The Briefcase, Ballmer's Social Network and Aspiration's House of Cards: Kawhi-Gate Part VII

As the NBA's investigation heats up, Pablo goes behind closed doors — and emerges with fresh sunlight: What exactly did the Clippers know about Kawhi Leonard's no-show deal? When did Steve Ballmer really get to know the fraudster who paid him off? And what do Doc Rivers, the Ritz-Carlton and a topless fashion shoot have to do with the origin story of a "match made in heaven" that the richest owner in sports would rather you ignore? Amin Elhassan and David Samson shake their heads, as we fact-check a timeline that the Clippers want you to believe. 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 • Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter https://pablo.show/ for exclusive access, documents and invites • Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" https://pod.link/1483011704 • Subscribe to "Basketball Illuminati" https://pod.link/1610336730 with Amin Elhassan (Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  I believe the Clippers are well aware.

• 0:13Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market. Love the crown molding. Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 1:00Speaker 04

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

• 1:03Speaker 03

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

• 1:07Speaker 04

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 1:10Speaker 03

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

• 1:13Speaker 05

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

• 1:20Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by Apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess. Once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes,

• 2:04Pablo Torre?

  from small businesses to larger organizations. And it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at Apollo.io. That's Apollo.io.

• 2:29Pablo Torre?

  We published our last episode about the Los Angeles Clippers and Aspiration about three months ago. And since then, the scandal has seemed quiet.

• 2:42Pablo Torre?

  There's been no public update from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, or Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. Even Mark Cuban stopped tweeting about it. But behind the scenes, a lot has been happening. Especially here in New York City.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  I can't believe you got me out of the house for this.

• 3:01Pablo Torre?

  I don't take your time for granted.

• 3:09Pablo Torre?

  We now have nine sources from inside Aspiration who allege that Ballmer hid a $48 million scheme to pay his superstar Kawhi Leonard through a no-show contract. And that Aspiration, which was also an enormous Clippers sponsor, never even announced this endorsement deal for a simple reason. The richest owner in all of sports, who had personally invested $50 million at first into this tree-planting company, was circumventing the salary cap, breaking a cardinal NBA rule that tries to limit what billionaire owners can pay to win.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  This is not a small investigation that started on September 3rd with us and you.

• 3:56Pablo Torre?

  Team Ballmer, however, has been telling their own version of this story. A version where Ballmer himself is the most reliable narrator of this fraud-laden timeline and his secretive social network.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Just remember what we're doing here. This is their investigation, not you. Do you plan on... Do you have stuff you need to find out from them?

• 4:19Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I just have this briefcase. I just need them to also have what's in here, which you have, as my attorney, been carefully advising me about.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  It's their investigation.

• 4:32Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  And they're being paid a pretty penny to investigate.

• 4:37Pablo Torre?

  Because the NBA hired a law firm, Wachtel Lipton, to do their own investigation.

• 4:45Pablo Torre?

  And so, yes, that is the voice of my on-air counsel, former Marlins president David Samson, on this Manhattan sidewalk in November.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Walking with purpose as we make them wait at $2,100 bucks an hour.

• 4:58Pablo Torre?

  I feel like they might not be mad.

• 5:02Pablo Torre?

  After I accepted an invitation for a private meeting with the lawyers hired by the NBA commissioner to probe one of his 30 bosses, who happens to be one of the dozen wealthiest people in the world.

• 5:20Pablo Torre?

  And just for the record, you're OK accepting halal card as your hourly rate?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  No, I want a steak dinner.

• 5:26Pablo Torre?

  OK, well, you can build that, uh, leotard.

• 5:31Speaker 01

  He pays for everything else.

• 5:50Pablo Torre?

  Amin hasn't seen that video.

• 5:52Speaker 06

  Mm-mm.

• 5:53Pablo Torre?

  Didn't know what we did.

• 5:55Speaker 06

  I remember talking about doing this. I didn't think you guys actually did it.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Oh, we did it.

• 6:01Pablo Torre?

  I normally would be very verbally effusive about like, "Thank you both for being here, Amin Elhas and David Samson. We haven't done this in months."

• 6:10Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:11Pablo Torre?

  The three of us in studio for part seven of this series. But there's a briefcase on the table.

• 6:16Speaker 06

  There is.

• 6:17Pablo Torre?

  Do not touch the briefcase, Amin. Please describe, though, the briefcase for the audience.

• 6:20Speaker 06

  It is more of a leather satchel than an actual briefcase. When I hear "briefcase," I think about the hard top, you know?

• 6:28Pablo Torre?

  With the locks.

• 6:29Speaker 06

  With the locks, and the combo locks. That's what I think about, very 1980s business guy chic. This is more the guy that works for a newspaper, like, maybe the editor-in-chief. He's got a satchel like that.

• 6:42Pablo Torre?

  Fake vintage, ink-stained. Hey, that's game worn. What do you mean fake vintage? Also, for those not watching, you should know that there are folders in front of both Amin and David. And David, don't, don't, please don't, for real. There is stuff in there that you have not seen either.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  People love that you do this, and I've been approached about this. That they love the fact that we come in here, Amin, and he surprises us. And the number one question I'm asked, do you really not know what's in the folder?

• 7:09Speaker 06

  We're not that good at acting. It's like, oh my gosh.

• 7:13Pablo Torre?

  For those who have not watched any of the previous many, many parts of this investigation, this is an episode that's born of what the NBA and Adam Silver, the commissioner, chose to do two days after he released Part One. They hired their preferred law firm for its internal investigations. A law firm by the name of?

• 7:33Speaker 06

  Wachtel, Lipton, and then the other two gentlemen whose names escapes me.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Those poor bastards.

• 7:38Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 7:38Pablo Torre?

  Rosen and Katz always get left off the marquee.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Proskauer, Rose, used to be Proskauer, Rose, Getz, and Mendelson. And then people were just like, forget Getz and Mendelson.

• 7:48Pablo Torre?

  And thank God you are here to remember them, David. That is why you, as my attorney, are here today. To provide that level of intimate knowledge of New York corporate white shoe law. And what that video indicates, what I can now report for the first time, is that Wachtel wanted to know if I would be willing to share any of my sources, including the multiple federal witnesses you've heard throughout this series, and/or any of the thousands of pages of documents I've obtained from inside of that climate change startup named Aspiration, whose co-founder Joe Sandberg pleaded guilty to wire fraud last year. But there was one big rule, a cardinal rule, David, governing my visit to Wachtel's office, our visit to Wachtel's office in November. And as my attorney, who I requested to bring to this meeting,

• 8:32Pablo Torre?

  you can now explain what the rule was.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  It was all confidential.

• 8:36Speaker 06

  Really?

• 8:36Pablo Torre?

  Without the record.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  They asked whether or not we'd be doing shows. And Pablo may have said, maybe. And you know what I did? I just stayed quiet, because I knew this guy. I didn't know what we were doing today, but I knew he was gonna do something.

• 8:49Pablo Torre?

  Everything that happened inside the headquarters of Wachtel, Lipton, they cannot be described in public.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  They didn't even want to describe the room.

• 8:57Speaker 06

  Really?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Like, they were dead serious. Like, they were, they led with this.

• 9:01Speaker 06

  You guys walk in, you sit down, and they go-

• 9:03Pablo Torre?

  We can't even say that we sat down.

• 9:05Speaker 06

  The game, the game rules started before you sat down.

• 9:08Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  It was early.

• 9:09Pablo Torre?

  When that video ends, we walk into the building.

• 9:13Pablo Torre?

  Silence. Can't say what happened. That's the rule.

• 9:17Speaker 06

  You just told me you didn't sit down.

• 9:19Pablo Torre?

  I said that I can't say if I sat down.

• 9:20Speaker 06

  Oh, okay.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Are you actually gonna discuss the meeting?

• 9:23Pablo Torre?

  No, what we are gonna do, though, is what I made peace with, and why you're here today, which is that I realized that what I can do, especially for Amin's sake, is show you and the audience the pieces of evidence I ultimately and very carefully did decide to bring with me.

• 9:42Speaker 06

  To the meeting?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 9:43Pablo Torre?

  What I brought, I can describe. What happened inside the meeting, I cannot.

• 9:46Speaker 06

  You cannot, yep.

• 9:47Pablo Torre?

  And so there is some actual new documentation that you and our audience will be seeing for the very first time today that Wachtel already has. David is laughing.

• 9:56Speaker 01

  I'm laughing because that's why his folder's thicker. Because I've seen it. And I was, it was something. I don't wanna give anything away.

• 10:02Pablo Torre?

  You haven't seen everything, though, David. And that's the key part of this episode.

• 10:07Speaker 06

  That's why you have a folder.

• 10:08Pablo Torre?

  And I wanna stress that the foremost priority that I had as a journalist, of course, was to do right by my sources, and this also meant ensuring that the league's internal probe, which is ongoing, clearly, could not simply dismiss or claim ignorance of the growing mountain of evidence we have collected in this series, which is why I decided to do this. And, yes, my reporting into this house of cards, this penthouse of cards, even, it continues. And some of the stuff, Amin, that we brought, like the first document in the folder before you, will be familiar.

• 10:39Speaker 06

  Okay, this is the endorsement agreement between Aspiration and KL2 Aspire LLC. It says it's effective as of April 1st, 2022, and also KL2 desires to allow company to use athlete endorsement as defined below and perform certain services for company, in each case subject to the terms and conditions contained herein.

• 11:02Pablo Torre?

  And David, you'll remember, according to your copy of this contract, you may open your folder now as well, that there were, in fact, those certain services, a few deliverables, that Aspiration bought the right to request.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  It's under H autographs. If requested to do so by company, KL2 shall cause Leonard to be available to sign 50 autographed items.

• 11:27Pablo Torre?

  Kawhi Leonard, by the way, is playing great right now.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Too little, too late.

• 11:33Pablo Torre?

  Well, he's averaging almost 40 a game over the last couple of weeks now.

• 11:36Speaker 06

  I don't think it's too little, too late, cuz all you gotta do is get to that plan, and they're only a couple of games back.

• 11:41Pablo Torre?

  And they're in New York City this week.

• 11:43Speaker 06

  Oh, wow.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Are you gonna go?

• 11:45Speaker 06

  Will they stop by?

• 11:46Pablo Torre?

  Well, in fact, we did, for the record, ask the Clippers if Kawhi Leonard, Steve Ballmer, president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank, were available for interviews, even in studio about aspiration during the road trip here, playing the Knicks and the Nets. They declined our request citing the ongoing investigation that is at the core of this episode.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  The chances of Kawhi Leonard walking in this room are 0.0. Blutarsky's GPA.

• 12:14Pablo Torre?

  But what I have been told independently is that Wachtel has, in fact, been methodically making its way towards the Clippers C-suite. As we speak, over the last four months, I mean, they have interviewed a number of aspiration employees. They're still trying to interview more, and they're trying to get to the origin story, as they see it, of the Clippers and aspiration relationship. And so from there, they will then turn to Ballmer and Kawhi and Lawrence Frank and other Clippers officials in a denouement that is unfolding truly in the new year. And this order of operations, I mean, may be personally familiar to you on some level because you happen to work in the front office of a team that was investigated by Wachtel.

• 12:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 12:53Pablo Torre?

  You worked for the Phoenix Suns under, and I, this is a great phrase, under now disgraced former owner Robert Sarver. And there was a league investigation there that was also triggered by a media report.

• 13:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, I believe Baxter Holmes was the reporter who had the story. It broke November of 2021. And they reached out to me in February of 2022, asking if we could sit down and have chat.

• 13:17Pablo Torre?

  Amid these allegations reported by ESPN, allegations of racism, misogyny, all that stuff, what was your response to Wachtel?

• 13:25Speaker 06

  None.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  You didn't sit down with them?

• 13:27Speaker 06

  Didn't sit down with them.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Were you nervous about your career?

• 13:30Speaker 06

  Uh, not about my career. I didn't do anything wrong, but I just, I did not want to speak to lawyers.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Were you told not to speak?

• 13:37Speaker 06

  No, no.

• 13:37Pablo Torre?

  Do you realize you're speaking to a lawyer right now?

• 13:39Speaker 06

  Well, yeah.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not a league lawyer, but that's noted in that I'm sort of clocking that.

• 13:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was one of those things where I was following the story very closely, and it was easier for me to read what the report was and to be like, that's not exactly how that happened, rather than actually tell them and correct them.

• 13:58Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is the wrong episode for you to be a part of.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Terribly, hopefully, the wrong country to live in for that to be the view, too.

• 14:06Pablo Torre?

  But you don't respond, and do they follow up?

• 14:09Speaker 06

  Nope.

• 14:10Pablo Torre?

  Very good.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Wachtel, in my opinion, Pablo, they were not gonna take no for an answer from you.

• 14:13Pablo Torre?

  Well, and I wanna say, like, the reason I'm at with them too is because they expressed a seriousness about wanting to talk to me and get to the bottom of this story.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  There's been a lot of balloons floated already, which is what leagues do when they're doing these investigations. And I've seen a lot, including recently, where it was, hey, maybe a couple draft picks, nothing too crazy. I do not believe they're gonna make Steve Ballmer sell because they need to have a gulf between what Sarver did, what Sterling did.

• 14:42Pablo Torre?

  As in Donald Sterling, noted racist and now fellow disgraced former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers preceding Steve Ballmer.

• 14:51Speaker 06

  So there's a lot, a lot to unpack. Number one, Sarver was not forced to sell. He was suspended, he was fined, and then what ended up happening was partners, these corporate partners pressured the Suns, like, hey, we don't want to do business. We don't want, we can't be affiliated with this thing.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  That's what happened with Dan Snyder and the Redskins.

• 15:14Speaker 06

  Right.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  It was not actually Roger Goodell forcing Snyder to sell. It was all of his partners.

• 15:19Speaker 06

  It was the corporate partners.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  There was like a mutiny on the bounty. And so, to me, what you're doing is, Wachtel is taking this as seriously as they took the Phoenix Suns. And I can tell you that from the meeting. This was not just a, hey, let's check the box and sit with Pablo.

• 15:34Speaker 06

  This is what I'll say, though, to that point, to that end, which is, even if Wachtel finds Steve Ballmer's guilty, there is not a single corporate partner of the Clippers that said, well, I can't be affiliated with this man anymore. And the second part is, there is a massive downside to getting out of business with Steve Ballmer.

• 15:54Pablo Torre?

  One basic question at the radioactive core of this entire saga, which Team Ballmer has somehow avoided answering for more than four months now, and this is the question I wanna help answer today, is pretty simple. The question is, did the Clippers know that aspirations, secret, no-show deal with Kawhi Leonard even existed?

• 16:15Pablo Torre?

  Because in a September 2025 statement, the Clippers had stressed how the marketing deal was, quote, "independent from Steve Ballmer and his franchise."

• 16:23Speaker 06

  This is the Clippers' statement courtesy of Shams Charania. He tweeted this out. Neither Steve nor the Clippers' organization had any oversight of Kawhi's independent endorsement agreement with Aspiration. To say otherwise is flat out wrong.

• 16:41Pablo Torre?

  And Team Ballmer, their most public defender, Mark Cuban, in this studio in fact, previously stressed that he personally couldn't possibly say if the team was aware of the contract either. Do you think the Clippers knew that Kawhi had this deal with Aspiration?

• 16:57Speaker 06

  I don't know. I don't know.

• 16:59Pablo Torre?

  Would you have known if you were the owner of a team and your most important player signed a deal with the...

• 17:04Speaker 06

  Not necessarily, but probably.

• 17:06Pablo Torre?

  Probably, yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 06

  Possibly.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  As president of the team, I would know every single one of them.

• 17:12Pablo Torre?

  Well, in your folders is one new thing that I shared with the NBA's internal investigators who walked out left in in November. I'm going to ask you guys to table read this because it is an email chain from inside of Aspiration. It starts on August 29, 2022. This is five months after Kawhi's endorsement contract had already gotten into effect. David, please play the role of Mike Shuckero. This is Aspiration's chief legal officer, who is writing to Aspiration's senior director of brand marketing and their chief business development officer.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  In our contract, Kawhi will sign 50 items. Open parenthens that we have to purchase per year for him to sign, close parenthens. We should get that done before year one gets deep and we are into the NBA season. In my view, the only things worth signing are NBA official game jerseys and NBA official game basketballs. I am certain Joe Sandberg will want some of the signed schwag. The rest should be user, he meant used, by Biz Dev as gifts and/or marketing as promotions. Here's the ball link. The 2022-2023 shirts are not out yet.

• 18:26Pablo Torre?

  And there's a hyperlink to Wilson.com and a basketball that you can purchase. And the Senior Director of Brand Marketing and Chief Business Development Officer then proceed to loop in Aspirations Director of Brand Marketing. We're gonna call this person the DBM. And the DBM, Amin, replies.

• 18:47Speaker 06

  Hi, Mike. Since we haven't publicly announced this endorsement deal, I wanted to double check if it's okay to talk about this Kawhi partnership with the Clippers partnership team. I ask because I know that they could likely provide us with a bunch of free or discounted basketballs and Kawhi merch, as well as facilitate signing. Coincidentally, the Clippers are planning a few bobblehead nights this season, and one of them will feature Kawhi. I want our logo to be on it. Let me know if I can start these discussions with the Clippers. Thanks.

• 19:19Pablo Torre?

  To which the Chief Legal Officer of Aspiration replies, that very same night, in writing,

• 19:23Speaker 01

  I believe the Clippers are well aware.

• 19:30Pablo Torre?

  So, in response to the Chief Legal Officer saying that the Clippers are well aware, the DBM, Director of Brand Marketing, then replies.

• 19:41Speaker 06

  Perfect. Thanks for confirming. I'll ask name redacted about merch for Kawhi to sign and report back.

• 19:49Pablo Torre?

  I should disclose here that I was in touch with the DBM, Aspiration's Director of Brand Marketing, who left the company last year in an attempt to include their perspective. And the DBM, unfortunately, ghosted me, as in like stopped replying altogether, once I sent over excerpts from the very emails that we have just read at this table, which did feel a little strange. But multiple sources have confirmed to me the identity of this merch connect, the redacted name that the DBM referenced when they wrote, quote, "I'll ask [blank] about merch for Kawhi to sign and report back," end quote, was the Director of Partnership Marketing at the Los Angeles Clippers.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  That's who would be intimately involved in any situation with Aspiration as a sponsor and would understand what the deliverables are. And that's who you would have. It wouldn't be Steve Ballmer talking to them at that level about something like autographed items or even about bobbleheads at that moment. So that, to me, that tracks how a team is run.

• 20:50Speaker 06

  There has to be a level of knowledge, right? You don't operate independently, even if the Clippers say that they had no knowledge. That doesn't matter because in order to do this, even if we're above board, you still have that connection and that communication.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Because remember, if they would ask, if Aspiration would have asked, "Hey, listen, we'd like some Kawhi stuff." And what you'd say is, "Well, you're a sponsor. You can have..." because we would allocate signed stuff per sponsor, per level. And if the ask was off, the question would come like, "No. Why do you need... You're not getting that." And then the response would be, "Wait a minute. We have an agreement that we get that."

• 21:26Speaker 06

  I think that's a real important thing to keep in mind. This isn't Aspiration, you know, a company that's in business with Kawhi, reaching out to the Clippers out of the blue. This is Aspiration, a company that has a business relationship with the Clippers itself. So these kind of communications are part of it.

• 21:43Pablo Torre?

  The thing that strikes me about these emails, right? It's like, "Let's get the merch. Let's get the signed jerseys. Let's get this bobblehead thing." There's like a checklist of like stuff we can get in the framework of our very deeply commingled endorsement deal with Kawhi that is also existing alongside our sponsorship deal in which we pay the Clippers. And so you can see that on the Clippers' side, right? In totality, what we're seeing is the Clippers are saying, "We had no oversight, no understanding. Team Ballmer, Mark Cuban, they're saying, 'We have no idea if the Clippers even knew about this crazy deal at all.'" And meanwhile, on the Aspiration's side, we have these [bleep] emails where they're just like, "Yeah, let's reach out to the Clippers. We all are talking about it. This is a deal that we're trying to activate."

• 22:27Pablo Torre?

  And they resolve to go and reach out to their counterparts at the Los Angeles Clippers, exactly as you would do as if this deal was meant to be done.

• 22:41Pablo Torre?

  And then there's the matter of what happened a couple of months after that August 2022 email chain, which is the 261-page document sitting in a Means folder.

• 22:51Speaker 06

  It is the Aspiration Partners Inc. Series C5 Preferred Stock Purchase Agreement dated as of December 9th, 2022.

• 23:02Pablo Torre?

  This is, in fact, the $1.99 million deal, which you will recall, signed by the Clippers' only co-owner, Dennis Wong, one of Steve Ballmer's oldest and best friends, dating back to their days at Harvard. This was signed, yes, December 2022, when Aspiration was two and a half months late in paying Kawhi Leonard his quarterly check of $1.75 million. But Wong, who had not invested in Aspiration before, wired in his $1.99 million, and nine days later, Kawhi gets paid. Although, the written disclosures flagged in Wong's agreement in front of you, David, they say what?

• 23:34Speaker 01

  The company is in default.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  KPMG resigned as the company's independent auditor. These are disclosures. I can answer that. FINRA is conducting five inquiries. But wait, there's more. The SEC is currently conducting a review of the ESG representations made by the company.

• 24:03Pablo Torre?

  In other words, Aspiration could not pay its bills at this point. The company actually fired 20% of its staff on the same day, December 15th, 2022, that they secretly chose to pay Kawhi his $1.75 million to do nothing. That is where the Clippers' co-owners $1.99 million went.

• 24:25Pablo Torre?

  But as for what was not written into that agreement we just read, because, you know, the whole point of this scheme was to not get caught, I also need to acknowledge another big concern expressed by Mark Cuban and Team Ballmer and all of their carefully framed denials, which is that for all of these documents, nobody actually mentions the phrase "cap circumvention" in writing. Right, and I've heard this. It seems a little convenient to have non-sports employees at this weird preplanting company in retrospect, years after the fact, identify a very explosive NBA salary cap scandal, a scheme perpetrated by the Clippers. And so the next document in your folders is a text exchange that I also shared with the NBA's lawyers at Wachtel, in the interest of transparency, that I would now like you guys to table read, too. This is February 2023.

• 25:10Speaker 06

  Right.

• 25:10Pablo Torre?

  Around this point in the timeline, according to court documents, Joe Sandberg has asked at least 19 outside investment firms to put money into Aspiration, which is in default, as said, but his company is still making it a priority to pay Kawhi Leonard. And so, these are two high-level Aspiration employees with direct knowledge of the company's C-suite, talking about what kind of bankruptcy Aspiration is gonna file for. Chapter seven, and in chapter seven, the company has to completely liquidate. In chapter 11, the less extreme version, you can restructure, try to repay your creditors. Amin, please be gray bubble. Okay. David, please be blue bubble.

• 25:44Speaker 06

  I'm so curious, how do they decide between seven and 11?

• 25:48Speaker 01

  The courts will. We can file for chapter 11, which we likely will, and then a bankruptcy court will come in and either verify that's the appropriate action, and we continue unwinding the business, while they move through it with creditors, or the courts see the books and they say, "Yeah, no, cease business. This is chapter seven. You can't be trusted to keep doing business right now."

• 26:10Speaker 06

  Oh, interesting, I see. So, maybe there is a grand plan.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Unlikely.

• 26:16Pablo Torre?

  And to Blue Bubble's credit, by the way, that is basically what happened. So, Aspiration filed for chapter 11, then pivoted to chapter seven last July, and then the conversation proceeds.

• 26:26Speaker 06

  Imagine when Ballmer finds out.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Ballmer has to be in on the take. I am so suspicious of him.

• 26:34Speaker 06

  I mean, I think they meant to say, "I mean," he's C-close with JS.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Especially with the salary cap, and Kawhi, and just all the shady dealings.

• 26:47Pablo Torre?

  So, the salary cap, and Kawhi, and all the shady dealings, and mentioning Ballmer being in on the take and being suspicious of him.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Here's some writing. I want to go back a little bit to Wachtel. I mean, just to paint a little picture with Pablo not wanting me to, but I don't care. So you have to understand that Pablo is handing stuff.

• 27:08Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  And Wachtel is investigating and they're taking it. And I was doing some eye reading because I want to see that's what negotiations are. You're looking always at your adversary. You're looking for any tells.

• 27:21Pablo Torre?

  Cues.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Looking for anything.

• 27:23Pablo Torre?

  Uh huh.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  And I was looking for, have they seen this before? Is there any element of surprise?

• 27:27Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Or are they just like, yeah, whatever, man. I've got, I got five copies of this. Like, this is no big deal. And there were, in the course of this, several times where I saw some pupil dilation. And because...

• 27:42Speaker 01

  I'm just, I was looking for that. I don't think the pupils are on the record, David.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  I disagree. I'm comfortable telling you that I saw pupil dilation.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  These bubbles are meaningful, at least to me.

• 27:56Pablo Torre?

  Well, look, speaking to the analysis in the bubbles, right?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:59Pablo Torre?

  There was no shock or comment or reaction or question at all from Gray Bubble about, quote, "the salary cap and Kawhi once Blue Bubble brought it up", which does conform with what I've reported previously, which is that cap survention, the whole reason Kawhi's endorsement deal allegedly existed in the first place, was pretty matter-of-factly discussed in direct reference to Steve Ballmer by multiple other high-level aspiration employees, several of whom, again, have become federal witnesses in the DOJ and SEC investigations into Joe Sandberg and aspiration. But here, I mean, is how Gray Bubble continues their thought about Ballmer being close to JS. He's apparently a mentor to him.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Oh, perfect. Ha ha.

• 28:45Pablo Torre?

  Learned that from AC? And AC, by the way, according to multiple aspiration sources, is not Al Cowling's, unfortunately. You know, sidekick in the Ford Bronco case. Right in the Broncos.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Yes, I was thinking, my first thought was AC Green. That popped into my head immediately.

• 29:00Pablo Torre?

  Alex Caruso. So many different jokes that I can make here. But this is, in fact, a different confidant to a man in Los Angeles who would get in trouble with the law. This AC you can find in SEC filings and also in this NASDAQ.com press release about the food delivery company Blue Apron.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Upon closing Alex Chalunco, Mr. Sandberg's chief investment officer will join the Blue Apron Board.

• 29:25Pablo Torre?

  The thing about Alex Chalunco is that he was close enough to Sandberg, such that Sandberg said, "You will be on the board of this company that I'm going to be an early investor in." And Alex Chalunco, I should say, did not respond to our request for comment.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Well, I don't have this information, except I would say that what a chief investment officer would have input and knowledge of is everything. Right. One of the things that I liked is cash management, where you are taking an endowment, or you're taking extra cash you have, and you are figuring out how you're going to invest it, because that's part of how you fund operations, is making money with your money. The second thing a chief investment officer does is they are in charge of the capital structure of the company, working in conjunction with the CFO, always with the president and CEO, as they figure out what's called the cap table. The cap table is the list of people who own what, and at what number they're at in terms of percentage ownership, and what their base is.

• 30:22Pablo Torre?

  And Steve Ballmer did not furiously sever ties with Aspiration upon learning that the company was insolvent. It's worth recalling what happened the month after these texts, right? So now we're in March 2023. Like his old buddy and co-owner of the Clippers, Dennis Wong, Ballmer decided to invest millions of dollars. Another $10 million in 2023 to go along with his initial $50 million from 2021. And even more bizarrely, David, he invested at the same multi-billion dollar valuation that Aspiration had in 2021, as if nothing was going wrong with the company. And so what all of this indicates is simply this.

• 31:00Pablo Torre?

  The Clippers, the relationship between Steve Ballmer and Joe Sandberg, and these two companies, their respective companies, you know, again, this is the context. They're both Harvard graduates, they're huge Democratic donors, they are people who are in business together in both directions. It might not be how it's been publicly portrayed.

• 31:18Speaker 01

  No, and I can't wait from the Wachtel standpoint because if Steve Ballmer goes in and says that he had no idea of anything and Wachtel chooses, whatever they choose, it will take into account whether Adam Silver does, that to me has always been the one that struck me about your reporting is I know what our owner was aware of and what he wasn't, and I know what I was aware of as team president and what I wasn't. Would I know of a small $10,000 local deal with a car dealership that one of our players had? No. I would not. Would I know about a $30 million deal, $9 million a year, $7 million a year? Would I know what our player is doing? I would, and if I do, that means our owner does.

• 32:02Pablo Torre?

  And so there's a follow-up question then, given the framework of how you do business, which is when did the Clippers even discover Aspiration as an entity? Because it might not be as late in this very long con as Team Ballmer would have you believe.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  Are you saying that they were aware of Aspiration prior to Aspiration becoming a sponsor of Intuit Dome?

• 32:27Pablo Torre?

  I am saying that we're going to discuss this after the break.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a tease, folks.

• 32:41Pablo Torre?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 33:14Speaker 07

  This podcast is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Kick off unforgettable travel journeys with Navy Federal's flagship Premier Card. You'll get four times points on all travel. Yes, all travel. So if you book a hotel, you'll earn four times points. If you book a flight, you'll earn four times points. Even if you book a ride share, you'll earn four times points. Plus, you'll earn three times points on dining. And unlike other cards, it doesn't require you to use any booking portals and has no rewards limits. So earning points couldn't be easier. It's all the travel, none of the baggage. So whether your next journey takes you hiking through a national park, relaxing on the beach, staying at a resort, or visiting somewhere on your bucket list, you can earn four times points on all your travel with the flagship Premier Card.

• 33:58Speaker 07

  Visit NavyFederal.org/flagshippremier to find out more. Navy Federal Credit Union, our members of the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA. Terms and conditions apply for rewards.

• 34:11Speaker 02

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed and the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.

• 34:49Pablo Torre?

  So I do need to remind everybody, you two guys included, in fairness to the Clippers, that Steve Ballmer and Dennis Wong were not the only investors of note in Aspiration. In fact, on Aspiration's Twitter account, which has since rebranded itself after filing for bankruptcy, as we discussed. Chapter 11. Yep, and then seven. They rebranded themselves as @GreenFiBanking. Okay, and I found this post from when it was still Aspiration from back in December of 2021. And this is a key year of 2021 in Steve Ballmer's version of this timeline, I mean. And so it's a tweet that I would ask you here to describe for us. All right.

• 35:29Speaker 06

  This is at Green FI Banking. We're honored to be joined in our mission of providing sustainability services to people and business by marquee investors Oak Tree Capital Management LP and Steve Ballmer. #SpendSustainably.

• 35:48Pablo Torre?

  And it links to this Bloomberg.com article with a splashy headline covered by Steve Ballmer's giant face.

• 35:56Speaker 06

  Oak Tree Ballmer bet $315 million on Aspiration before SPAC deal.

• 36:04Pablo Torre?

  We first mentioned Oak Tree Capital Management, which is a very blue-chip investment firm in part one of the series. We'll come back to them, by the way, in a minute. But just remember what Steve Ballmer told ESPN the day after he dropped part one, right? Which is that he didn't even know about Aspiration until the company, Aspiration, approached the Clippers in the year 2021.

• 36:27Speaker 08

  This is a company that I got to know, frankly, through them approaching us about a sponsorship deal. My family and I were super keen to do work to stem climate change. We think that's an important thing. I was in the process of even changing the design of Intuit Dome so that we could be carbon neutral. And then we meet this company that focuses in on an aspect of carbon neutrality. To me, it seemed like a match, kind of made in heaven, if you will. And then they offered us-

• 37:00Pablo Torre?

  The month after that ESPN interview, I mean, the Wall Street Journal on the front page took it a step further. This was last October. This was after our reporting. The Journal cited a Team Ballmer source who actually increased the distance between Ballmer and Sandberg even more. And David, if you could read that quote in front of you from the Journal.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  A person close to the Ballmer group, his investment company, said the two hardly knew each other. He said that Ballmer and Sandberg had their first significant interaction at the press conference announcing the partnership between the Clippers and Aspiration. I wonder, is significant mean they're next to each other? Is it dinner? How many dinners do you have to have to have significant interaction? One, can't be one.

• 37:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, significant.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Three?

• 37:48Speaker 06

  Significant, it's not about volume, it's about intensity, right? So if I could have dozens of interactions with you, but all my interactions are, "Hey David, all right, bye David, hey, happy new year David."

• 38:00Speaker 01

  So we've had volume.

• 38:01Pablo Torre?

  But remember what Ballmer told ESPN, right? The first interview. "This is a company that I got to know, frankly, through them approaching us about a sponsorship deal."

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Boy, does he regret that interview.

• 38:12Pablo Torre?

  Well, what we can do here, though, is re-watch the presser from September 2021 between Aspirations' marquee investor and the man he picked to be a, quote, "founding partner of his crown jewel, the Intuit Dome." Because unfamiliarity isn't exactly the impression.

• 38:28Speaker 06

  Is this the part where we look at their pupil dilation?

• 38:31Speaker 09

  Steve Ballmer is one of the most underappreciated, unheralded philanthropists of our time. I know that because he has quietly been an ally of some of the most important social justice movements that I've been involved in to fight poverty, to fight racial injustice, to fight economic inequality. And he always does it without taking any credit. And so I'm not going to blow his cover too specifically, but I will just underscore that to be aligned with someone of those values is very special. And...

• 39:04Pablo Torre?

  And so the question, practically speaking, becomes evidence-based. When did Steve Ballmer and Joe Sandberg actually cross paths? And so we asked the Clippers for an answer, and they again declined to comment citing the NBA's investigation. But we want to fully answer this question as best we can of when this match made in heaven actually did get started. And it turns out that you cannot start with 2021.

• 39:32Pablo Torre?

  In fact, the year you need to start with, it turns out, is 2018. You actually need to start with the first day, January 1st, of 2018.

• 39:44Speaker 06

  Oh, boy.

• 39:45Pablo Torre?

  Because on January 1st, 2018, a nonprofit called the Golden State Opportunity Fund first started receiving annual donations from the Ballmer Group. And this is the group whose source the journal quoted before. And this is notable because, as we reported in part five of our series, the lone founder and chairman of the board of this charity, whose face also is plastered on the website and the marketing materials, is who?

• 40:12Speaker 06

  Joe Sandberg.

• 40:13Pablo Torre?

  And look, I get that Steve Ballmer has billions upon billions upon billions of dollars. And I even understand that you can't take his quote to 60 Minutes, in which Ballmer and his wife Connie said that they strategized about the Ballmer Group's donations, quote, "Grant by Grant," literally.

• 40:29Speaker 08

  You can't look back and say, "Well, people's economic mobility this year was a 2, and next year it's going to be a 2.3."

• 40:36Speaker 10

  Yeah, now, we can't do population-level measurement. But place by place, you know, grant by grant, we can do that.

• 40:43Pablo Torre?

  You may also recall that Steve Ballmer went on to donate $1.875 million to Joe Sandberg's charity, as aforementioned, in late 2024, which was 10 months at least after Ballmer already knew that the federal government had investigated Sandberg for conning people like Steve Ballmer. This was even after another Aspiration board member had already been arrested by the FBI in connection to Sandberg's scheme.

• 41:07Speaker 06

  He's a very forgiving man, Pablo. I don't know what you're not understanding.

• 41:10Pablo Torre?

  The point is that Ballmer started sending money to Sandberg at the very start of 2018. So, let's just stay there for a minute. And I want us to keep scrolling through Aspiration's old Twitter account, which has, since rebranded itself after filing for bankruptcy, @GreenFiBanking. These are all posts from before the rebrand, because you get to a post eventually that someone maybe forgot to delete. David, what is the date and timestamp of this post?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  10:00 a.m. on August 23rd, 2018.

• 41:51Pablo Torre?

  Amin, could you please describe what this post says and shows?

• 41:55Speaker 06

  It is a picture of Aspiration employees, I have to assume, all sitting around. It looks like they're mid-applause, as at the front of the room, one and only Doc Rivers, former head coach of the Clippers, with a smile on his face. Do you want me to read the copy?

• 42:11Pablo Torre?

  I would love you to, actually.

• 42:12Speaker 06

  All right. Basketball emoji.

• 42:16Speaker 06

  What better way to get motivated in the team meeting than having our very own coach? Special guest Doc Rivers stopped by to share why he's excited about Aspiration and encouraged us to keep our heads in the game at LA Clippers. It's not Blake's fault.

• 42:30Pablo Torre?

  The fact that there is this photo from that same year at this office, which happens to be, by the way, we did the Google Maps on this, conveniently located less than 10 minutes away from the Clippers' practice facility at the time.

• 42:43Speaker 06

  Playa Vista.

• 42:44Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, so this was Marina Del Rey office of Aspiration. Playa Vista was where the Clippers used to practice before the whole Intuit thing came to be.

• 42:52Speaker 06

  Hold on, man. They have a relationship with the Clippers in 2018?

• 42:58Pablo Torre?

  Doc Rivers, by the way, at the time, was not merely the head coach of the Clippers in 2018.

• 43:02Speaker 06

  He was the president of basketball operations.

• 43:04Pablo Torre?

  He had just been replaced by Lawrence Frank as president of basketball operations, but he was still reporting directly to Steve Ballmer.

• 43:12Speaker 06

  Right.

• 43:12Pablo Torre?

  And the next thing, David, I'd like you to review here are internal documents that I obtained that mentioned two other Aspiration investors that we have not discussed so explicitly yet. Can you please name those investors?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  The Glenn A. Rivers Revocable Trust UA September and the Kristen Rivers Revocable Trust UA September. And I will bet you a dollar that Glenn A. Rivers is known as Doc and that Kristen is likely someone in his family, I mean.

• 43:46Speaker 06

  It is his former wife. It was wife at the time.

• 43:48Pablo Torre?

  Yes, as of February of 2018. So.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  It's normal to do it through a trust.

• 43:56Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah, that part.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  That's not, that's normal.

• 43:58Speaker 06

  This is episode seven, right?

• 44:00Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 44:00Speaker 06

  How are we still, I feel like I should have, I should have called this from the beginning. From the, from episode one, as soon as we found out, Aspiration, Clippers, money on the table. There's a lot of kind of moving parts and caps are convention. Why didn't the name Doc Rivers come out my mouth immediately?

• 44:16Pablo Torre?

  So I reached out to Doc Rivers, who declined comment, but I should just observe that these investments, yeah, they came more than a year before Kawhi Leonard, by the way, would officially be a free agent in 2019.

• 44:30Pablo Torre?

  So I'm just saying that like this social network was not only geographically tight, they were investing years before all of this.

• 44:40Speaker 06

  Incestuous. This is incestuous.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  It doesn't go to speak to that, gentlemen, in my opinion. It certainly speaks to knowledge. This is not wrong on its face to tell your friends, hey, I'm investing in this company. Let's do this. But it certainly goes to knowledge.

• 44:57Pablo Torre?

  The social network that we're describing would have known more than hardly knowing anything, which was the previous quote.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  They're still going with that.

• 45:07Speaker 06

  This is, this is the part, again, that tests credulity.

• 45:10Pablo Torre?

  I'm merely saying that these investments happened, that team building speech happened years before Steve Ballmer says he heard of the company. We're just going based on what's been documented.

• 45:23Speaker 06

  This is out there.

• 45:23Pablo Torre?

  This is just people not putting together what the social network consists of. And so speaking of, by the way, I now want to take us to what Sam Amick at The Athletic reported in December of 2019. Because this was after the NBA and its attorneys opened the original investigation into alleged Clippers salary cap surrender convention and Kawhi's unlicensed representative slash uncle Dennis Robertson. Amin, could you read?

• 45:48Speaker 06

  Sources say the league was told that Robertson asked team officials for part ownership of the team, a private plane that would be available at all times, a house, and last but certainly not least, a guaranteed amount of off-court endorsement money that they could expect if Leonard played for their team. All of those items, to be clear, would fall well outside of the confines of the league's collective bargaining agreement.

• 46:14Pablo Torre?

  So what I've been doing, by the way, is going back now in our timeline from 2018 to 2019. And so I've been living in 2019 for the past several months.

• 46:23Speaker 06

  There's this thing called COVID that's coming. Prepare.

• 46:26Pablo Torre?

  I don't know.

• 46:27Speaker 06

  Buy a lot of toilet paper.

• 46:28Pablo Torre?

  I just love bats.

• 46:31Pablo Torre?

  This is a period, by the way, that Steve Ballmer, I think, would probably prefer that we not discuss in depth, but it brought me to a rare interview with Kawhi Leonard that actually got published two months ago. This was in November. This is the same month that David and I visited, walked House offices, actually. And this interview is with an outlet called Flaunt Magazine.

• 46:52Speaker 06

  Love that.

• 46:53Pablo Torre?

  And this interview also came with a high-end fashion shoot, which we're showing to you guys right now.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  I can't pull that off.

• 47:00Pablo Torre?

  Could you describe what you're seeing, Amin?

• 47:03Speaker 06

  He's wearing a duster of some sort, or maybe it's a pea coat, and he's on the beach, he had a surfboard, now he's wearing flowing linen kind of robes, now he's wearing a Celine kind of, was that a varsity jacket? Now he's lying down on a couch, and he's wearing a gray hoodie. Now he's got no shirt on at all. Yes, he's showing us that ripped physique. This is as out of his shell as I've ever seen him.

• 47:26Pablo Torre?

  He kind of has like captive Venezuelan president vibes. He's just like not totally loving being out here in public, like, performing.

• 47:35Speaker 06

  Right.

• 47:36Pablo Torre?

  And so, in this interview, by the way, to get back to the content of it, Kawhi didn't talk about secretly getting a house in 2019, or an endorsement deal with Aspiration in 2021, or anything involving Steve Ballmer or Oak Tree Capital Management. But there was one excerpt, David, from Flaunt that I found interesting. Could you please read?

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Leonard has recently opened his own production company, Lavish Mountain Productions, that focuses on animation and commercial work. He speaks of being deeply motivated by the entrepreneurial spirit of it all.

• 48:10Pablo Torre?

  Lavish Mountain.

• 48:13Speaker 06

  I like that name.

• 48:14Pablo Torre?

  Lavish Mountain is a conspicuous name, and it's so conspicuous that I found it in the state of Florida, it turns out, because that is where Uncle Dennis Robertson registered a company called Lavish Mountain LLC. But he didn't do this recently, as Flaunt Magazine suggests. According to the public filing, Amin, which is the next document in your folder, he registered it when?

• 48:40Speaker 06

  November 4th, 2019.

• 48:43Pablo Torre?

  Which would be around when?

• 48:44Speaker 06

  The beginning of the first season Kawhi Leonard plays for the Los Angeles Clippers.

• 48:49Pablo Torre?

  And according to property records we obtained, the very next day, November 5th, 2019, Lavish Mountain LLC acquired the grant deed for a house. A luxury penthouse, actually, at a building that I mean, I think you know quite well. It's in downtown Los Angeles.

• 49:08Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 49:09Pablo Torre?

  It's a very high floor. It's worth about 6.725 million dollars at the Ritz Carlton Residences. And according to these records, public records we requested from the Los Angeles Treasurer and Tax Collector, the entity paying the property taxes on this penthouse, since Lavish Mountain purchased it, has been who, David? The payer name? Kawhi Leonard. And as confirmed by various public real estate listings as well, this property happens to be the same penthouse, it seems, where Kawhi lived or stayed, at least until he put it up for sale in 2024. But of course, I didn't totally understand, initially, why this penthouse was very quietly conveyed through an LLC started by Uncle Dennis in the state of Florida.

• 49:53Pablo Torre?

  And so, David, I'd just like you to now look at your next document, which is the grant deed for Unit 43G, the unit in question. Because I'd like you to please tell me who sold it to Lavish Mountain LLC. Larry W. Keel. Larry Wayne Keel.

• 50:12Speaker 06

  Should I know that name?

• 50:13Pablo Torre?

  I think that name is pretty unknown to, I guess, our entire audience at this point. Uh, most people listening wouldn't recognize it.

• 50:19Speaker 06

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:20Pablo Torre?

  But Mean, please open the next thing in your folder, and then describe what you're seeing.

• 50:26Speaker 06

  So it's two pictures, side by side. Uh, the first picture, taken somewhere in the 90s, of five, uh, middle-aged men in white shirts and ties. And then, what clearly looks like a reenactment, or an attempt to reenact that photo, current day, and they're all a little heavier and a lot grayer, and some hair has been lost.

• 50:44Pablo Torre?

  Well, I'm not needing you to judge how they've aged.

• 50:47Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, that's just how, how it works, how it happens. Do you want me to read the caption underneath?

• 50:52Pablo Torre?

  Yes, please.

• 50:53Speaker 06

  So, as I said, five gentlemen, and the caption says, "From left..." Oak Tree founders Larry Keel, Sheldon Stone, Richard Masson, Howard Marks, and Bruce Karsh in 1995 and in 2020. So I was right, it was in the mid 90s. I just guessed it by looking at it.

• 51:13Pablo Torre?

  Larry W. Keel is in fact the co-founder of Oak Tree Capital Management. He's the only guy sitting in a chair in these photos, taking 25 years apart. He served on the board of directors through 2019 before becoming an advisory partner to Oak Tree. And you may recall Oak Tree, of course, from like 10 minutes ago or whatever it's been, as the other marquee investor in aspiration. That aspiration tweeted about being so honored to have on board right alongside Steve Ballmer. And he owned a place at the Ritz. Ah, guys. I mean, we here at Palatouria Finds Out, just to be very diligent, asked Larry W. Keel and Oak Tree Capital Management how it is that in November 2019,

• 51:55Pablo Torre?

  the same year Kawhi Leonard's Uncle Dennis notoriously demanded a house from prospective teams who wanted to sign his nephew, that Larry W. Keel wound up selling Kawhi Leonard a penthouse through an LLC that his uncle created the day before. And how it is also that two years after that transaction in November 2021, Uncle Dennis created yet another LLC through which Kawhi Leonard would be paid millions of dollars in secret endorsement money from aspiration, which happened to be the same company that the firm Larry W. Keel founded had invested in alongside Steve Ballmer. And Larry W. Keel did not respond. Maybe in fairness, all of this is an insane coincidence.

• 52:35Speaker 06

  The transaction itself can be above board. Again, the important, the pertinent information is that who sold it to whom. Right? And in that sense, that it wasn't anyone else in the world. It wasn't David Samson that sold it. It wasn't Bud Selig. It was Larry Keel, the co-founder of Oak Tree. Which has, again, going back to what we talked about Steve Ballmer, another thread connecting his orbit to this company.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  But also, there are transactions that often happen amongst friends, where they buy each other's places and you hear, hey, he bought the house of the movie star and they did a deal because we have players who do transactions when they're traded.

• 53:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, they buy each other's houses.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  They buy each other's houses. So that shows to me there's a relationship. It doesn't show that that is a deal that is nefarious.

• 53:26Speaker 06

  Absolutely, but to me, that's all this is about. It's not, everyone wants it to be like, aha, we got it. That's the house that he asked for. Like, no, it's just demonstrating yet again, there's no way these people don't know each other, which is

• 53:39Speaker 01

  I'm comfortable with that.

• 53:40Speaker 06

  Which is what they keep trying to tell us. Oh, I don't know, I don't know anybody. This has nothing to do with me.

• 53:45Pablo Torre?

  Yes, this is, if nothing else, a social network that keeps drawing the money behind aspiration and the Clippers closer together.

• 54:06Speaker 07

  This podcast is brought to you by Navy Federal Credit Union. Kick off unforgettable travel journeys with Navy Federal's Flagship Premier Card. You'll get four times points on all travel. Yes, all travel. So if you book a hotel, you'll earn four times points. If you book a flight, you'll earn four times points. Even if you book a ride share, you'll earn four times points. Plus, you'll earn three times points on dining. And unlike other cards, it doesn't require you to use any booking portals and has no rewards limits. So earning points couldn't be easier. It's all the travel, none of the baggage. So whether your next journey takes you hiking through a national park, relaxing on the beach, staying at a resort or visiting somewhere on your bucket list, you can earn four times points on all your travel with the Flagship Premier Card.

• 54:50Speaker 07

  Visit navyfederal.org/flagshippremier to find out more. Navy Federal Credit Union, our members of the mission. Navy Federal is insured by NCUA. Terms and conditions apply for rewards.

• 55:05Speaker 11

  Hey, I'm Max Brown. You know The Athletic is home to the world's best sports journalism, but this fall, just in time for football season, we're launching something unlike anything we've ever done. We're building a daily show streaming live on YouTube. Me, Kofi Yoboa, Charles McDonald, and The Athletic's own Zach Harper and Daniel Popper. We'll be hosting live watch-alongs of the biggest games with award-winning analysis and behind-the-scenes insights from Athletic insiders. On off days, we'll go deeper into the hard-hitting stories you can't get enough of. And we want you, the smartest fans in sports, to be part of it. Come drop questions in the chat and we'll bring the answers straight from the source. The Athletic Live, presented by Google Gemini. Follow us on YouTube and we'll see you in the chat.

• 56:33Pablo Torre?

  So, I need to acknowledge here that we have presented a lot more evidence from the aspiration side of things than the Clipper side of things. And that's despite my best efforts, but that's where our information, clearly, admittedly, seems to be the strongest. And in fact, the only time I think Kawhi has ever been asked or had to answer questions about aspiration at all was at Clippers Media Day before the season, and Kawhi, David, was not especially impressed with our reporting.

• 57:04Speaker 12

  Like I said, I don't deal with the conspiracies or the clickbait.

• 57:11Speaker 12

  Analyst or journalism that's going on. So that's, that's what it is.

• 57:16Speaker 13

  Well, I think the allegation was that, that you didn't perform any services for them. Do you, is that accurate or, or did you do things for them?

• 57:22Speaker 12

  I don't think it's accurate, but it's old. This is, this is all new to you guys. Um, the company went bankrupt a while ago, so, um, we already knew this was going to happen, so.

• 57:33Speaker 06

  Called you a journalist, you know, so that's a positive.

• 57:36Pablo Torre?

  That is a lot more than others have done lately. But before we abandon our microphones.

• 57:41Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 57:41Pablo Torre?

  And in the interest of yet more sunlight in a world of many unplanted trees, we need to return to that August 2022 email chain that we started with, where Aspiration's chief legal officer said about Kawhi's $28 million endorsement deal, quote, "I believe the Clippers are well aware." And the director of brand marketing, the venerable DBM of Aspiration, replied by saying they'd asked the director of partnership marketing at the Clippers about getting Kawhi to sign some merch and, you know, have the team put the Aspiration logo on a Kawhi bobblehead. And I want to acknowledge again, in the skepticism of all of this, yeah, look, I can imagine Team Ballmer saying like, yeah, you have aspiration side conversations.

• 58:25Pablo Torre?

  And I haven't provided proof that those conversations with the Clippers actually took place. And so, Amin, this is where I finally need to ask you to please open the briefcase that you don't think of as a briefcase.

• 58:41Speaker 06

  Oh, I get to touch the briefcase?

• 58:42Pablo Torre?

  That's been patiently waiting for your touch this whole time.

• 58:46Speaker 06

  All right.

• 58:47Pablo Torre?

  It's very weathered.

• 58:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 58:49Pablo Torre?

  A good patina.

• 58:50Speaker 06

  You're saying this is vintage and not, not just-

• 58:52Pablo Torre?

  No, I said it was vintage.

• 58:54Speaker 06

  All right.

• 58:54Pablo Torre?

  It is literally vintage. It's like decades old.

• 58:56Speaker 06

  Okay, I'm making sure that we didn't get this from anthropology or something like that.

• 59:01Pablo Torre?

  March 21st, 2023 was less than two weeks after Steve Ballmer quietly invested another $10 million into aspiration. Less than two weeks before, another quarterly aspiration payment was due to Kawhi on March 31st. And on that day, March 21st, the Clippers gave a free gift. I mean...

• 59:21Speaker 06

  How did you get this? I know, it's a bobblehead. But it's not any bobblehead, folks. It's a one-armed Kawhi Leonard bobblehead. He's wearing his Los Angeles Clippers number two jersey. His head is bobbling and underneath it says Kawhi Leonard, and right above Kawhi Leonard is a little plaque that says aspiration.

• 59:42Pablo Torre?

  The arm, uh, fell off in transit.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Very common.

• 59:45Pablo Torre?

  eBay.

• 59:46Speaker 06

  This is...

• 59:47Speaker 01

  To have armless bobbleheads, I've got a whole collection.

• 59:49Speaker 06

  Art imitating life.

• 59:51Pablo Torre?

  Truly.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  That's a thread.

• 59:53Pablo Torre?

  I mean, look, in the words of Aspiration's Director for Brand Marketing from the email chain, "The Clippers are planning a few bobblehead nights this season, and one of them will feature Kawhi. I want our logo to be on it. Let me know if I can start these discussions with the Clippers."

• 1:00:09Speaker 06

  You know, I've seen a million of these. This little tile on top of it is... You know, when you go to a house and you say, "Oh, that part of this house was not built with the rest of the house." This is an extension. I get the vibe that this thing was like a last-second...

• 1:00:26Pablo Torre?

  Well, it is important to note that this is the one and only Clippers bobblehead that has ever had an aspiration logo on it. And that the month before Kawhi's aspiration bobblehead, for instance, February 2023, Nicholas Batum's bobblehead was sponsored by Cedar Sinai. And I can see a photo of that on the Clippers Twitter account, showing it to you on video.

• 1:00:47Speaker 06

  That doesn't look like Nicholas Batum at all.

• 1:00:50Pablo Torre?

  And the year before that, by the way, the first season aspiration was a Clipper sponsor. Cedar Sinai also happens to be who sponsored Kawhi's bobblehead. This was the spring of 2022. There's a whole set you could pick up. I also need you guys to tell me if you notice anything about how the Clippers Twitter account promoted Kawhi's bobblehead, the one sitting in front of us in March 2023, in contrast to how they promoted the others, including Nicholas Batum's, the month before.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Oh my god. Did they take out... I mean, they took off the aspiration logo. Look at that, it's blank.

• 1:01:21Speaker 06

  I should read for the listening audience. Tomorrow is Tuesday. I get it, the number two and then a prospes day. Be one of the first of 10,000 fans in the building and receive a Kawhi Leonard bobblehead exclamation point. That's it. And then it's a picture, as we said, of the bobblehead. The placard that says aspiration in real life is blank and that's it. Compare and contrast. The Batum one says hashtag Clipper Nation. We are back in action on Friday. Be one of the first of 10,000 fans in attendance and receive a at Nicholas 88 Batum bobblehead, courtesy of Cedar Sinai. So obviously, I don't think Kawhi has a Twitter account. That's why they couldn't tag him.

• 1:02:06Speaker 06

  They just said Kawhi Leonard. But certainly you would tag the sponsor because that's the whole point of why we're having a bobblehead.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  You do not do a bobblehead giveaway without a sponsor. Period.

• 1:02:19Speaker 06

  That's who's paying for it, pretty much.

• 1:02:21Pablo Torre?

  And so the question of like, why isn't there the aspiration word anywhere on this public post on the Clippers account? Is followed up by a question that our graphics department raised, which is, why did they edit out? According to an error level analysis that they performed for us here at Pablo Torre Finds Out, so that it's just a white sign at Kawhi's feet.

• 1:02:45Speaker 06

  So wow, look at this. Okay, ladies and gentlemen.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Wait, say this again. I don't understand what you're saying.

• 1:02:50Speaker 06

  So he's saying they did an analysis of the image. It had aspiration on it and it was digitally removed. It reminds me of the Epstein files where they redacted, but they didn't know what they were doing. They redacted. They made it very easy for you to just basically read the redacted parts.

• 1:03:06Speaker 01

  So what you found out is that they took a picture with the aspiration logo and they photoshopped it out before tweeting it.

• 1:03:12Pablo Torre?

  Look, like, we can't say definitively that this is Photoshop, but I urge you to look at what the white box looks like.

• 1:03:19Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:03:20Pablo Torre?

  And how black that, almost like a redaction that boxes versus the other white objects on the bobblehead in the photo.

• 1:03:29Speaker 06

  So the name Kawhi Leonard, right? The words Los Angeles, which are kind of behind him. The Los Angeles Clippers font on the jersey, the socks that he's wearing, the white in the sneakers, the white on the piping of the jersey.

• 1:03:45Pablo Torre?

  Right, they all have digital noise.

• 1:03:47Speaker 06

  Very noisy, very noisy. And then you have this perfect black box where that white placard is. If it were a picture of a blank plaque, basically.

• 1:04:00Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 06

  Then.

• 1:04:01Pablo Torre?

  In real life.

• 1:04:02Speaker 06

  In real life, a white, blank plaque. Then we would see the same sort of noise that we see on his socks, that we see on his name, that we see on the Los Angeles, that we see on the piping of the jersey. Instead, we just see perfect black, like something that was redacted, digitally altered.

• 1:04:21Pablo Torre?

  That's what it would seem.

• 1:04:23Speaker 06

  So, hold on. Let's go back to this timeline again. Aspiration is on the edge, starting when? When are things going down at Aspiration?

• 1:04:33Pablo Torre?

  So, Bomber puts in the $10 million when pretty much no outside investor will in this same month, two weeks before this.

• 1:04:41Speaker 06

  Got it.

• 1:04:41Pablo Torre?

  And the federal government is closing in literally around this time.

• 1:04:46Speaker 06

  So, at this moment in time, the Clippers, we are inferring that they know that Aspiration is going into a bad place.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  Can we assume though, I mean, that Aspiration was not making its sponsorship payments?

• 1:05:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  So, they wouldn't get that. So, then you would take it out now. But I would, the question is, would I even give away the bobblehead with the sponsor who hadn't paid its bills? Certainly, I wouldn't promote it.

• 1:05:10Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  I would Photoshop it from the tweet. The question is, would I blow the whole thing off?

• 1:05:15Speaker 06

  Yeah, would I still give it away?

• 1:05:16Speaker 01

  That's, and, and.

• 1:05:18Speaker 06

  Now, but you know, David, teams announce when the bobblehead nights are at the beginning of the year, so.

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  And people buy tickets for those games. I would give it, I would still give it, Pablo, just so you know. But I would not promote it on Twitter. I'd be so pissed off if Aspiration were not paying its bills.

• 1:05:32Speaker 06

  But Aspiration not paying its bills, once again, lets us know, hey, this company seems to be having some problems.

• 1:05:40Pablo Torre?

  Why would you put in $10 million more dollars?

• 1:05:44Speaker 06

  When you, you have inside knowledge, not even outside.

• 1:05:47Pablo Torre?

  This is exactly my point.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  I think there should be an investigation.

• 1:05:51Pablo Torre?

  But listen, at the end of March 2023, Kawhi Leonard was due to another quarterly payment. Simultaneous to this, Aspiration was having trouble paying its bills to the Clippers. And the Clippers, meanwhile, were doing [BLEEP] like this that raises all of these questions in retrospect about why and how and what did you know and when did you know it?

• 1:06:12Speaker 06

  This brings me back to a point I made after we recorded the very first episode and hearing the reaction from people, from Mark Cuban to Clipper fans to NBA players. Everyone's talking about this. And the thing that they kept coming up with, I think Cuban did as well, like, "Oh, why would they be this sloppy? Why would they be this sloppy?" And I cannot stress this enough. Look how much work and how much digging and how much you, Pablo, and your wonderful team had to do for us to uncover any of it. This wasn't sloppy. This was sophisticated as [BLEEP]. Like, "Oh, they were so sloppy." No, this should have been the perfect crime.

• 1:06:55Pablo Torre?

  Look, in fairness, again, Kawhi Leonard may think that I'm a conspiracist, that we are conspiracists.

• 1:07:01Speaker 06

  Clickbaity.

• 1:07:02Pablo Torre?

  And, well, you know, he, Kawhi Leonard, also, like Aspiration's brand marketing director, may not want to answer any more of my questions. The Clippers, for the record, when we asked why there's no mention of Aspiration on their post about Kawhi's bobblehead, which has it on the physical thing, declined to comment citing the whole league investigation. But I can tell you, and David can now confirm, that Wachtel Lipton also now has its own Kawhi Aspiration bobblehead in its possession. And so if you're gonna ask the basic question that we started this episode with, did Steve Ballmer's Clippers know that the KL2 Aspire deal existed? Were they, in fact, well aware and behaving so shadily because of that?

• 1:07:46Pablo Torre?

  I just think we also need to pose that same question to Lil Kawhi Leonard. Because he, like his taller self, may be silent, but

• 1:08:01Pablo Torre?

  I do think that he is nodding yes.

• 1:08:07Pablo Torre?

  And that's what we call journalism.

• 1:08:18Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems. Sound design by Andrew Bersick and NGW Post. Theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.

• 1:08:53Speaker 03

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

• 1:08:59Speaker 04

  Love the crown molding.

• 1:09:01Speaker 03

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

• 1:09:04Speaker 04

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

• 1:09:08Speaker 03

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

• 1:09:12Speaker 04

  No FiOS? Yeah, no, thank you.

• 1:09:15Speaker 03

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

• 1:09:18Speaker 05

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

• 1:09:22Speaker 14

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. They're offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage, HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.