Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Ballmer's Tree-Money, the Whistle-Blowers and the Document You've Been Waiting For: Kawhi-Gate, Part IX About this episode How did millions travel from the Clippers to Aspiration to Kawhi Leonard? Amin Elhassan and David Samson join Pablo — live onstage at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, right where Adam Silver was just sitting — to examine new and extremely credible evidence.
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
• 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.)
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're going to find out what this sound is.
0:07 Speaker 01 Even to pay Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard an incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA salary cap, disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement? That's a smoking gun, ladies and gentlemen.
0:20 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
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2:05 Speaker 03 Hello, everyone. My name is Drew Sullivan. I'm a first-year MBA here at MIT Sloan. It's my pleasure to bring you our first edition of Pablo Torre Finds Out live at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. Today, we'll be joined by David Samson, host of Nothing Personal with David Samson, Amin Alhassan, MBA analyst and commentator at Metalark Media and SiriusXM Radio, and of course Pablo Torre, the host of Pablo Torre Finds Out. This episode will run for 45 minutes. Please note that we will not have time for Q&A at the end of the episode. With that in mind, I'll turn it over to you, Pablo.
2:40 Pablo Torre? Thank you.
2:46 Pablo Torre? Actual naval intelligence officer. I've always wanted to have David and Amin do a live show with me in a room named after a guy who has blocked me on Twitter. Oh. Shout out to the godfather of sabermetrics, Bill James, actually has blocked me on Twitter. What'd you do? That investigation is also ongoing. I don't know. Maybe one of you guys can be a source for us on that. I have folders. I have folders for David and Amin. I want to be very clear about something to everybody who's in the audience here, everyone who's watching live on YouTube, I am told. Put some hamburgers in the chat if you're in
3:26 Pablo Torre? the YouTube chat. Pablo Torre finds out. You guys know exactly as much as David and Amin about what's about to happen here. And here are some folders that, as always, I will tell you to not open. David, do you have your little glasses?
3:45 Pablo Torre? I do, Pablo. Thank you so much. Very good. David has eye problems because he's been reading so many documents. I'm just old. It's not a problem.
3:53 Speaker 01 It's a reality.
3:54 Speaker 05 It's a reality.
3:55 Pablo Torre? With that attitude, I suppose.
3:58 Speaker 05 The only guy with 2.0s in the room. Give me a break. Sorry.
4:01 Speaker 01 He's in a bad mood, right?
4:03 Speaker 05 I'm sorry. You schlep us up to Boston.
4:05 Pablo Torre? I came here wanting...
4:06 Speaker 05 You don't tell us what it's about.
4:07 Pablo Torre? I wanted to come here and be Oprah, you know? And you got a secret document, and you got a secret document, and David is just... Just...
4:16 Speaker 01 He's over it, I think.
4:17 Pablo Torre? Yeah, man. He's stedmaning this thing. Oprah deep cut. It is... It is... It is something that I want to take seriously here as we transition to actually doing a bit of reporting. There is new and extremely credible evidence that we're here to discuss, and I also need to disclose for the record that Daryl Morey, who is the president of basketball operations of the Philadelphia 76ers and the co-founder of this conference, also has no idea what we're about to do here.
4:50 Speaker 05 He mentioned that prior to the show.
4:51 Pablo Torre? Yes. He did not realize...
4:53 Speaker 01 To the point where he's not here, he's next door.
4:55 Pablo Torre? He's going head to head with us, which is for the best because we are doing part nine of our investigation into Steve Ballmer and the Clippers. And so...
5:09 Pablo Torre? A little less light in the applause the next time, but you guys are absolutely right there with us.
5:16 Pablo Torre? This is the 20th anniversary of this conference, which is absurd. I mean, for people who've not been here, who are just watching perhaps at home, can you give a sense of the caliber of power broker that we are actually in good company with?
5:30 Speaker 01 So I haven't been here since 2020. The last time I was here, they were telling us, hey, by the way, you might have to start shaking hands with your elbows. And that was for real. And we thought like, whoa, no, we'll be fine. Just you got to elbow bump people and we'll be fine. Later that night, I went to Celtics Jazz and I dapped up Rudy Gobert. Like massive hug and everything, swear to God.
5:53 Pablo Torre? This all makes sense now in retrospect.
5:55 Speaker 01 I was patient zero. But never tested positive, though. That's my claim to fame.
6:00 Pablo Torre? Great.
6:03 Speaker 01 But yeah, no, it's, you know, this thing began at MIT. And I think David, you were there in the early days when it was like in classrooms. And now it's this massive convention center. When I was here, it was in the convention center, but you didn't have a problem with conflicts as much. You know, it's, oh, I'll watch this panel and then I'll watch the next panel. And now there's like four or five things going on at the same time. It's, it's huge. Everyone's here.
6:25 Pablo Torre? Barack Obama was here one year.
6:27 Speaker 01 Yes, he was. He's my M I P here tonight as well.
6:30 Pablo Torre? Is that right?
6:31 Speaker 01 Well, uh, you know, I gotta check with Sasha, Malil, Michelle.
6:38 Speaker 05 It's just terrible. Trying to do a show.
6:42 Speaker 01 Well, uh, you know, I can do the show and do this voice at the same time.
6:46 Pablo Torre? It's very funny to me that on this same stage where Amin is doing terrible Barack Obama impressions, the commissioner of the NBA was holding court.
6:54 Speaker 01 Was.
6:54 Pablo Torre? The same man who has now spent six months figuring out how to hold to account the richest owner in all of sports.
7:03 Speaker 01 Well, if you listen to him, he says he's not doing that. He's waiting for Wachtel Lipton to complete their investigation. And at that point, he'll commence thinking about the punishment.
7:11 Pablo Torre? And his spirit is inhabiting the man sitting in the chair he was sitting in earlier. Yes, correct. David, Adam Silver, though, is not sticking around to watch us here today because why? Where is he?
7:24 Speaker 05 He scurried south because of your show. Or he's sitting in a room currently with the newly formed college committee. They're going to solve all the issues. Don't worry. Randy Levine is on the case. He is in charge of a committee and a picture came out already of them sitting at a table as though they're trying to solve other sort of peace crises. But apparently they're going to solve NIL and that's where Adam had to go.
7:49 Pablo Torre? Yes, he is with Donald Trump right now.
7:50 Speaker 05 Currently.
7:51 Pablo Torre? Not the rabbit hole we're falling into somehow. What I did want to do, though, was acknowledge a critique that I have received as we get a little, uh, you know, a little risque here. Because this ongoing investigation into a bankrupt, tree-planked, it's just funny for me to continue to have to say bankrupt, tree-planted startup, a fintech company. This investigation continues to consume my life.
8:18 Pablo Torre? It does. We're doing fucking part nine.
8:22 Pablo Torre? In our episode last month.
8:24 Speaker 05 You owe me a dollar.
8:25 Pablo Torre? In our episode last month, David, I reported something that I personally thought was fascinating. I want to acknowledge the critique that we received. What I reported was that multiple aspiration employees have long believed that the entire federal investigation into aspiration was the direct result of a whistleblower from inside the company reported aspirations hidden fraud to the SEC, to the DOJ, to the CFTC. And this apparently led to all the arrests and convictions and bankruptcy filings we've been monitoring since. And given how important Steve Ballmer and the Clippers are to the story of aspiration, what I asked aloud in that last episode was whether this hypothetical whistleblower might have also named Steve Ballmer and the Clippers in such a complaint to the government.
9:08 Pablo Torre? And this led to responses like the ones in David and Amin's folders, which I also want to show on the big screen behind us, if our production values are as high as I think they are. David, could you please open your folder?
9:22 Speaker 01 Oh, he gets to open it.
9:23 Pablo Torre? That's right.
9:28 Speaker 01 The upside down?
9:31 Speaker 05 I don't know if it's backwards or not, so I'm going to take a very big chance here. Oh, I mean, really? Nope, backwards.
9:38 Speaker 01 Other way around.
9:39 Speaker 05 Okay, here we go. I shall turn it over.
9:41 Speaker 01 That's why you got to rehearse.
9:43 Speaker 05 Listen, we're live, baby. Love it.
9:47 Speaker 05 Okay, what do you want me to do?
9:48 Pablo Torre? I'd like you to read it.
9:49 Speaker 05 Okay.
9:51 Speaker 05 There's nothing there. A bunch of hyperbole and rehashing. What if the whistleblower mentions the Clippers? Womp womp. The only thing Pablo will find out is that his 15 minutes is over with this story. That's a tweet from David P. Sampson.
10:09 Pablo Torre? Okay. Amin?
10:15 Speaker 01 I love that that's his big moment. Quote, "There's a whistleblower under oath? What if he mentions the Clippers?" Unquote. Oh, yeah. What if he mentions Pizza Gate? Or effing space aliens? Or the lizard people running the government? What are we doing here? Question mark, question mark.
10:33 Pablo Torre? And in the interest of transparency, I should probably just mention here that Daryl Morey's actual suggestion to me for this live show was this text message in your folder. David.
10:46 Speaker 05 Reveal who killed Epstein in prison at the conference? Question mark?
10:54 Pablo Torre? That investigation is also ongoing.
11:10 Pablo Torre? But the question I actually want to answer here today with all of you, and with all due respect to the lizard people, is a different question. The question is, how exactly did tens of millions of dollars travel from the Clippers' bank account to Aspiration's bank account in order to pay Kawhi Leonard? And there would seem at first to be an easy answer here, if you've been paying attention, since Steve Ballmer made an initial investment of $50 million into Aspiration back in September of 2021, and the total value of Aspiration's secret no-show endorsement arrangement with Kawhi Leonard was $48 million, 28 million in promised cash, 20 million in equity. But one key to understanding this entire alleged scheme, which nine Aspiration sources
11:54 Pablo Torre? have told me was designed to circumvent the NBA salary cap, is that Aspiration was spending all of its cash insanely quickly, right? So this is why it was so conspicuous that an LLC belonging to the Clippers' only co-owner, Dennis Wong, chose to invest $2 million into Aspiration in December of 2022, when Wong had already been informed that the company was in default, only for Aspiration, of course, to wire $1.75 million to an LLC belonging to Kawhi Leonard just nine days later, after months of delay. And I'll point out that Amin Alhassan is breaking fast. It is Ramadan. He was having... Is that a Nature Valley bar? I don't want to disclose the brand.
12:39 Speaker 05 They didn't pay.
12:41 Pablo Torre? You and Kawhi Leonard have something in common, in that case.
12:45 Pablo Torre? But that is just $2 million, right? And so the question becomes, how does tens of millions of dollars travel from the actual Clippers organization to Aspiration? And for that, Amin, we need to rewind to the first actual document in your folder, which is what?
13:02 Speaker 01 This is the Kawhi endorsement agreement.
13:05 Pablo Torre? Yes. The no-show contract for Kawhi's, quote, "organic marketing deal." And this was signed by who and on what date?
13:12 Speaker 01 Kawhi Leonard, April 4, 2022.
13:16 Pablo Torre? So what I need to point out here is that by April 4, 2022, Aspiration did not have enough money to pay Kawhi Leonard. They'd already spent all of the money they got from Steve Ballmer, actually. But that very same day, Los Angeles Clippers, David, agreed to do something very interesting. This now, according to the first document in your folder, which is what?
13:41 Speaker 05 This is Aspiration's April statement from Silicon Valley Bank.
13:46 Pablo Torre? And how much did the L.A. Clippers wire into Aspiration on April 4, 2022?
13:52 Speaker 05 $32,442,080.
13:57 Speaker 01 Coincidence.
13:58 Pablo Torre? Now, maybe you guys also have a guess as to what exactly is happening here with the $32 million. But I think the best explanation actually comes from somebody else that I first encountered in person at this very conference back in the early days of Sloan. And this person happens to be Team Ballmer's number-one defender.
14:22 Pablo Torre? During a 36-day stretch last year, Mark Cuban tweeted 17,053 words about this investigation. And, Amin, I would love for you now to read just a few of them here in front of everybody assembled at home and in this room.
14:39 Speaker 01 Mark, I love you.
14:42 Speaker 01 And a final note, while Pablo is focusing on the $2 million and the $50 million from Wong slash Ballmer, he didn't really get into the millions of dollars in carbon credits that were purchased by the Clips and the Arena. I bring this up because it would have been a lot easier and a lot safer if he was trying to circumvent the CBA to just buy more carbon credits. They were almost all margin, as Pablo correctly pointed out, so they would have created the cash immediately to pay KL2. End quote.
15:14 Pablo Torre? And this is a really, really, really smart point that Mark and/or ChatGPT raised.
15:20 Speaker 01 He loves it.
15:21 Pablo Torre? He does. He loves, he loves, he loves LLMs.
15:25 Pablo Torre? The standard approach, David, that environmentally conscious companies, sports teams, like the one you ran, the Miami Marlins, the approach that they typically had towards buying carbon credits was just to buy them whenever they needed them because a carbon credit, if we've done nothing else in nine parts, I hope people know, a carbon credit is literally what?
15:45 Speaker 05 It is literally for PR purposes.
15:47 Pablo Torre? Okay, that is, that is, you're jumping ahead to the takeaway. But what is it in its physical form?
15:54 Speaker 05 It is the planting, in theory, the promise, the, you say, you're told, hey, we're gonna plant a bunch of trees, therefore you can keep flying privately.
16:06 Pablo Torre? It's a tree.
16:07 Speaker 01 Well, it's a promise of a tree.
16:09 Pablo Torre? It's the commodity known as, we're gonna plant this tree.
16:13 Speaker 01 We've promised to plant it.
16:15 Pablo Torre? That's right. Planting a tree, for the record, generally costs like 10 to 20 cents on the public carbon markets. Aspiration was charging a dollar, which is, as Mr. Shark Tank pointed out, an incredible margin. And yet, what were the Clippers doing? Right? Let's examine this question. The Clippers made the highly unusual decision to prepay $32 million worth of trees on April 4th, 2022. As you can see here now on this handy timeline that we've made. So the tree money traveled into an escrow account with aspiration, as you'll see. Here we are, April 4th, 2022. And this brings us to this master timeline, which in the defense of the Clippers, they've previously denied, right?
17:00 Pablo Torre? They would have you believe that this timeline is actually two separate timelines. And therefore, of course, this is not caps or convention. This is passionate tree planting and some other stuff that was happening separately that they had no idea about. And so for the record, the Clippers, in response to detailed questions we sent them yesterday, declined to comment for this episode as they quote unquote, "fully cooperate with the NBA's ongoing internal inquiry." But you may recall that the team's original statement to us was this flat out denial. And I'll just read it here for legal reasons and also general entertainment. Quote, "Neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false."
17:45 Pablo Torre? Provably false is a very notable phrase because they stopped using it after September 2nd, 2025. But I will then point out that Ballmer, for his part, has previously told ESPN, Ramona Shelburne, on television that the Clippers merely introduced Kawhi to aspiration and that, quote, "then they were off to the races on their own," end quote. So we're here to pressure test the defense of two totally separate timelines. And so we have another stop on this road. According to the language of the no-show contract, David, the KL2 contract, which you have, when was Kawhi's very first quarterly payment actually due?
18:26 Speaker 05 Company will pay KL2 $28 million in cash during the term of this agreement. The payment shall be made quarterly in arrears in the amount of $1,750,000. The first payment shall be paid on June 30th, 2022. All payments will be wire transferred to KL2's account.
18:51 Pablo Torre? So June 30th, 2022 is when aspiration needed to actually start wiring Kawhi Leonard via KL2 Aspire LLC, his money to do, again, about as much as Amin was doing when he was not disclosing the brand of the... Bar he was just eating to break his fast.
19:09 Speaker 01 I think I did more for the bar because I
19:11 Pablo Torre? You actually did.
19:11 Speaker 01 I held it and I took a bite.
19:12 Pablo Torre? You actually did. Uh, but Amin, could you now please tell us what the next headline on this internal document is inside of your folder?
19:23 Speaker 01 Clippers and Aspiration: Acknowledgement of Carbon Credit Ownership Transfer.
19:28 Pablo Torre? This document, as you can also see perhaps, is actually signed by the CFO of the Clippers and the CEO of Aspiration. And on what day, Amin, did this tree transfer happen to take effect?
19:42 Speaker 01 The acknowledgement of carbon credit ownership transfer is made effective as of June 30th, 2022.
19:49 Pablo Torre? But surely, there must be some other time pressure that caused the Clippers to want that tree money on June 30th, 2022 specifically, because maybe this is all just an end of Q2 sort of coincidence, you know? I'm not a business guy, I'm not a billionaire, I don't know. Amin, could you please read the next line?
20:05 Speaker 01 Aspiration has secured 400,000 carbon credits on behalf of company to offset part of company's historical CO2 emissions.
20:14 Pablo Torre? Historical emissions, David. What are those?
20:20 Speaker 05 So, we didn't measure those in my 18 years because I didn't really care. And it is shocking to me. Listen, it's a great thing if I could say to everybody in our market, you have no idea how worried we are about the environment. We're about to pay to make up for all the things we did wrong. It's like apologizing for all of the ills like 10, you know, affairs ago. You say, oh, I'm sorry for that one. No, no, we were just talking about this latest one, but.
20:51 Pablo Torre? I appreciate that very specific comparison.
20:53 Speaker 05 No, I'm just saying, I don't, I don't fully understand that, why he would do it. I mean, there's really... Well, they care about... They care about the environment. Very much. I'm sorry.
21:05 Pablo Torre? But the point being that by definition, these are the carbon emissions that the team had released in the past. How did he keep track? Well, they can do analyses, you know, whatever. Like, the point, the point being that there was no present day time pressure in June of 2022, by definition, at all. And so, we first asked the Clippers about these carbon credits last year and what they said, referring to their sponsorship with Aspiration at the Intuit Dome, was, quote, "Our development agreements for the arena included mandates to buy carbon credits, but after studying the issue of neutrality, we went far beyond those requirements." Yep, David. "Some of those commitments were built into the sponsorship deal with Aspiration, totally separate of the investment in the company.
21:49 Pablo Torre? We made payments to Aspiration until the company was unable to fulfill their responsibilities," end quote. And so, David, just to close the loop here on totally separate, what is the next document that is in your folder, please?
22:06 Speaker 01 He's getting a workout, putting his glasses on.
22:08 Pablo Torre? I know, very efficient.
22:09 Speaker 05 Aspiration's June statement from Silicon Valley Bank.
22:13 Pablo Torre? And Aspiration, suddenly flush with all of this tree money from the Clippers, decided to do what on June 30th, 2022?
22:21 Speaker 05 That's an outgoing wire of $1.75 million.
22:27 Pablo Torre? To?
22:29 Speaker 05 KL2.
22:31 Pablo Torre? So, they happened to wire out $1.75 million, Kawhi's quarterly paycheck amount, on June 30th, 2022. And so, just going to recap here, the handy timeline that I showed you before.
22:46 Pablo Torre? Kawhi signs $28 million Aspiration contract. Clippers prepay $32 million in carbon credits. That's April 4th, 2022. June 30th, months later, Kawhi receives his very first no-show paycheck from Aspiration on the same exact day that the Clippers finally grant approval to Aspiration to access the $32 million in that aforementioned escrow account and transfer those trees. Again, totally separate as you can clearly see on this timeline.
23:14 Speaker 01 Maybe that was just the day they went to the bank.
23:16 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that's how it works. They walked in with like $32 million. I'd like to deposit this, please. But as for the remainder of the $32 million, because again, that's only 1.75 that they used, what Aspiration did with the rest of it is extremely in line with the pattern we've been describing because they, of course, burned through all of it. Okay? By November 18th, 2022, according to dozens of legal letters that I've reviewed, the company was so broke that it set out to terminate its dozens of outstanding marketing agreements in order to save money, except for two. Two marketing agreements still remained, and I'd like you
23:58 Pablo Torre? guys to guess which two marketing agreements Aspiration chose to preserve as they were cutting loose all of the other ones.
24:06 Speaker 01 Robert Downey Jr.
24:08 Pablo Torre? No. Oh. That's a great guess, though. Although he was an Aspiration endorser. I mean, thanks for the layup. I'll take it. Kawhi Leonard.
24:17 Speaker 01 That was my second guess.
24:18 Pablo Torre? It was it. KL2 Aspire LLC, which was never announced publicly, was retained. The other one
24:29 Pablo Torre? happens to be the $300 million Clippers founding sponsorship agreement, which had been very publicly announced for the entire world to see because, again, that's the point of marketing, right? So you have the secret one, you have the one that is very, very announced everywhere. That was a CNBC headline. In other words, aspiration wanted to keep sending money to Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard in specific, which now brings me a mean.
24:54 Speaker 05 It doesn't, sorry, it doesn't mean they wanted to keep spending, sending money. It just means they didn't break those. So it doesn't mean they were going to pay them or actually do anything. Sorry.
25:03 Pablo Torre? They wanted to remain obligated.
25:05 Speaker 05 Yes.
25:06 Pablo Torre? To those parties in specific. I mean, this brings me to another bit of feedback that I have received on Twitter, unfortunately. This is a lot of just me airing personal grievances, by the way, so apologies. But I've been thinking about this one ever since because I think there's a reasonable question that lots of people are asking.
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26:31 Speaker 01 Will you accept the results of the NBA's investigation when they're released? Ooh, that is a good question.
26:36 Pablo Torre? And David, there is another message that echoes this concern. Could you please read that?
26:42 Speaker 05 You are so sensitive. Can you imagine making policy based on Twitter?
26:46 Pablo Torre? Never, Ronnick. Never. God. Never go to war or anything.
26:51 Speaker 05 Would you admit nothing nefarious happened if that's the conclusion the NBA reaches? Just curious.
26:58 Pablo Torre? And I just need to say that, in all sincerity, right? Part of me cannot wait to find out what the NBA's internal investigators at the White Shoe Law Firm, Wachtel Lipton, say they found out. I genuinely want to know what they, what they return with.
27:15 Speaker 01 Isn't it weird though, typically when Wachtel Lipton goes in, the investigating organization, they come out with the findings. They are the authority. They've got all the information. And all the news stories and all the reactions are based off of what comes out in that report. But they're in a weird situation where you're kind of one step ahead, releasing stuff. So can they ever say our investigation is concluded if we keep coming out with new stuff?
27:44 Pablo Torre? Well, I think this raises the fundamental question of what questions are they asking? What are they trying to find out? Because I, I am happy to take lots of credit for what's been reported, but I also think that this is all due to the sources and the evidence that I have come in contact with. And so something I read recently, Amin, was an article reported by Joe Varden and Mike Vorkunov in The Athletic last month. And I'd like you to actually read this excerpt from the article that's the next thing in your folder.
28:16 Speaker 01 Joe, Mike, I love you guys too.
28:19 Speaker 01 "Some interviewed by Wachtel during its investigations have questioned what the firm's parameters are and if the NBA set them. One former Aspiration employee interviewed by Wachtel, and granted anonymity by The Athletic to protect their privacy, said the questions in the interview were two-pointed. The former Aspiration employee said that they were asked about Leonard, his uncle and business manager Dennis Robertson, Aspiration and its internal dynamics, and the Clippers organization. The employee, however, said he was not asked about Ballmer," end quote.
28:55 Pablo Torre? And I found this very eye-opening for obvious reasons, perhaps. For months, I've been talking to multiple NBA owners and coaches and general managers and scouts who believe that the NBA does not want to punish its richest owner.
29:09 Pablo Torre? Because Steve Ballmer's $140 billion may be too critical to Adam Silver's ambitions at a time when money for growth, for global expansion, which he was talking about on this stage earlier today in those chairs. And all that money is in flux, right? It's an uncertain time economically. Everybody knows that. And this guy has, Mr. Ballmer, a ton of it. And what one NBA head coach told me was, quote, "The aspiration situation deserved an immediate response. It affects the integrity of the league as well as competitive balance right now." End quote.
29:40 Speaker 05 You're not going to get an immediate response. That's unrealistic. You have to do the investigation and you have to pick a day, by the way. You're right about that because there could be, they're not happy that you are leaking it this way like one episode at a time, like a drip.
29:54 Pablo Torre? Publishing, as I can confirm things on the record.
29:57 Speaker 01 He's being responsible. This is how journalism works, David. You don't just run to Twitter and start talking about, oh.
30:03 Pablo Torre? And to that point, I should say also, the NBA league office did not respond to our request for comment before our deadline, right? So all of that is in order. But what I started doing after reading The Athletic's independent reporting was polling sources. I polled five former aspiration employees who had previously told me that they communicated and/or participated in meetings with Ballmer through aspiration, including on the subject of carbon credits. And what all five of these aspiration employees told me is that when they sat down with the NBA's investigators from Wachtel, the investigators in question did not ask them about Steve Ballmer either. Which raises a question, I think, among those employees about the NBA's desired scope of
30:46 Pablo Torre? this investigation, David, and how independent an independent investigation might really be.
30:52 Speaker 05 You know what I bet he did at the end? The investigators, when you're interviewed by someone in the media, you're investigated, it's always, hey, did I not ask anything? Or am I leaving anything out? I don't know if you do that as a reporter, as a journalist.
31:03 Pablo Torre? I love to ask a question along the lines of, what should I have asked you if I didn't?
31:07 Speaker 05 What should I have asked you? And whenever I'm interviewing, I'm like, all right, I'm leaving now. You never, when you're being cross-examined or anything like that in a deposition, you never add anything. That's a quick word of advice I mean for the next time you're sued. So I wonder whether or not that Wachtel ended with those aspiration employees. I don't know if you asked them, hey, did they say at the end, anything else you want to mention? Like, the responsibility is theirs.
31:32 Pablo Torre? Did Amin just check his phone to see if he got sued in the last?
31:34 Speaker 01 No, I just wrote the note down. It's coming.
31:52 Pablo Torre? I should clarify that Wachtel Lipton's lead investigator, whom David Samson and I previously met with in an earlier episode, was not available for comment. So, good questions raised, but I have no insight for that on the record. But I did interview one high-powered lawyer at a different firm who does outside investigation work for leagues. And what they said was, quote, "You want to signal to not only your client, but to other clients that you will provide the outcome that they want." And I am trying to calibrate my cynicism, right, around the outside investigation. But David, you were the president of a Major League baseball team that had been investigated.
32:36 Speaker 05 Okay.
32:38 Pablo Torre? What's your sense of how leagues operate in relation to the outside counsel that they hire and pay money to?
32:46 Speaker 05 With all due respect to Adam Silver and to leagues, there is not a commissioner who opens the investigation, the report, and reads it and says, "Oh, I didn't know that." Or, "Oh, that's interesting. I had no idea. Oh, you just released that publicly and I'm reading it now?" Give me a break. The way it works is that you have access to the report prior to it being released. The way it works is you are the client. And I don't know if you're in the service industry, but the way it works is you work for your client. Lawyers work for their clients. And you're sourced from whatever firm, but you can fill in the blank. Every firm is that way that I've ever worked with in all
33:28 Speaker 05 of my years. They want to know, what do you want? Because how else do they deliver it? And then how else do you get what's the most important, which is repeat business?
33:37 Pablo Torre? So, on the notion of repeat business and the finances of an investigation, something that I think is very interesting is who ultimately pays the bill for the investigation. So in this case, David, who pays the bill for the Wachtel investigation into the Los Angeles Clippers?
33:54 Speaker 05 Steve Ballmer.
33:57 Speaker 05 Little-known fact there is that when you become an organization, when you become a franchise, you abide team. You have to sign a document, an agreement with the league. And one of the provisions is, should you ever be investigated, you will pay for it. It is, it's one of those things. If you're a team owner, you know that is real. It's not talked about a lot, but yes, Steve Ballmer is paying. And but Steve Ballmer is, I wonder whether he's going through the hour leads of Wachtel.
34:22 Pablo Torre? Well, they accumulate.
34:25 Speaker 05 Yes, they do.
34:26 Pablo Torre? And so something that I want to point out as a result of this dynamic is that, as for my other aspiration sources that I've been talking to for, I started this investigation in February of 25. It's been more than a year. There are several key sources who say they have refused to talk to the NBA's investigators because they essentially see those investigators as working for the 140 billionaire who's ostensibly being investigated. And when these sources tell me that it feels like the NBA is, quote, "paying to borrow someone else's letterhead," it is hard to ignore what the NBA's high-powered law firm of choice has not been asking about, which they are all talking about amongst themselves. But this is what's especially crazy, I mean, about not asking
35:11 Pablo Torre? about the team's owner in particular, right? As much as I want to take credit for the novelty of this whole investigation, this is not the first time that former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has been investigated for alleged cap circumvention. Do you remember the other instances that Steve was involved with?
35:31 Speaker 01 The other repeat offenses? Well, I would say there was the DeAndre Jordan Lexus deal.
35:35 Pablo Torre? Yep. So $250,000 as a fine in 2015. They had offered DeAndre Jordan in the pitch meeting a deal through another team sponsor, Lexus in that case. That was the first one in 2015.
35:50 Speaker 01 And then the second one was, was that Kawhi? Yeah, it was Kawhi when he came to sign.
35:55 Pablo Torre? It was the first time that they investigated Kawhi Leonard in cap circumvention and all that stuff in 2019.
36:01 Speaker 01 Well, that one didn't have a, there was no tidy bow at the end of that.
36:05 Pablo Torre? In fact, the league apparently found nothing.
36:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:07 Pablo Torre? Right? And that was after the Lakers and the Raptors complained to the NBA about Uncle Dennis Robertson, his unlicensed representative, and Kawhi Leonard himself. And that's also in addition to three different civil lawsuits we've covered in this series before, each of them having to do with the Clippers' recruitment of Kawhi. So that's the backdrop on all of this. And so my basic presumption was simply that Wachtel might want to ensure that they found out what all of these employees may have known, David, about Steve Ballmer, just as a pure CYA strategy, but the scope as they strategized around it was not that.
36:44 Speaker 05 It's much easier if you don't ask the question to say that it was not part of the investigation than to ask it, get an answer, and then not have it in the report and say, hey, we didn't deem it report worthy. It's easier to say it on the front end than the back end.
36:58 Speaker 01 It's kind of like when COVID first started blowing up and Donald Trump said, hey, we should not test. That way our positive results will go down. If you never test, if you never ask for it, you'll never find out.
37:10 Pablo Torre? There's some strange symmetry in all of this happening today as Adam is meeting with that man at the moment. So, look, the thing I am left thinking about more than anything is just this question. What information would the lead investigators have been told if they had been very explicitly directed by their client to dig deeper into Steve Ballmer, their client's richest boss? Because something I've been spending these last several months doing is not simply talking to former aspiration employees. I've also been talking to a range of former federal employees. And I've been surveying the, again, to take it back to politics for a bit, I've been surveying the staggering amount of turnover at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures
37:54 Pablo Torre? Trading Commission. And again, I just cannot help but wonder what other evidence Adam Silver's N B A may be sitting on. And I actually happen to mean that last part quite literally.
38:11 Pablo Torre? David and Amin?
38:13 Speaker 01 This guy. Hold on, man.
38:15 Pablo Torre? I would love for you now to put your folders aside, and please look underneath your chair.
38:22 Speaker 01 I knew when he did the Oprah thing, I was like, that's a weird reference from-
38:26 Speaker 05 Cameras are there, so don't do that.
38:28 Speaker 01 Thank you.
38:29 Speaker 05 This, you go behind. Are you really something I don't want to touch-
38:32 Pablo Torre? I would love for you to reach under the chairs-
38:33 Speaker 05 First of all, it's disgusting. Did you look under the chair?
38:35 Pablo Torre? I did not.
38:37 Speaker 01 Am I sitting in the right chair? Is it under the cushion?
38:40 Speaker 05 Oh, it's, thank God I didn't touch the underchair. It's taped to the floor.
38:46 Speaker 05 I feel way better about myself.
38:47 Pablo Torre? It fell off the bottom of your chair.
38:49 Speaker 05 I'm super happy about it.
38:50 Pablo Torre? I mean-
38:51 Speaker 01 So it is okay?
38:53 Pablo Torre? I should say that earlier this morning, before the 20th anniversary Sloan Sports Conference kicked off, the Popolitaria Find Out staff went around this room and taped a very important document to those chairs, the same chairs that Adam Silver was sitting on.
39:08 Speaker 05 Was this here when Adam was here?
39:11 Pablo Torre? It was there before he was scheduled to go meet Donald Trump at the White House. And the document you'll find there, it turns out, as you continue to open it, is not about pizza gate, or space aliens, or the lizard people running the government.
39:23 Speaker 01 Who killed Epstein?
39:25 Pablo Torre? And unfortunately, it's also not that. What you are holding in your hands is an authenticated copy of a government whistleblower complaint.
39:35 Pablo Torre? This is, at long last-
39:37 Speaker 05 Do we have security?
39:39 Pablo Torre? This is the whistleblower complaint that directly led to the federal investigation into Aspiration, and the subsequent convictions of Aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg and another one of its board members, both of whom have since pleaded guilty to wire fraud. And in fact, this whistleblower complaint is the exact document that multiple former Aspiration employees had told me they believed existed. And David, what is the date at the top of this document, and to whom was it submitted?
40:06 Speaker 05 March 2, 2023, via SEC whistleblower portal.
40:14 Speaker 05 Can I?
40:15 Pablo Torre? Please continue.
40:16 Speaker 05 A lawyer look at this? I can read this?
40:18 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
40:19 Speaker 05 Why? Nicole, there's a name here.
40:22 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
40:22 Speaker 05 Okay. This is new for us. We don't get to read names usually. Nicole Creola Kelly, Chief Officer of the Whistleblower, Securities and Exchange Commission, 100 F Street Northeast, Mail Stop 5631, Washington DC 20549. Ray TCR 16765-764-865-147. The audio listeners will thank you for that.
40:47 Pablo Torre? March 2nd, 2023 was multiple years before my reporting began, for the record. And that TCR number, I need to explain to you guys because this is completely new. It stands for tip complaint or referral number. It is a unique registration number. It's what you get when a whistleblower signs a government form that declares, under penalty of perjury, that the information provided is, quote, "true, correct, and complete to the best of my knowledge, information and belief." That government form also stipulates that this whistleblower may be prosecuted if, quote, "in my submission of information, my other dealings with the SEC or my dealings with another authority in connection with a related action, I knowingly and willfully make any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or representations," end quote. And this TCR number,
41:31 Pablo Torre? which David very helpfully read out, it can be verified as real with the federal government if anybody has questions about the authenticity of the document. So David, can you please continue reading what else this says?
41:45 Speaker 05 Dear Ms. Kelly, this submission supplements TCR 16765-764-865-147 that he bought with two zuzium. Submit, thank you, by the way. Don't indulge him. Thank you. All right, sorry. This submission supplements the TCR number, submitted on February 15th, 2023, by whistleblower, redacted, is joined in submission by a second whistleblower who will remain anonymous. Aspiration Partners Inc. Aspiration was founded in 2013 by Joseph Sandberg and Andre Charny.
42:24 Speaker 05 The company promotes itself as a global leader in sustainability as a service solutions for consumers and...
42:34 Pablo Torre? It goes on for a while.
42:35 Speaker 05 It's like cut off after that.
42:37 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to point out a couple of things. Joseph Sandberg and Andre Charny, two fellow Harvard grads alongside Steve Ballmer and Dennis Wong.
42:47 Speaker 01 And Pablo Torre.
42:48 Pablo Torre? Allegedly.
42:49 Speaker 05 Can't do the show without saying Harvard. Can't do it.
42:51 Pablo Torre? This complaint is several pages long, okay? That's why we cut it off there. It was submitted by not one, but two Aspiration employees through their attorneys, and those attorneys that are listed on this document declined to comment to PTFO. But one thing that people often ask about in this nine-part investigation is, where's the smoking gun? Where is that thing? Where is the legally-vetted document that proves in writing that we have here at Pablo Torre Finds Out, you know, not simply invented some wild story about how the Los Angeles Clippers used tree money to flagrantly circumvent the NBA salary cap? And so, I mean, I would now like you to please read this next excerpt from the document.
43:33 Speaker 01 Read the whole thing, right?
43:35 Pablo Torre? Yes.
43:36 Speaker 01 All right. Other examples of Aspiration's fraud. A, Los Angeles Clippers $32 million escrow account. In June 2022, Aspiration reached a $32 million agreement with the Los Angeles Clippers to create an escrow account and draw on the funds to purchase specific carbon offsets from specific projects on behalf of the Clippers to offset their emissions. Aspiration used only $1.4 million to purchase carbon credits pursuant to the agreement. Of the $20 million that Aspiration drew from the escrow account, most was used to pay for carbon credits to satisfy other agreements, either for past agreements with the Clippers
44:17 Speaker 01 or to satisfy agreements with other customers, and to pay for Aspiration's operating costs, and even to pay Clippers-forward Kawhi Leonard an incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA salary cap disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement. That's a smoking gun, ladies and gentlemen.
44:35 Speaker 05 That's emphasis added. I was clapping.
44:42 Speaker 01 You gotta play for the crowd.
44:43 Pablo Torre? I mean, look.
44:46 Speaker 05 So you were given a...
44:48 Pablo Torre? Look, I wanna pause for a second, right? The big question we gathered here to answer was, "How in the fuck did tens of millions of dollars travel from the Clippers' bank account to Aspiration's bank account in order to pay Kawhi Leonard?" And this, after a year of reporting, is the documented answer, okay? It's corroborating everything else we've previously reported. And the irony, in a sense, is that the smoking gun was the starting gun. It was the thing that kicked off everything we've been trying to piece together in the months since.
45:26 Speaker 05 Is this what you're saying started the federal government investigation of Aspiration that has led to the conviction of Sandberg? They're not interested in salary cap circumvention, the government.
45:37 Pablo Torre? Well, this is the beauty and the frustration of this story, is that this document is the document that gave a roadmap of alleged wrongdoing to the federal authorities. But it's worth noting that circumventing the NBA salary cap is not illegal on its face, right? Which may explain why the DOJ and the SEC and the CFTC, it's why they did not prioritize, perhaps, an investigation of what The Ringer has already said might be, "The biggest and most audacious case of salary cap circumvention in NBA history," end quote.
46:11 Speaker 01 It's at the top of the sheet. Other examples of Aspiration's fraud. That means they got through all the other fraud, and now they got to the Clippers and like, "Yeah, by the way, the last line, they're even paying Kawhi Leonard under the table."
46:24 Pablo Torre? Part C, by the way. Like, C, part A, right? This document, I hesitate to say, goes on. And I am told, importantly, by multiple sources with direct knowledge that the federal government is not done. The SEC's investigation into aspiration is active and ongoing as we speak. And I'm also told that the federal government continues to find these aspiration whistleblowers credible. And personally, this is just me talking now, I do think these whistleblowers did something that the sports world, as embodied in this room at this conference, should know about. Right? I mean, this speaks to the question of competitive integrity in sports.
47:05 Pablo Torre? It speaks to the question of what accountability for the richest people on earth even requires anymore? At a time when those concepts have never been more fragile. That's the context for all of this reporting. That's why I continue to focus in the way that I have. And so David is ruefully shaking his head.
47:23 Speaker 05 I'm just frustrated because if this salary cap circumvention is happening, then, and there's no punishment that comes, you're gonna have other teams and other owners who are just despondent because they're gonna either have to start circumventing it if they so choose to spend their money that way, but why would you? The whole purpose of getting a cap, which is what you work so hard to get from a union, is to not do this. But I digress.
47:47 Speaker 01 The purpose of the cap is to make sure that when I have a good player, he stays with me. But if there's somewhere else, I can still get him. That's the whole thing. Everyone always wants the rules to apply to everybody else, except for themselves. And so, much in the same way that people say, "Well, 30 years ago, players played 82 games." And I said, "You know what? If Michael Jordan had discovered that by playing 70 games, I'd be even more amazing in the playoffs, he would have done it." And then everyone would have followed suit. They're all just keeping up at the same ruse that everyone else is doing.
48:19 Pablo Torre? The question, though, is who cares? Right? Like, does the NBA care? Does our audience care? Do the people at home care? And so, towards this goal, out in the audience, I also have a surprise for you. If you reach under your chairs...
48:35 Speaker 01 Come on.
48:36 Pablo Torre? Two of you will find out that, in fact, you get something to take home with you tax-free.
48:42 Speaker 01 Is it a tree?
48:43 Speaker 05 Please tell me it's a tree.
48:44 Pablo Torre? There are two of you. And I want to congratulate those sitting in the 11th and 12th rows in the center here. Okay. These are rows K and Rose L. If you're in seat number two. Get it? KL. If you're in seat number two, have you found it? Oh, there's one right there. I see it on the right. Yes. There you go. There's one. And you get a secret document.
49:11 Pablo Torre? And you get a secret document right behind.
49:16 Pablo Torre? This is...
49:19 Pablo Torre? Yes, you got it? I don't know if this is the end of what we've been doing here, reporting on this story. I just know that if you open those envelopes, you will find what feels like all the proof that anybody needs to know that this story is real. And I perhaps think it's fitting that I want to end this by thanking David Samson and Amin Alhassan for showing up to work. Thank you. Well, some folks across the aisle, they don't want us to be finding out whether aspiration paid quietly.
49:49 Speaker 05 Can I go back to the airport?
49:52 Pablo Torre? We can now end the show. There you go. Thank you.
49:55 Speaker 05 Thank you.
49:58 Pablo Torre? What's in the envelope?
50:06 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lowman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tubinello. Our studio engineering is by RG Systems. Our sound design by Andrew Bersick at NGW Post. Digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern. And our theme song, as always, by John Bravo. We'll talk to you next time.
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