer's personal investments into aspiration. The $50 million in 2021, the next $10 million in 2023, that's after the whistleblowers reported the scheme to the federal government, and it is while the company was obviously falling apart. And you will also perhaps recall, David, the secret undisclosed side deal we previously reported, where Steve Ballmer had worked out an arrangement with Joe Sandberg on that initial $50 million investment,

• 30:45Pablo Torre?

  in which Sandberg agreed to guarantee that investment in case of the company's collapse. This was a side deal, a protection, a downside bit of security that nobody I talked to, no one knew about this, until Steve Ballmer happened to very subtly disclose it in his victim impact letter ahead of Sandberg's sentencing. And so in that story, by the way, in Ballmer's investments, which Wachtel, again, left out of the report by and large, what you have is, are familiar from episode one. Two Things Can Be True theory, Amin.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  One, Steve Ballmer was defrauded by Joe Sandberg. Two, Steve Ballmer used Joe Sandberg to circumvent the salary cap.

• 31:34Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 31:35Speaker 07

  But you need a three here, Amin. If you're going to talk about soap on a rope, you need a three.

• 31:41Speaker 04

  Soap, soap on a rope?

• 31:45Speaker 07

  That's my.

• 31:45Pablo Torre?

  Are we still?

• 31:46Speaker 07

  Sorry, that's my big, that's the reason I won't commit any crimes, I'll tell you that.

• 31:50Pablo Torre?

  It's the rope?

• 31:51Speaker 07

  It's not the morality of it.

• 31:53Pablo Torre?

  It's the rope.

• 31:54Speaker 04

  You're not worrying about the gallows, folks?

• 31:57Pablo Torre?

  So from our reporting into Daktronics and Wachtel's investigation into Boingo Wireless and Locked In Insurance, in addition, is that this whole alleged scheme was, of course, bigger than Aspiration, and it has now raised questions of whether Daktronics and Boingo, which were both public, public companies at the time, whether they truthfully disclosed those secret dealings with the Clippers in their securities filings, while they were also receiving enormous multimillion-dollar contracts from the Clippers at the Intuit Dome that were contingent on their participation in these secret cap circumvention, allegedly undisclosed, side deals.

• 32:39Pablo Torre?

  And all of this, David, would be an SEC concern, of course. Daktronics has said it's cooperating with the SEC. Boingo has not been talking publicly since the NBA ruling came down. But the first federal prosecutor that I talked to added this question that I want to pose to David. Quote, "Is there any evidence that someone from the Clippers knew and acknowledged that any one of these companies would have to avoid disclosing this in their securities filings, perhaps in order to protect their own flank? If so, you could have the beginnings of a conspiracy to violate securities laws." End quote.

• 33:22Speaker 07

  And you could have Interstate. There's all sorts of other accounts. But do you remember something that people summarily dismissed that I pointed out on one of your shows and almost made fun of, much to my, actually, not chagrin? Remember, we talked about the Halo Board, the $100 million Halo Board? And how you can fudge numbers when you're building a ballpark and putting things out to contracts? And the Halo Board may only be $80 million, but you make it $100 million with the promise that Daktronics will give you $20 million or give Kawhi Leonard $20 million? You're not supposed to do that with a public company. Why?

• 34:02Speaker 07

  Because if I can prove that Steve Ballmer made Daktronics falsify invoices or artificially inflate the value of product, the impact of that on other deals that they're doing, the investors are saying, wait a minute, is the board worth $100 million or is it worth $80 million? How do we project revenue and earnings going forward? How do we figure out about investing in your company, the value of your shares? So I would just point out that while we do things in stadium courts, while we do things with companies in order to make sure that we're on budget and on time, when you're

• 34:45Speaker 07

  doing things that actually can impact share worth or what you are doing to investors in a public company, you're opening yourself up to an inquiry, which is exactly what the Eastern District is starting right now.

• 34:59Pablo Torre?

  Allegedly.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  Flip side of that, David, is I'm curious about the legality of paying the company, the third party, Daktronics in this instance, for consultancy. And then Daktronics separately paying Kawhi Leonard as a spokesperson. In other words, it's all one big pot where the money's in and the money's out, but can you say, no, no, no, this money was earmarked over here for something completely different? And this money that we paid him with was completely different money in a criminal court? How do you prove that that money here was just, you know, basically going through a waystation?

• 35:42Speaker 07

  That's when you have to go to the SEC filings. That's when you go to the disclosure statements. That's what, when they say they're opening a probe, what they're doing is looking at all these documents. It's like being audited, a tax audit. No one's looking at your tax return until you're audited. Then everybody's looking at how much you paid for a block of cheese. So once there is an inquiry, then all of a sudden, they're going to follow the trail of the money. What went in, what went out, and what was told? And the way you tell people in a public company about what you're doing is with these filings. That's the SEC, that's the law, that's the regulatory way, which is just give us the

• 36:21Speaker 07

  breadcrumbs of the roadmap so we can evaluate whether or not we are fairly reasonably confident about investing in your company.

• 36:30Pablo Torre?

  So for the record, Daktronics, on that same earnings call where they disclosed the SEC's probe, they said that they would not be commenting any further in public about all of this. And when asked about such a direction potentially for its inquiry, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn declined to comment. And so what I did was I went back to our pal Lou Manzo, the former prosecutor who probed Aspiration's fraud, with a question. Let's say that there's a criminal dimension with the Clippers knowingly doing something with disclosures. How would you explain what that means in real terms?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Fraud is lies for money. That's the simplest way to explain it. And so if, if the Clippers aided lies where somebody benefited with money, then that's, that's, you know, the basic supplier fraud. And then all you have to do is improve an Interstate jurisdiction and, and there you go off to the races.

• 37:30Pablo Torre?

  Off to the races is a phrase-

• 37:32Speaker 07

  My favorite expression.

• 37:33Pablo Torre?

  -that keeps coming back ever since that interview out of ESPN that Steve Ballmer gave Ramona Shelburne.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  The introduction got made, and then they were off to the races on, on their own.

• 37:44Pablo Torre?

  So this is where I should point out also that the SEC, the lack of SEC disclosure for these companies, you know, the penalty there, civil, we're talking about a fine of some magnitude. But what my first federal prosecutor source told me is that if, quote, "The Clippers actively helped plan this scheme across four companies," then the criminal penalties for even a books and records violation would be much more serious than the SEC's fines. End quote. And so this is where I should say that we took this analysis of how former prosecutors think the DOJ might go after Steve Ballmer and his Clippers. We took it to Steve Ballmer's lawyer and the Clippers spokesperson, and they did not

• 38:27Pablo Torre?

  immediately respond to our requests for comment. But what we know, I mean, from Wachtel's report about how these Clippers team partners interacted with the NBA's investigation is very interesting and perhaps worth you reading for us here.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  Quote, "Some, such as Boingo, purported initially to cooperate, but then supplied information that was inconsistent or not credible to investigators and ultimately refused to cooperate further."

• 38:58Pablo Torre?

  And we also know from Wachtel's report the following about Clippers' president of business, Gillian Zucker, specifically. This is the longtime sports executive who has been repeatedly described to me, by the way, across months of reporting, as Steve Ballmer's right-hand woman.

• 39:13Speaker 04

  Quote, "Ms. Zucker made several statements that proved inconsistent with contemporaneous documents, other witness statements, and the broader chronology of events, professed a lack of recollection on important issues, placed responsibility on subordinates, and offered inconsistent rendition of facts," which is my favorite way of saying lied.

• 39:40Pablo Torre?

  Well, I'll give you another way, David, as it concerns the off-to-the-races claim that Ballmer made in the ESPN interview that we played before. Because here is what Wachtel concluded about the Clippers' claim that their sole involvement in Mr. Leonard's relationship with Aspiration was the introductory email.

• 39:57Speaker 07

  "Based on the foregoing evidence, investigators find these statements to be inaccurate at best with respect to Mr. Ballmer and clearly false with respect to Ms. Zucker."

• 40:11Pablo Torre?

  All of which made former DOJ prosecutor Lou Manzo consider the head start, maybe, that the federal government now has on this story and how there are two federal agencies now competing with each other, effectively, to get to the bottom of it.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  So is there a company that the Clippers helped lie for money? So if, did the Clippers help Daktronics lie by, you know, giving this no-show job to, to Mr. Leonard? And was that lying material in, in helping Daktronics gain a foothold over another company that wouldn't do that? I think the more eyes that are on something and the higher up the attention gets, a lot-

• 40:59Speaker 06

  Like up to the Deputy Attorney General's office at DOJ. That means that there's going to be more pushing. So more resources devoted to your prosecution. So you could get some more agents, you could get some more prosecutors, and then just more eyes on it. So, you know, most prosecutors work at a very, as fast as they can. But certainly when you have high ups at, you know, DOJ or your US Attorney looking at a case, you're going to focus on that.

• 41:28Pablo Torre?

  Which now brings us, David, back to the question of political pressure. And you may recall in Major League Baseball, for instance, how the steroid scandal became quite useful in Washington DC, going even to Capitol Hill for a hearing.

• 41:45Speaker 07

  We measure throughout the industry. When you're sitting in owners' meetings or you're just having conversations with the commissioner, you're measuring the weight of what's worthwhile in terms of putting our focus, our resources. The government does the same thing. When they've got a docket and Lou didn't have just aspiration on this plate, you've got 70 possible cases on your plate. You can't do everything all at once, everywhere. So what you do is you decide what's going to get the most attention, what has the highest likelihood of indictment, then conviction, and what's going to make us look good, not just to the country, but more importantly, to our boss? And what's going to screw the other departments who are asleep at the switch,

• 42:30Speaker 07

  who did not raise these issues? And therefore, we're getting credit all over the board. You're going through each issue and then deciding. What Lou was trying to say, and he said it perfectly, actually, is that if the Department of Justice in the Eastern District, if they find that something's going on where off to the races was not exactly how it happened, and that there is a harmed individual or a party, and there was line, and there was money involved, and there was wire, interstate, et cetera, they're going to go. Why? Because Ballmer is rich and famous, because sports is the thread that is common between people who don't care about what happens on the court

• 43:14Speaker 07

  and people who do, and it's sexy. And when you put all those things together, you are worried if you are on the receiving end of that investigation.

• 43:23Pablo Torre?

  And so here is where I should quote one high-level NBA league source who told us about the DOJ's investigation. Quote, "The [bleep] US Attorney's Office? The fact that they spend god knows how much of our taxpayer money, even on just stuff like the Terry Rozier thing? It's just ridiculous." End quote.

• 43:43Speaker 07

  I disagree, Pablo.

• 43:44Pablo Torre?

  Well, but look, and the Eastern District disagrees, right? They consider sports important. They have prosecuted FIFA corruption under Obama, Trump, Biden, and then Trump again. And now, of course, there is the matter, the extra ingredient of the time and place in which we exist that has to do with the matter of a means-old Twitter header. And the fact that the guy who was pictured in it showed up at the Eastern District's presser for the NBA gambling charges, which had started under Joe Biden, but then led to this.

• 44:18Speaker 07

  This is the insider trading saga for the NBA. That's what this is. That's why we are going to take heat.

• 44:25Speaker 04

  And you can bet on that.

• 44:28Pablo Torre?

  There's never been a better time to take a $700,000 fine for whatever it is that Kawhi Leonard did or did not do, and get traded to another country.

• 44:41Speaker 07

  Our friends up north.

• 44:52Pablo Torre?

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• 45:36Pablo Torre?

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• 47:20Pablo Torre?

  But another interesting part of this story, as we get close to the end, finally, of this episode, is that the stuff we just mentioned with aspiration and Daktronics and Boingo and locked-in insurance might not be the most interesting area for the Department of Justice to investigate, at least not according to former DOJ prosecutor Lou Manzo.

• 47:39Speaker 06

  So the Rhode Island football club story is interesting to me because there is public money involved. And it's not just statements on an SEC disclosure. If there's public funds involved, then that really queues up a federal interest. So I'm almost a little surprised the reporting didn't come that the District of Rhode Island is pursuing a case or something like that, rather than Eastern District New York. And maybe they are, we just don't know behind the scenes. Because it makes no sense, right? Kawhi Leonard, why would he own a minor league soccer team in Rhode Island? It makes no sense. And how did he come to own it? And how is that team aligned with the stadium development plan

• 48:24Speaker 06

  that has affordable housing and this whole nexus? That, to me, is just like a very unfinished story.

• 48:31Speaker 07

  Now you're talking, Pablo, something close to my heart. Because that was the probe with me over public financing of a stadium. And that's exactly what RIFC was. So I can speak anytime you want about how to defend that and what the truth is. Certainly in my case.

• 48:45Pablo Torre?

  Are you offering pro bono counsel to?

• 48:48Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 48:48Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 48:49Speaker 07

  I am, and I'll tell you why. Because I understand why Lou's saying that. Because public financing for stadiums is like an eight on the sexy chart for the prosecution. Because it is such a cause of debate, not just on sports shows, but on shows where people don't care about sports because they ridiculously think that money can be used to help pay police more or teachers more, when in fact, 99% of the time, the money can't be used for that. I'm not digressing here. I'm saying that if there's a "there there," it's going to be looked at. I promise you that.

• 49:24Pablo Torre?

  We got to take David from an eight to like a five when we talk about public financing.

• 49:28Speaker 07

  It just pisses me off that you get public financing and people go crazy.

• 49:32Pablo Torre?

  The second-tier pro soccer team in question, I got a note here, has said in a previous statement to us, quote, "There is absolutely no connection whatsoever between Rhode Island FC and the NBA investigation." End quote. But all of this, I mean, it brings us back, at long last, to the well-appointed rooms of the St. Regis Hotel, where 29 of the 30 teams arrived here in Manhattan to discuss the sport that the three of us all grew up loving and where it's headed next. And this conversation involved not just the absentee Clippers, but also a question at NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's post-game presser, so to speak, about another governor

• 50:16Pablo Torre?

  that we here at Pablo Torre Finds Out have recently been investigating in Los Angeles, named Mark Walter, who just agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger for a record $12.5 billion.

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Second row on the end on the left, Pablo.

• 50:34Pablo Torre?

  Hey, Adam. Pablo from Pablo Torre Finds Out. Given the ongoing federal investigations into the Clippers and Daktronics and aspiration, as well as the investigation into Mark Walter, there has been a growing concern that wealthy individuals and entities are using the approval of the NBA to purchase credibility in the eyes of the public, meaning the fans. And I'm just curious if that growing concern is something that you share when it comes to the due diligence that follows the application of an owner or a sponsor? And if you plan on changing anything about NBA due diligence processes because of that?

• 51:17Speaker 04

  I mean, interesting the way you put it. I've never heard it quite that way. I understand that with team ownership comes a platform, both for individual Owners and it and helps them become widely known. Um, but I also think it imposes responsibilities on them and their communities. It's my opening. It's one of the things we talked about today in terms of what comes with team ownership. What do you think he means by that? He's like, oh, I didn't, I didn't think about it that he thought it was very interesting. The way you framed that. And I said, he said, he hadn't heard that before. I said, you hadn't heard that people were thinking that maybe Mark Walter got over by basically his association with the NBA?

• 52:02Pablo Torre?

  And baseball and sports. Yeah.

• 52:05Speaker 04

  Adam says things sometimes where he tries to play this Pollyanna like, really? I had no idea like, I look, man, you know, you don't have to admit this stuff, but you also can't feign this ignorance about something that I think is pretty straightforward.

• 52:25Pablo Torre?

  Sports washing. I mean, that's, that's the core of the question as we invite private equity and sovereign wealth funds and shady sponsors into the sport that again, we all genuinely care about.

• 52:37Speaker 04

  I, I would only say, you know, and, and this has even come up in, in your reporting just as there are limits to what a reporter is able to do. Some ways reporters can do things um that traditional investigators can't because you can, in some cases, keep all your sources confidential. I think there's different transparency obligations on leagues and also maybe a different set of actors willingness to talk directly to leagues. But we take these vetting, the vetting process very seriously. Um, a lot of what we do is intensive database searching. I mean, you would think in this day and age with AI and everything else that everything is centralized. It's not many cases, you're going state by state.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  In certain cases, people are part of industries that are regulated state by state. So you have to look there as well. You know, we, we also talk to as many people as we can find and um, you know, who, who have knowledge about these people and we do interviews. But um, beyond that, you know, I will say we're always reassessing to see if we can do more. But in, in fairness to the parties involved, even Mark Walter, um, as we sit here today, I know, know more about him than I did when we vetted him. I read newspaper articles, but in fairness to him, I don't know where those investigations are going to come out. I don't know where any government inquiries are going to come out. So um, I, I again, I guess um, we're always seeing if we can do things better, but I,

• 54:06Speaker 04

  I don't see a trend or some widespread issue certainly among, you know, our principal owners that, that gives me cause for concern.

• 54:14Speaker 07

  We will vet people hard, but when the number starts with a T and ends with an N and you're going to buy a franchise at a valuation of $10 billion, we may remove the second T out of the vetting process because we'd love to have a number like that on the books. Will your question change the way they investigate potential owners? I'm sorry, PTFO, it will not, but is it something that the NBA will think about going forward? Maybe.

• 54:41Speaker 04

  It's a question that I've been asking since Mark Walter, since Mark's dad with the Minnesota group. Are we okay with our franchises being in essence, a condo on South Beach? I bought it, it was a good price. It was cool. What? You'll pay me how much for it? Sold. I have no home memories. There's no pictures of my kids when they were in grade school. None of that. This is just a condo on South Beach that when I go to South Beach, I got a place to stay. Is that the future of, I'm going to speak for the NBA. Is that the future of our league? And if it's not, if this offends anyone in control, what are they going to do about it?

• 55:23Speaker 04

  And David, I can already tell by your body language, they ain't going to do [BLEEP] because they just want the money. As big as that number gets, that's all that matters.

• 55:33Speaker 07

  Cuba Gooding got it right. Show me the money.

• 55:36Speaker 04

  Show me the money.

• 55:37Speaker 07

  We say that inside owners meetings almost every time.

• 55:40Pablo Torre?

  How many Tom Cruise movies can we fit into a single episode? Here is the thing though, that Adam Silver is right about and that I have no objection to truly. Journalists, podcasters even, we do a very different job from the league and its law firm and a very different job from the federal government. And those differences form something like an ecosystem, an ecosystem that hopefully keeps the public interest and the health of the thing that the public cares about in anything resembling balance, which then took me back to Lou Manzo for one more very

• 56:24Pablo Torre?

  important question. You know, I was thinking about the NBA gambling investigation by the DOJ uh, in terms of timeline and no cases, of course, these are all different, but um, that was started like in the Biden administration and then it got, you know, actually arrests were made under Trump, um, which is to say that this was years. If you're not familiar with how long a DOJ probe takes, how would you summarize what is a reasonable expectation for like a timeline?

• 56:57Speaker 01

  I think the fastest a charging decision can happen is nine months where a probe is started, subpoenas go out and arrests are made. That's, that's a pretty accelerated timeline. So I'd say two to three years all in from time you cut the first subpoena to the sentencing um, is standard.

• 57:22Pablo Torre?

  All of which is to say that this series has a long way to go. Years, guys.

• 57:29Speaker 04

  We got more of these. We got more of these. Two or three more years, David.

• 57:33Pablo Torre?

  Two or three more years of podcasting with you two.

• 57:37Speaker 07

  When ecosystems get out of balance, the result is certain species become extinct.

• 57:44Pablo Torre?

  That is foreboding.

• 57:45Speaker 04

  Who's the dinosaur in this case?

• 57:47Pablo Torre?

  And who's the asteroid?

• 57:49Speaker 07

  Wait to see.

• 57:58Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.