Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Enter the Dungeon: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban on Kawhi-Gate About this episode After tweeting 17,053 words in defense of his fellow billionaire NBA owner, the most polarizing member of Team Ballmer is back — in-studio — to confront all of Pablo's most burning questions: Why was Kawhi Leonard's deal kept so secret? When did the Clippers really know? Just how screwed was Aspiration? And what the hell do Cuban's Mavericks and the Knicks' Jalen Brunson have to do with this scandal?
• Part I: The Richest Owner in Sports, the Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OwzYk6OCFM
• Part II: Team Ballmer vs. Team Sh*tting Bricks — an Argument with Mark Cuban https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwXcEG5BA6U
• Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKJyKFdT8rQ
• Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ow9i3obDE
• Part V: Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab7k09CI9qI
(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 19,764 words · 8 speakers
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. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 Kudos to you for finding your sources. No issues there. The conclusions you came to, [BLEEP] on Steve Ballmer, and that was wrong.
0:17 Pablo Torre? Right after this.
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2:31 Pablo Torre? Hey, there he is.
2:33 Speaker 01 It's a dungeon in here.
2:34 Pablo Torre? There, welcome to the dungeon.
2:36 Speaker 01 Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me.
2:37 Pablo Torre? Thanks for coming in.
2:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course.
2:39 Pablo Torre? Um, water, bathroom, coffee.
2:42 Speaker 01 We got the bathroom.
2:43 Pablo Torre? Smelling salts.
2:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, hopefully not. Even though I haven't got much sleep, I'll take it.
2:49 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say.
2:49 Speaker 01 Good to see ya.
2:51 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, you're a wildly busy person, so this is a lot of fun for you to do this for us.
2:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, Cost Plus has been driving you crazy.
2:57 Pablo Torre? That's the pharmaceutical industry, you know?
2:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, just little things.
3:00 Pablo Torre? Casually trying to upend the pharmaceutical industry.
3:01 Speaker 01 Trying to change healthcare, why not?
3:03 Pablo Torre? Test, test, test.
3:04 Speaker 01 That's where you want it lined?
3:05 Pablo Torre? Yeah, if you could.
3:08 Speaker 01 Here you are.
3:09 Pablo Torre? Look at that.
3:09 Speaker 01 Thank you. Double.
3:10 Pablo Torre? Double fist.
3:11 Speaker 01 Double-fisted.
3:11 Pablo Torre? Double fist.
3:12 Speaker 01 It's the only way you roll, Pablo, I know.
3:14 Pablo Torre? Just the finest. The most luxurious.
3:19 Speaker 04 Just for reference before we start, this dial is for your own voice.
3:22 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
3:23 Speaker 04 Um, and the second one is for Pablo's.
3:25 Speaker 01 Turn down Pablo, turn up mine?
3:29 Pablo Torre? Look, I promised over email this would be respectful. I totally.
3:33 Speaker 01 Do your thing, yeah. I have no, go where you want to go. I'm easy-peasy.
3:37 Pablo Torre? The thing I want to start with is to say thank you for giving me the line that now leads my resume.
3:42 Speaker 01 Which is?
3:43 Pablo Torre? A great podcast entertainer, great acting skills, but in terms of getting to the real, real, not so much.
3:52 Speaker 01 There you go, I'm here to oblige.
3:53 Pablo Torre? I want to do this in a way that's probably, hopefully, a little different, a little more fun than like Frost Nixon.
4:03 Speaker 01 Okay.
4:21 Pablo Torre? I actually just want to understand, like, your life right now.
4:26 Pablo Torre? I mean, you're in New York. Thank you for being here in studio formally. Why are you here? What's going on?
4:31 Speaker 01 Oh, I just did a conference, a healthcare conference for 32BJ. It's a union and they work with a variety of unions and organizations. So I came in to talk about what we're doing with costplustdrugs.com to reduce the cost of pharmacy, to change healthcare, to help guide them as they negotiate new contracts, just the basic stuff. So I had it on the schedule for a couple of months already.
4:54 Pablo Torre? Just the basic stuff?
4:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:55 Pablo Torre? I wasn't sure it was like, was this stop in New York part of your larger plan to eventually become the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission?
5:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. That was my goal all along, right?
5:05 Pablo Torre? Have you won it?
5:05 Speaker 01 You got me. Pablo, yeah, Pablo finds out.
5:09 Pablo Torre? Finding out. But you did want to be SEC Chair for a company.
5:12 Speaker 01 No, I had no, no interest in being SEC Chair.
5:14 Pablo Torre? You said it at one point.
5:15 Speaker 01 No, that was me [BLEEP] with Gary Gensler because I thought he was an idiot.
5:17 Pablo Torre? Oh. Well, this is why I asked the follow-up questions.
5:21 Speaker 01 Right, that's what you do.
5:23 Pablo Torre? But some of the bio for people who are, it's funny, again, for me to be like, by the way, I talk to Mark Cuban a lot these days, but for those who are not familiar with your oeuvre, minority owner now, oeuvre.
5:35 Speaker 01 What does that even mean?
5:36 Pablo Torre? Your body of work.
5:37 Speaker 01 Oh, my body of work, okay.
5:38 Pablo Torre? It's a little French. I'm trying to, trying to class you up.
5:41 Speaker 01 There you go. I need all the help classing me up as I can get.
5:44 Pablo Torre? No, look, you're the minority owner of the Dallas Mavericks, 27%. We've established that. Also, you co-own a Major League Pickleball team.
5:51 Speaker 01 Right.
5:51 Pablo Torre? The Dallas Flash.
5:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, did they change the name to Flash?
5:54 Pablo Torre? Are they Dallas Flash?
5:55 Speaker 01 I don't even know. I did it as a favor to a friend. But I like pickleball some. It's fun to watch.
6:02 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your Dallas Flash, that's right. And, you know, you mentioned great acting skills.
6:08 Speaker 01 Great acting skills. You see me in Play Dirty here recently?
6:11 Pablo Torre? I watched it this week.
6:12 Speaker 01 What?
6:19 Speaker 05 Uh, fine.
6:23 Speaker 05 Do I? The Lady Volantaro, how long? And you are? Impatient. Where is she?
6:31 Speaker 05 Whoa.
6:32 Pablo Torre? Just Mark Wahlberg, brandishing a firearm.
6:35 Speaker 05 Evans.
6:36 Pablo Torre? At a white tablecloth restaurant in front of you. And an associate.
6:39 Speaker 05 Do you have any concept who the [bleep] you're talking to? You're not answering my question. I don't have to, moron. I'm one of the most important [bleep] people on the planet. This isn't some rat-infested alley. You're out of your league. You're dealing with a different class of people now.
6:55 Pablo Torre? What a smirk.
6:57 Speaker 01 You know how long I've been?
7:05 Speaker 01 The best part was Mark Wahlberg was not there when we were shooting it.
7:08 Pablo Torre? Oh, that was, uh...
7:08 Speaker 01 So that was all acting. That's just me putting myself in the moment.
7:12 Pablo Torre? A method smirk.
7:13 Speaker 01 Yes. The fear, the smirk.
7:16 Pablo Torre? Um, there's just...
7:17 Speaker 01 Just shot.
7:18 Pablo Torre? There's just a zillion things I actually do want to ask you about. I want to get to at some point, like Dallas and Mavs and Luca, if that's okay, at some point, at the end, maybe. But the reason, of course, you're here is because you remain by far the most devoted, most famous, most polarizing, most public member of Team Bomber.
7:36 Speaker 01 Yes, sir.
7:37 Pablo Torre? As you have come to call it. Do you know how much you have tweeted about this story in my reporting?
7:42 Speaker 01 Not really, no.
7:43 Pablo Torre? You have sent 160 tweets.
7:45 Speaker 01 Most of them were just little tiny responses. A couple of them were articles.
7:49 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
7:50 Speaker 01 The one time, yeah, the one time was like the 4,000 words or whatever.
7:53 Pablo Torre? You typed a total of 17,053 words in 36 days.
7:56 Speaker 01 A lot of that is ChatGPT-generated, but yes.
8:00 Pablo Torre? I suspected that. I feel no less insulted by that. But nonetheless, I'm here to confront you and the robot.
8:08 Speaker 01 Please do.
8:09 Pablo Torre? And I just want to try to keep this accessible, as always, to like the general audience. So I guess the conversation, which I want to begin here, starts with a simple question. Why do you think the sheer existence of the aspiration sponsorship deal with Kawhi Leonard was never announced in any way through a press release or anything ever?
8:30 Speaker 01 The deal was signed, if I'm remembering correctly, April 4th of 22, but it was dated April 1st. March 30th was a much bigger announcement. And they didn't want to step on each other. Is the first reason. Do you know what that announcement is?
8:46 Pablo Torre? Please.
8:48 Speaker 01 Oh, I thought you would know.
8:49 Pablo Torre? No, no, no. What announcement?
8:50 Speaker 01 Oh, that's when they announced their deal with the Boston Red Sox, which was an $80 million deal. And that's where they were going to get their logo on the field, right by the batter's box, not by the on-deck circle, all that stuff. So it was an $80 million deal. Rule number one of marketing, when you're getting PR and you've signed a big deal, you don't step on it. And so, once I saw that they had done this big deal and realized how big it was, it made perfect sense why they didn't announce it then, right? And then, after that, the people who had done the deal, I shouldn't say the people, because Joe Sandberg did the deal, but they changed over the focus of their business. And as best we can tell, no one wanted him there and no one wanted to do the deal. And so, there was no reason to announce it. That's my perception.
9:35 Pablo Torre? Well, so just the Red Sox deal, we mentioned that in episode one of the show. I'm glad you bring it into this context because it was another deal, another real sports team that Aspiration got into business with, of course. So, let's say that Aspiration didn't want to announce this, Kawhi didn't want to announce this, no one wanted to.
9:53 Speaker 01 No, no, now you're putting words into the system here, right? So, there's a difference between making the right marketing move, right? So, you just signed an $80 million deal with the Red Sox. And the Red Sox come out and say, like the Clippers did, September of '21, so that would be six months earlier, whatever, right? That how important the whole carbon credits thing was and conservation was to them, right? So, a big part of the Red Sox deal was very similar to the Clippers deal. In fact, they look, I'm going to use my bat. In fact, they look very similar to each other. I'm trying to remember.
10:29 Pablo Torre? I am with you.
10:32 Speaker 01 So, they're very similar to each other.
10:34 Pablo Torre? Oh, I've seen hundreds of emails with the Red Sox and Aspiration. The premise here, again, is we're zeroing out the carbon footprint.
10:40 Speaker 01 Right, so it was very important to the Red Sox, like it was to Bomber, so nothing unusual there, right? So, the question becomes, right? Why did the marketing people not do anything with Kawhi? Well, on one hand, that's the question you asked me, right?
10:54 Pablo Torre? No, no, the question actually was simpler. It was, why did no one ever say that this deal existed at all in any way, ever?
11:00 Speaker 01 Well, first of all, we don't know that for certain.
11:03 Pablo Torre? I have never seen anything. I've said this for five episodes and no one's ever provided a counterargument or a factual correction or evidence.
11:10 Speaker 01 Two ways to activate the deal. One is like you're expecting. Let's do the tweet. The things that were in the contract that he was never asked to do.
11:17 Pablo Torre? I actually just want to be very clear and specific here. I just mean, they announced with celebrities all of the time. We signed Leo DiCaprio, and we signed Drake, and we signed Robert Downey Jr. and Orlando Bloom and Cindy Crawford, Cindy Crawford's daughter.
11:30 Speaker 01 When did they announce all those things?
11:32 Pablo Torre? All in this time period.
11:33 Speaker 01 When did they announce those?
11:35 Pablo Torre? Is your argument going to be that by the time they signed Kawhi Leonard to a deal that was four times larger than everyone else combined in that celebrity roster, they had decided to no longer care about celebrities?
11:47 Speaker 01 No. My point was, they were not profitable, but they were fully and well-funded in 2021. And they were run with the goal of having a consumer product, the credit card from Aspiration Bank. And what you do with a consumer product is night and day different than what you do with a B2B product, right? So making those announcements make perfect sense. Now come April of 22, they were in deep [BLEEP], right? And as you know, and I think you're, some of the folks have told you, that the conversation, because we know Uncle Dennis Incorporated KL2 Aspire, I think it was called, in November of 21. So they had been talking for a long time and it had been delayed, obviously for a considerable period of time. So the fact that it was delayed is one indicator. Because if they were really excited to sign
12:31 Speaker 01 the deal and use Kawhi, the marketing team would have been pushing. Let's get this done because we really have a lot of places for him to use.
12:38 Pablo Torre? Right. The opposite, of course, happens, right? The marketing people, the CMO doesn't know who Kawhi Leonard is, even.
12:44 Speaker 01 Right, right. So the question is, why was there a deal?
12:46 Pablo Torre? No, no, I think the question is still, why, just to keep on the first question, why past April did no one mention that they had signed Kawhi Leonard at all?
12:56 Speaker 01 Because they were in a different business at that point.
12:58 Pablo Torre? Not as of that month.
13:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, if you look at their numbers from September 30th of 2021, the last real numbers they had that they published.
13:08 Pablo Torre? So I guess what I'm saying is what we agree on is this was a bad deal for Aspiration to sign as of April 2023.
13:14 Speaker 01 Not necessarily, right? So here's what you haven't discussed at all yet, right? And that is activation. And I'm not talking about traditional marketing activation. So you've been to the Staples Center, right?
13:23 Pablo Torre? Mm-hmm.
13:23 Speaker 01 Right? So you know, here's the court level seats. And then a lot of people go into the tunnel. And they have that club that's there, right? Where all the celebrities hang out and everything. And then the people who buy the court, the front row seats have access to that. Correct? And they see the players walking through. And it's not unusual because it's happened to me, I'm sure it's happened to you. Where people, fans, right there that have come from the court will stop you and take pictures, introduce you to customers, dah dah dah dah dah. We have no evidence one way or the other, but I'd be willing to bet that a dollar to a dime, right? That Joe Sandberg took full advantage of that. And was able to use Kawhi just to take a picture, to say hello. Just like I've done a thousand times with the Mavericks, right?
14:08 Speaker 01 Oh, we signed a deal with this sponsor. Hey, Marcus, sponsor's in town. Or, hey, Marcus, sponsor's going to be at the game. Will you take pictures with them?
14:14 Pablo Torre? Sure.
14:15 Speaker 01 Sure. Easy peasy, right? Just have them in the tunnel before halftime or after the game. Easy access. So when I talked to people, the one person, two people I know, but one person I talked to at, that worked at Aspiration, they said, yeah.
14:26 Pablo Torre? I love how you've been doing reporting, by the way.
14:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, just because they reached out to me, right?
14:29 Pablo Torre? I want to hear about them reaching out to you.
14:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, I know. And I know. And I said, I was fine with it, right?
14:32 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And likewise.
14:34 Speaker 01 Yeah. And so it's just normal business, right? So the issue is that the guy that's going to, one of the guys going to jail, Joe Sandberg, right? He obviously was the one that did the deal. Because even in your tweet, it said Joe is, is slow rolling the deal. No, he said to Joe from Uncle Dennis, that Mike, the lawyer was slow.
14:53 Pablo Torre? Mike Chekarell, the general counsel.
14:54 Speaker 01 General counsel was slow rolling the deal, right? And that it was obvious that Joe Sandberg had signed. So the value proposition here where we disagree, and we don't really have detail one way or the other. But where we disagree is the value proposition wasn't necessarily to the marketing. People at aspiration. It was to Joe Sandberg specifically.
15:14 Pablo Torre? Why do we disagree about that?
15:15 Speaker 01 Well, because I think that's where he utilized Kawhi.
15:18 Pablo Torre? Oh, but I-
15:18 Speaker 01 He got his money's worth.
15:19 Pablo Torre? I fully agree that Joe Sandberg was the one to benefit from this deal. It wasn't the marketing of aspiration. The question is, what was the goal Joe Sandberg wanted to achieve? And you have this theory that Joe was using it to glad hand with Kawhi during the games that the Clippers were playing, or before or after, or whatever.
15:35 Speaker 01 No, I've even evolved that theory.
15:37 Pablo Torre? Okay, but I guess what I'm saying is the reason Joe Sandberg wanted to do it was because, of course, he had a relationship with Steve Ballmer. And there was an agreement, hey, we're gonna do this deal that no one ever is gonna know about.
15:47 Speaker 01 You don't know that.
15:48 Pablo Torre? But what I'm saying is, I know that based on-
15:50 Speaker 01 You're making that up.
15:50 Pablo Torre? No, no, no, I have nine sources that told me that.
15:52 Speaker 01 No, nine sources that worked in the accounts payable department.
15:54 Pablo Torre? Not all, not all finance, not all finance. Mark, Mark, Mark. So, look, what I want to make clear here is a couple of things. Because you're really good at talking and being shot by Mark Wahlberg. Incredible about those things. There is simply no evidence that this deal was ever announced in any way. And the reason I keep on harping on this is because at a certain point, if you are Joe Sandberg, selfish guy, who wants to boast and peacock about all the things he's done, you would want to say,
16:23 Speaker 01 No!
16:23 Pablo Torre? We also have this deal with this guy!
16:26 Speaker 01 No, no, so you're not, you don't, so if you look at Joe Sandberg, right? What was his job at aspiration?
16:30 Pablo Torre? I mean, so, this question-
16:32 Speaker 01 This matters.
16:33 Pablo Torre? I have many ways that I can talk about this for a very long time. Joe Sandberg was not actually an employee of aspiration.
16:39 Speaker 01 No kidding!
16:40 Pablo Torre? But what he was, was the co-founder, and they want to peacock about all of the celebrities, all of the sports teams. I have a deal with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Downey Jr., Orlando Bloom, Drake, The Crawfords, and Kawhi Leonard, who he paid for the price, by the way. The price of what you're saying, the glad handing theory. Forty-eight million dollars?
16:59 Speaker 01 No, he didn't, he paid him 3.5 million.
17:01 Pablo Torre? The agreement, the contract says-
17:03 Speaker 01 But if you know you have no money to pay the agreement, it's meaningless.
17:07 Pablo Torre? No, no, no, no, no.
17:08 Speaker 01 He knew he had no money to pay it.
17:10 Pablo Torre? Mark.
17:11 Speaker 01 Just like me saying Pablo, I'm gonna give you 200 million dollars right now.
17:15 Pablo Torre? So what we need to establish here is that Joe Sandberg may know, right? At the time of the deal, he has no intention of paying the total term of the deal.
17:23 Speaker 01 He has no money.
17:24 Pablo Torre? But Kawhi Leonard absolutely thinks it's a real deal.
17:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:28 Pablo Torre? It's a real contract.
17:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:30 Pablo Torre? So the point is, the intent of what we're doing here-
17:33 Speaker 01 No, the intent on Uncle Dennis's and Kawhi's side is obvious. The intent on Joe Sandberg's side is not, right?
17:40 Pablo Torre? So why would-
17:40 Speaker 01 Uncle Dennis wants to get paid.
17:42 Pablo Torre? Okay, so we established that there is no evidence at all that this deal was ever announced anywhere.
17:47 Speaker 01 Unless, I mean, not publicly, no, we agree, not to a major audience.
17:51 Pablo Torre? I've been waiting, man. I was hoping you might bring it in. I've been waiting for anyone to tell me.
17:54 Speaker 01 So moving on.
17:55 Pablo Torre? Why was this a top-secret deal that they never talked about? My theory is, they wanted to keep it secret because it was a 48 million dollar no-show contract that circumvented the cap. Your theory is something that is not that.
18:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, because-
18:07 Pablo Torre? But let's move on, because we agree to disagree.
18:08 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, no, not just we, let's just move on. Because what's at stake? Because at the exact same time the Kawhi deal was signed, right? Joe Sandberg was also trying to take over Blue Apron. And he didn't have the money to do that either. And so he was looking to do an acquisition that was, I don't know, I don't know the exact amount, but there's plenty of evidence on documentation out there. Where he effectively was lying to say he had the money in May of 22 or whenever the date was.
18:39 Pablo Torre? The guy was eventually pleading guilty to wire fraud.
18:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, for sure. But you've got to look at from here. So you want to know what the intent was. So you're asking the question. We agree that Joe Sandberg initiated the deal and negotiated the deal with Uncle Dennis and Mitch Franklin.
18:52 Pablo Torre? The initiation, I'm not saying one way or the other. I'm merely saying what we know.
18:55 Speaker 01 So are you agreeing that Joe Sandberg was the one who negotiated this deal?
19:01 Pablo Torre? I cannot tell you that he's the only one who was involved. Mark, I'm a journalist. I know that he was involved, but is he the only one in the room negotiating?
19:09 Speaker 01 Okay, so most, but, fine. Right, so if he's the driving force, and he's taking responsibility for this, isn't it relevant what else was going on in his financial life?
19:20 Pablo Torre? Oh, and absolutely. And so the timeline that I wanted to point us to is-
19:23 Speaker 01 So here we are, right? So here he is, he's committed to, um- A deal with Kawhi that pays 1.75 million dollars a quarter to be paid first in June, on June 30th, right, of 2022.
19:38 Pablo Torre? That was the first payment.
19:38 Speaker 01 Right, when it was due, right. So at the same time, at the same time, knows he doesn't have the money. Because we know from the September 30th, 2021 financials, which would have been after Ballmer put in his money, that they only had 13 million dollars left.
19:54 Pablo Torre? So Ballmer puts in his money in September of 2021.
19:56 Speaker 01 Right, so September 30th, so he put it in September 14th, or 17th, one of those two dates, of 2021. And as of September 30th of 2021, according to the S4 that was filed by InterPrivate because of the SPAC that they were trying to take.
20:10 Pablo Torre? InterPrivate was the holding company that was going to absorb.
20:12 Speaker 01 Make everybody all the money, right.
20:13 Pablo Torre? Go SPAC at 2.3 billion dollars, which is a valuation that came up when, Mark, because Steve Ballmer and Oaktree Capital Management invested together and resulted in this valuation of, whoa!
20:25 Speaker 01 No, that's not how it works, that's not how it works.
20:26 Pablo Torre? Of course it is, it's literally the timeline.
20:29 Speaker 01 That's not how a SPAC is valued, but that's besides the point, that's not really relevant at this point.
20:32 Pablo Torre? I think it's deeply relevant, it speaks to why Joe Sandberg was doing the deal at all.
20:35 Speaker 01 Well, that, okay, he wanted to get the payout, right, because that was the only thing that could save his ass.
20:38 Pablo Torre? He wanted to be in business with Steve Ballmer, who gave him 50 million dollars personally alongside Oaktree, and guess what? The SPAC that wasn't over 2 billion dollars as a valuation was after that roughly 300 million dollar infusion came in.
20:51 Speaker 01 You're missing the point, because you're trying to just drive it just the one thing you know, okay? So.
20:55 Pablo Torre? I'm talking about like sports washing, and I think you're trying to talk about lots of other things.
20:59 Speaker 01 No, no, you're not letting me finish, right?
21:01 Pablo Torre? Please, please.
21:01 Speaker 01 All right, so now we know from Joe Sandberg's perspective, he's got Kawhi that this company owns 28 million dollars to.
21:09 Pablo Torre? Plus 20 million dollars in an equity deal.
21:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, but that's coming from him personally, that's worthless, and so.
21:13 Pablo Torre? But it's relevant, but I'll go with it.
21:15 Speaker 01 Okay, that's fine, we're going with it, right? So that's one. Two, he also committed to the Red Sox to pay 7 million dollars a year, the exact same day, the day before, so that's another seven, right?
21:26 Pablo Torre? They're collecting these sports deals.
21:27 Speaker 01 Right, at the same time, he owes personally 145 million dollars that he is unable to pay, and he's hoping that he can figure all this out. But what we also know. Is that Balmer invested September fourteenth or seventeenth of twenty twenty one? And there are published financials that Interprivate put to the S E C that shows they only have thirteen million dollars. So at the time that long, long before, I should say, long before Joe Sandberg completed this deal, he knew they had no money.
21:57 Pablo Torre? Oh, oh, oh, so we.
21:58 Speaker 01 He know, he knew he had. Cause all the money, think about it, all the money. And then when you had numbers after that.
22:03 Pablo Torre? You know what happened to the money? They're not counting the marketing dollars against their valuation is because they're just spending it all.
22:09 Speaker 01 Right, that special, I forget what they called it.
22:11 Pablo Torre? It's amazing. They made up an acronym.
22:12 Speaker 01 An acronym, yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:13 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, the point being that I fully agree and have reported that the money goes in from Balmer and others, and the money goes out almost immediately.
22:21 Speaker 01 Immediately, right?
22:22 Pablo Torre? It's crazy.
22:22 Speaker 01 But think about that. Think about that, right? So if all of this.
22:25 Pablo Torre? Which is to say that, of course, when it comes to Kawhi, right? The question is, okay, why did they?
22:32 Speaker 01 Why did they even do the deal?
22:33 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
22:33 Speaker 01 Why did they even do the deal?
22:34 Pablo Torre? And I think we're, we're circling a question for which the only rational explanation is that it wasn't in Aspiration's interest to do it. It was in someone else's.
22:44 Speaker 01 That's, that's, this is where we disagree. None of this has anything to do with Aspiration's best interest.
22:49 Pablo Torre? That's what I mean. That's what I'm saying.
22:50 Speaker 01 None of it. None of it. No, I'm taking.
22:51 Pablo Torre? I agree. It's a terrible deal for Aspiration.
22:53 Speaker 01 No, Joe Sandberg only cares about Joe Sandberg.
22:55 Pablo Torre? Yes.
22:56 Speaker 01 Joe Sandberg doesn't.
22:57 Pablo Torre? Well, no, no, hold on. I want, so Joe Sandberg benefits if Aspiration goes public at a two plus billion valuation.
23:02 Speaker 01 Of course, of course. But in order, but he also needs to survive because cash flow wise, he is toast. And he knows the company is toast because even his.
23:11 Pablo Torre? Yes, he needs to raise money perpetually because the money is coming in and going out.
23:15 Speaker 01 That's what Churney said, right? He needs to make, raise money perpetually. And what did he say to Churney? I'm gonna kill you because you don't even know what I have to do to do all this stuff, right?
23:23 Pablo Torre? Yes.
23:23 Speaker 01 Right.
23:24 Pablo Torre? And, and we're fast forwarding the timeline, but yes.
23:25 Speaker 01 This whole thing is only about Joe Sandberg and him trying to stay out of jail.
23:29 Pablo Torre? It's about Joe Sandberg trying to get Aspiration to cash in on a two plus billion dollar SPAC.
23:36 Speaker 01 Right.
23:36 Pablo Torre? That's his.
23:38 Speaker 01 Right. And that's what I, that's what I wrote. That's what I've been writing.
23:41 Pablo Torre? Oh, no, no. And, and by the way.
23:42 Speaker 01 And you didn't mention that at all in your first podcast.
23:43 Pablo Torre? Episode one, episode one, we did all this.
23:45 Speaker 01 You mentioned the SPAC, you mentioned SPAC, but you didn't, you didn't tie it back to him just trying to stay out of jail, but it doesn't matter.
23:50 Pablo Torre? No, no, no. I, I disagree. I think Chat G P T may be doing me a little bit of an injustice in terms of the summaries it's presented to you.
23:56 Speaker 01 I got the transcript somewhere, but anyways.
23:57 Pablo Torre? And that's what I mean. But look, what I want to say is when they get to April, they sign Kawhi, he's due the first payment at the end of June, and they pay him in July.
24:04 Speaker 01 All of Balmer's money is gone.
24:07 Pablo Torre? Yes.
24:07 Speaker 01 Gone, right? Now, you would think.
24:10 Pablo Torre? Yes.
24:10 Speaker 01 You would think if there was a deal that was made between Ballmer and anybody, anybody, anybody with half a brain would say, hey, look, we've got this deal with Ballmer. For whatever reason, I know what the reason is. You don't have to understand. This is Sandberg talking, right?
24:26 Pablo Torre? Now, do you?
24:26 Speaker 01 You would set aside that money.
24:28 Pablo Torre? No question.
24:28 Speaker 01 Okay, there you go.
24:29 Pablo Torre? But, but do you agree that Joe Sandberg is also somebody who maybe isn't as smart as he thought he was?
24:35 Speaker 01 I don't know or care. All I know.
24:36 Pablo Torre? But I guess the point is there can be some mixture, as always, of cleverness and incompetence.
24:41 Speaker 01 There can be a lot of mixtures of a lot of things, but you don't have proof one way or the other.
24:45 Pablo Torre? Hold on, hold on, hold on. We're gonna, we're gonna get there. The question here, I asked you, was, sir, why do they never announce this deal at all? And so we're now in the weeds and that's okay?
24:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, because you're trying to make that a big deal to show it's a no-show job, right?
24:56 Pablo Torre? It's just inexplicable.
24:57 Speaker 01 No, it's not relevant.
24:59 Pablo Torre? It's inexplicable.
24:59 Speaker 01 It is.
25:00 Pablo Torre? It's the most, why would?
25:00 Speaker 01 No, it's very explicable. If you've ever done marketing, if you've ever worked in a company that's.
25:05 Pablo Torre? So why for two years, let's give it two years, did they never mention it?
25:09 Speaker 01 Because they changed business and they brought in a new CEO.
25:11 Pablo Torre? April, May, June, July?
25:13 Speaker 01 October, by October.
25:14 Pablo Torre? October, November, December.
25:16 Speaker 01 So I, I gave you the first hit, right? First of all.
25:19 Pablo Torre? I'm just saying that's a, that's a year.
25:20 Speaker 01 Let's walk through it. Let's walk through it, right? Rule number one of marketing, if you're making one big announcement, you don't step on it with another announcement of any.
25:28 Pablo Torre? How many months does it take for a bit of breathing room?
25:30 Speaker 01 You'd find out, right? By the time.
25:32 Pablo Torre? Is it one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12?
25:35 Speaker 01 There's more. It's not about that. You're trying to game it, but it's not like that.
25:38 Pablo Torre? That's a lot of months we're in.
25:39 Speaker 01 No, no, because April 30th, right? Uh, I'm sorry, March 30th, when they signed and announced the Red Sox deal, big deal, right? Da-da-da-da-da. So you don't step on that. Okay, so the question is how many months? By the time they got to, I'm trying to think when they actually changed their business model, but it was prior October, because that's when they let Churney go and that's when they brought in Olivia, right? But they had already.
26:02 Pablo Torre? Olivia Obrecht, the follow-up CEO.
26:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, the numbers were already there, as you saw in the, the S4, that they were making their money in business to business. They were getting killed, destroyed, had no upside whatsoever on their consumer business. So it wouldn't be the first time in the history of marketing where you sign somebody to do something, pivoted in your business and decided not to use.
26:26 Pablo Torre? So I want to add a little bit of texture because. They signed him to a deal, again, that is four times larger than everyone else combined, who is like a zillion times more famous.
26:34 Speaker 01 You keep on going to that as if it's a reflection of some insidious, you know, effort. But it's not relevant at all. You keep using it, but it's not relevant at all.
26:44 Pablo Torre? Because of course it is, Mark. Because it speaks to why exactly this deal was specifically the way it was constructed. It reflects an intent from someone.
26:52 Speaker 01 No, the businesses were different.
26:58 Pablo Torre? So I just gotta jump in here to clarify something about the timeline here. Because the business of aspiration, which Mark was just alluding to, was not meaningfully different in April 2022, when Aspiration signed Kawhi Leonard to this top-secret $28 million no-show endorsement deal from what the business of aspiration was in September of 2021, when they signed this 300-plus-million-dollar founding sponsorship deal with the Clippers. In fact, that Clippers deal reflected this pivot that Mark is trying to say happened after the KL2 Aspire LLC deal was brokered.
27:38 Pablo Torre? But that deal, the Clipper deal, was the embodiment, actually, of this pivot. It was the thing that was designed to draw attention to it, as Steve Ballmer himself announced at Clippers Media Day in September of 2021 with, you know, a French accent of his own.
27:58 Speaker 06 The pièce de résistance, as we went through this, is when we had a chance to really sit down and meet the folks from Aspiration. Joe Samberg, who runs Aspiration's here, will talk to you a little bit more about their company. We can talk about our partnership. But to have our first founding partner be a company that focuses in on providing services to consumers and businesses to reduce or even go negative on their own carbon footprints was a great thing.
28:32 Pablo Torre? We played that clip in episode one, by the way. Which I do strongly encourage you to go back and listen to at some point. At least because we also established in that episode that the top secret no show $28 million endorsement deal with Kawhi Leonard was also about this pivot, the carbon offsets. As one particular deliverable in this very deliberately structured contract that we had read indicated.
28:59 Speaker 07 That Leonard has to be available and participate with company to create an annual program in support of the company's reforestation program.
29:07 Pablo Torre? Oh, this one's good.
29:08 Speaker 07 With a tie to calculating Leonard's carbon footprint, given his annual schedule of events and travel. Boy, I'd love to see that.
29:16 Pablo Torre? Well, it's hard because it didn't happen.
29:19 Speaker 01 I thought you were gonna say that was the one thing he did do.
29:23 Pablo Torre? And so if you want even more of our analysis of Aspiration's carbon offsets business with the Clippers, and even more also on the flow of funds from Steve Ballmer to Aspiration, which was largely inspired by our first conversation on this show with Mark Cuban, that stuff happens to be in part four of this series, just in case you're curious. But I do want to return us now to the argument that I was in the middle of having with our special guest.
29:49 Speaker 01 When a business is thinking it's going to be profitable and it's operating like a normal business, it's one thing. And then when the owner, the main guy, goes and borrows money again fraudulently and all of a sudden their business is no longer a good operating business.
30:07 Pablo Torre? Let's say you didn't like, you had immediate buyer's remorse and you were like, whoa, we just paid this guy four times more than the biggest stars in Hollywood combined and we don't want to use him anymore. Shouldn't you at least say, we did it, so you get something?
30:21 Speaker 01 No, because then you look like a [bleep] moron.
30:23 Pablo Torre? I mean, I think and fear that that might have happened anyway.
30:27 Speaker 01 Well, yeah, but they're trying to survive, right? You don't announce that you signed a guy that you, and by the way.
30:33 Pablo Torre? Okay, so can I?
30:34 Speaker 01 They ended up paying him less than they paid those celebrities.
30:38 Pablo Torre? How do you know that?
30:39 Speaker 01 Because he's only been paid, he only was paid twice.
30:42 Pablo Torre? That I have reported so far.
30:44 Speaker 01 No, that anybody, that's anywhere, if you back, go back on the numbers.
30:47 Pablo Torre? Do you have sources that tell you that he got paid more than what I've reported?
30:49 Speaker 01 At most, so let's just do the math.
30:51 Pablo Torre? Well, the bankruptcy filing says he's owed 7 million.
30:53 Speaker 01 Right.
30:53 Pablo Torre? The deal was 28.
30:55 Speaker 01 Right.
30:55 Pablo Torre? And so somewhere between the 3.5 that I've reported in 2022, and that is a big gulf.
31:01 Speaker 01 No, right, so what happens is, the 28 million, when they, the day that they go bankrupt, anything past that, or the day they file.
31:09 Pablo Torre? Yeah, so wipe off the last year.
31:10 Speaker 01 So wipe, so that's 21.
31:12 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
31:12 Speaker 01 Right, so that's 7, now that's down to 14, right? If there wasn't any other conversation or anything, so at most.
31:19 Pablo Torre? Do you have information that there was conversation about that?
31:21 Speaker 01 About the remaining dollars, no.
31:24 Pablo Torre? I just don't think we can definitively say, based on the evidence, that he got paid only 3.5 million dollars.
31:29 Speaker 01 But think of it this way, right? 16 potential payments. You only knew about 2 of them. And one of them, from your first reporting, right? You had tied specifically to Ballmer. But we know Ballmer's money was all gone by the time the agreement was even signed. So you went out and made this assertion about Ballmer without knowing that the money wasn't even available to pay.
31:54 Pablo Torre? We had 7 sources, but I want to go past that because you don't believe the sources, that's okay.
31:57 Speaker 01 But the 7 sources was the guy with the, the, the, the, whatever, modulated voice, right?
32:02 Pablo Torre? One of the finance department employees who was interviewed by the federal government, who's pointing me to documents that have been verified by every single other source and documentation.
32:11 Speaker 01 He works in the accounts payable department or in the finance department.
32:13 Pablo Torre? I think it's easy to dismiss the sources and I can't possibly convince you otherwise, that's okay.
32:17 Speaker 01 But it's not even just about dismissing, it's just not enough. You just [BLEEP] on a guy's reputation by having some guy in the AP department who's tried to tie it.
32:26 Pablo Torre? Mark, Mark, Mark, Mark.
32:26 Speaker 01 Your guy said, your guy said, everybody knew, it was common knowledge that this was circumvent of the sour.
32:32 Pablo Torre? In the department, in which they had to make payments to Kawhi Leonard, that no one could explain, there was talk about.
32:39 Speaker 01 It's the accounts payable department!
32:41 Pablo Torre? Mark, you don't know who these people are and I wish you would stop, I just, it's, it's just, we can speculate.
32:46 Speaker 01 I can tell by the form that you showed in, in your first podcast.
32:49 Pablo Torre? We have over 3,000 pages of documents, there are a lot of forms.
32:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, but what you showed, what you show was just an accounts payable ledger. That's all.
32:58 Pablo Torre? We have documents that we can get to, and I want to.
33:00 Speaker 01 I see a folder.
33:01 Pablo Torre? You see a folder. So we're, I want to get to the folder, Mark. You keep on preventing me from getting to the folder.
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34:53 Pablo Torre? Have you talked to Steve Ballmer about this?
34:54 Speaker 01 No.
34:55 Pablo Torre? The first piece of paper in this is something that people have pointed out to me a lot. I just want to make sure that because you're saying you're not just shilling for Steve Ballmer here, that you are not in fact this meme.
35:06 Speaker 01 Oh, you busted me. Yes, that's me.
35:09 Pablo Torre? Are you familiar with this meme?
35:10 Speaker 01 No, I'm not.
35:11 Pablo Torre? You're familiar with a poo from The Simpsons jumping in front of another person behind a...
35:16 Speaker 01 No, I only know the episode that I did.
35:17 Pablo Torre? And it says billionaires, jumping in front of other billionaires.
35:20 Speaker 01 I only know the episode I deal with.
35:21 Pablo Torre? I'm the criminal with the gun.
35:23 Speaker 01 You gotta watch in season 20, the episode with the billionaires handshake. Oh, yeah, three points, big three and a big D for the big C, Mark Cuban, that's me. Who is that man? And why isn't his enthusiasm being punished?
35:37 Pablo Torre? That's Mark Cuban, sir. He's the most flamboyant owner in the league.
35:42 Pablo Torre? Do you think the Clippers knew that Kawhi had this deal with Aspiration?
35:46 Speaker 01 I don't know. I don't, I don't know. I mean, it wasn't the first deal that he signed with a Clipper sponsor, so I don't know.
35:52 Pablo Torre? Right. The Clippers knew about the previous one, the honey deal, which was the jersey patch. Why would they not know about this one?
35:59 Speaker 01 I don't know one way or the other.
36:01 Pablo Torre? Would you have known? If you were the owner of a team and your most important player signed a deal with...
36:05 Speaker 01 Not necessarily, but probably.
36:07 Pablo Torre? Probably, yeah.
36:08 Speaker 01 Possibly.
36:09 Pablo Torre? I think at some point, right? If you could just speculate, like, when would they have known, at the very least?
36:15 Speaker 01 That they had a deal? I don't know. I mean, maybe the CEO would know before Ballmer would know. Yeah, before Ballmer would know. Because that's typically how I would find out. I wouldn't get a list of deals or anything like that.
36:27 Pablo Torre? Sure.
36:27 Speaker 01 I would find out when someone said, hey, you know, would you say hi and take a picture with so and so? We signed a deal with them. That's typically when I would know. Now, the bigger sponsor with Aspiration, I would know about, obviously.
36:37 Pablo Torre? Yeah. Right. So we agree on that, I think. Yeah, so Steve Ballmer says that he introduced, of course...
36:43 Speaker 01 Right.
36:43 Pablo Torre? Kawhi's camp to Aspiration.
36:46 Speaker 06 The introduction got made, and then they were off to the races on their own.
36:51 Pablo Torre? So at some point, the introduction is made, and then the question is, when does the curiosity arise? I wonder what happened to that?
36:58 Speaker 01 Never.
37:00 Pablo Torre? Never what?
37:01 Speaker 01 I've had sponsors that works with us, "Hey, can you connect me to Dirk's guy, to Luca's people?"
37:05 Pablo Torre? But you said for the founding sponsor of this level?
37:08 Speaker 01 No, that's for me on a $300 million deal, I'm knowing about it. Like, when we did Chime, I know about it.
37:13 Pablo Torre? Of course.
37:14 Speaker 01 But anything that came across, like, I couldn't tell you, like, Luca, Luca's people would, you know, talk about certain deals.
37:19 Pablo Torre? So you think it's possible that Luca had a side deal with Chime and you wouldn't know about it?
37:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, I would have no idea. I wouldn't care.
37:25 Pablo Torre? You wouldn't care?
37:26 Speaker 01 No.
37:26 Pablo Torre? What if you were aware that the camp of the guy who signed the deal had a history of allegedly asking for things that the rules don't allow?
37:33 Speaker 01 I don't care. I mean, I'm not involved in it at all.
37:36 Pablo Torre? You don't care about that?
37:36 Speaker 01 I'm not involved in it at all.
37:37 Pablo Torre? Well, I know that that's the position, but the question is personally, and in terms of just being honest, wouldn't you have curiosity, "I wonder if that deal is gonna help me or potentially humiliate me publicly?"
37:48 Speaker 01 No. The only time I really inserted myself in those types of situations was if I thought it was a product that was not good for Mavs fans. And our people would come to me and say, "Hey, we think you might have questions about this. You know, it's a supplement deal, or it's, you know, a sports drink deal that's doing something funky." That's the only time I'd get involved. And the salesperson would say, "Is it okay for us to go after these guys?" Do I follow up with that afterwards? No, we have a CEO who does all this stuff.
38:12 Pablo Torre? Sure, but I'm curious, based on that, what you think about how Lawrence Frank, the Clippers president of basketball operations, answered this line of yes or no questions at Media Day?
38:21 Speaker 03 Has Dennis Robertson, Kawhi's uncle, ever asked for any extra benefits that wouldn't be allowable under the NBA seller cap directly to you? There's been a lot coming out about his asks. Yeah, look, Dennis knows the rules, Kawhi knows the rules, Mitch Frankel knows the rules,
38:36 Speaker 01 and we know the rules.
38:39 Speaker 01 Is that a yes or a no, though? Yes, we all know the rules. Yeah, I mean, he's doing what he's supposed to do, right? Look, have I ever been asked for [BLEEP] that not legit? Yeah, of course. You know, do I do it? No, right? That's just the rule. But in terms of the business deals, that's why you have a CEO. Sid Marshall did 99% of the Chime deal.
39:01 Pablo Torre? Oh, sure. Look, and I think there are, obviously, the reason the president of basketball ops is asked that is because, of course, it's not just Steve alone in an alley. This is a deal that, when I said, "Who negotiated this?", I'm like, "I think there are more than just Joe Sandberg and Steve Ballmer in the conversation."
39:16 Speaker 01 No chance.
39:17 Pablo Torre? Yes.
39:18 Speaker 01 No chance, none, zero.
39:20 Pablo Torre? That what?
39:21 Speaker 01 Being involved in the negotiation of a contract for a player.
39:24 Pablo Torre? No, no, no. Look, the theory of the case here, based on my reporting, is Steve Ballmer turns it over to people who get into the actual nuts and bolts of the deals. The reason I bring that up is because, of course, Steve Ballmer said the same thing to ESPN. So, since 2019, has Dennis Robinson asked you for any other benefits that would not be,
39:44 Speaker 06 that would be in violation of the league rules? They know the rules. They, meaning Kawhi and his representatives, including, including his uncle. We know the rules. And if anything's not clear, we remind ourselves what the rules are. And we make absolutely clear, we're going to abide by those rules. And they understand them as well. And it's important for them to abide by them, which they have.
40:08 Pablo Torre? But can you translate what is not being said here? It means what? What is Lawrence Frank not willing to say that you are personally?
40:15 Speaker 01 All I said was there have been players, not even agents, normally somebody affiliated with the player, a relative or whatever, that asked for something, something, right?
40:25 Pablo Torre? No doubt, no doubt, no doubt. And now, look, I want to-
40:26 Speaker 01 But to be clear, to be clear.
40:28 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're not saying that, you don't have knowledge that you're admitting to about that.
40:31 Speaker 01 No, I'm just saying, I didn't really-
40:33 Pablo Torre? I'm merely translating the-
40:33 Speaker 01 The business people do their business, right?
40:35 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
40:36 Speaker 01 There's no reason for basketball to get involved. I tell them not to get involved.
40:39 Pablo Torre? Of course. But according to the reporting, and this is out of Toronto, and the Lakers, of course, Kawhi's camp was explicitly asking for things.
40:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, but then, go back to the honey deal.
40:47 Pablo Torre? No-show deals, equity in companies.
40:49 Speaker 01 So why wasn't the honey deal a no-show deal?
40:50 Pablo Torre? Because that was, they're, they're, by the way, they signed some deals that passed muster. The reason it wasn't a no-show deal was Kawhi did ads, Kawhi was announced as a honey sponsor. And?
41:02 Speaker 01 What? That's it? But they asked him to do all that. You have no proof that he was even asked to do anything.
41:09 Pablo Torre? So, so, just to clarify here, what does it matter? If Kawhi was asked by aspiration to do anything.
41:16 Speaker 01 It's everything, right?
41:18 Pablo Torre? But is it, but whose side does it help if they never asked? Just out of curiosity.
41:22 Speaker 01 It doesn't help either side. It's a failure on the part of aspiration. That's all.
41:26 Pablo Torre? Certainly.
41:27 Speaker 01 But that's it.
41:28 Pablo Torre? But why wouldn't?
41:29 Speaker 01 So you, there are multiple deals that Kawhi did that.
41:33 Pablo Torre? He did stuff and they announced it. This is why I keep on asking the beginning of this episode, what the question is. Why was this one a deal where it was never announced and he never did anything?
41:41 Speaker 01 Because aspiration is a [bleep] up company.
41:42 Pablo Torre? Okay, great.
41:43 Speaker 01 And, and they were turning over people left and right. And their founder, the money guy, the guy who kept on bringing in the money, was a huge Clippers fan. He sat front row all the time.
41:55 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
41:55 Speaker 01 He would bring his girlfriend. He would do all this stuff. He would get all the accoutrements. Is that French?
42:00 Pablo Torre? Well, he and Steve.
42:01 Speaker 01 Is that the right French word?
42:02 Pablo Torre? That's a great French. And there is a certain je ne sais quoi about the dynamic between Steve and Joe.
42:09 Speaker 01 It's not, no, put aside, put aside Steve. It has nothing to do with Steve.
42:13 Pablo Torre? Okay, so, so I wanna, I wanna sort of advance the ball here a bit because aspiration, which is a team sponsor and a company that Ballmer personally invested $50 million into, that established and not in dispute. I wanna go back to the team sponsor dynamic because you mentioned Honey and Chime. And another one that came up brings us back to this story about how, you know, the Clippers famously ended up keeping DeAndre Jordan, the center that they had, from you. This is 2015 and it turns out, and this is just me going through the time machine here, it turns out that in 2015, you were asked about this in a very funny setting.
42:49 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
42:50 Pablo Torre? It was onstage during a talk you gave at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas.
42:54 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
42:55 Pablo Torre? This was the day after. This is July 9, 2015, and it sounded like this.
42:59 Speaker 05 Now, the, the sports fans among us, and I know there's a bunch here, know that you had kind of a tough, tough night last night with, uh... So this week on Shark Tank.
43:11 Speaker 01 Without going, without rehashing all the details of the DeAndre Jordan commitment. Oh, you had to say his name, okay. From a, from a leadership standpoint, when you have a setback, when you have a tough day, what do you say to your people? What do you say to the fans? The conversations we've had today, that it's over. You know, there's nothing you can do about it. You, you think for a second, is there anything I can change? You think for another second, what have I learned so I can do it differently next time? Um, and then you move forward and say, what are our options? You know, I'm, I'm a big believer, you have to re-earn your business every single day. You have to look to see whether or not.
43:45 Pablo Torre? I just like that you were talking about DeAndre Jordan in front of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who were in the audience at the Presidential Center there in Dallas. Why do you think I'm bringing this up now?
43:53 Speaker 01 No idea.
43:54 Pablo Torre? Okay. I'm bringing it up because Steve Ballmer was fined $250,000 for caps or convention.
43:58 Speaker 01 Right, you mentioned to me, yeah.
43:59 Pablo Torre? Yeah. Reportedly because his team offered a marketing side deal for DeAndre Jordan through Lexus. Would it be surprising for you to learn that Lexus was not only a team sponsor, but also, like Aspiration, a founding partner of the Intuit Dome?
44:10 Speaker 01 No.
44:12 Pablo Torre? So I'm just saying, like, team sponsors being used in these attempted ways to circumvent the cap against people like you, his competitors, he's done it before.
44:21 Speaker 01 So, but why, you're trying to make it sound like it's something he does all the time.
44:24 Pablo Torre? Well, he's been caught doing it in 2015.
44:26 Speaker 01 Right, so why didn't he do it with all the other sponsors?
44:28 Pablo Torre? Investigated 2019.
44:28 Speaker 01 How many sponsors do you think they have?
44:30 Pablo Torre? Oh, I just think he does it for the ones that he really cares about.
44:33 Speaker 01 Oh, okay, so the big ones, but he didn't care enough about Kawhi with Honey in 2020, before then, when he could have taken care of all of this.
44:40 Pablo Torre? Oh, so, so let me, let me just do some basic math here, because you raised a really good question about like, why this now in the timeline? So, the Raptors, during 2019 free agency, I'm just looking at the numbers here, right? So, they can offer a max of $190 million over five years. The Clippers and the Lakers could only offer $141 million.
45:00 Speaker 01 What was the year?
45:01 Pablo Torre? Over four years, 2019.
45:03 Speaker 01 2019, okay.
45:03 Pablo Torre? This is the big, Kawhi just won the title, free agency. The thing that got investigated by the NBA.
45:08 Speaker 01 Right.
45:08 Pablo Torre? Because the Raptors and Lakers groups complained. 190, 141. Do you know what 190 minus 141 is?
45:15 Speaker 01 With taxes, no.
45:18 Pablo Torre? A very Texan answer. 190 minus 141 is 49?
45:23 Speaker 01 Oh, sure. You're trying to say the numbers match up.
45:24 Pablo Torre? The number, the deal is 48. It's 48.
45:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, but, okay, let's just go right there, right?
45:30 Pablo Torre? Please.
45:31 Speaker 01 So, when you did episode one,
45:33 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
45:33 Speaker 01 you thought it was 28. You didn't know it was 48, right?
45:36 Pablo Torre? I didn't have the evidence that I have now for the 20 million dollars.
45:38 Speaker 01 Right, right, right. So now you're backtracking to try to make those numbers fill, right? But that's not the point.
45:43 Pablo Torre? No, no, no.
45:44 Speaker 01 The point, the point is when you went in episode one,
45:47 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
45:48 Speaker 01 and you thought it was 28 million dollars.
45:50 Pablo Torre? It is, on the endorsement deal, 28 million dollars.
45:52 Speaker 01 Okay, that's not where I'm going, right?
45:53 Pablo Torre? You got the paperwork, yeah.
45:54 Speaker 01 Right, you got the paperwork, right? So it's 28 million dollars, and you tied the 50 million dollars from Ballmer to say this is what was being used to, to pay the 28, correct?
46:05 Pablo Torre? I was saying Ballmer put in 50,
46:07 Speaker 01 Right.
46:07 Pablo Torre? Kawhi was getting out 28.
46:10 Speaker 01 So, I don't know the French word. So, eras whatever, right? Then, that one must be connected to the other.
46:18 Pablo Torre? No, I'm saying that based on the-
46:19 Speaker 01 Otherwise, what was the whole point of the episode?
46:21 Pablo Torre? Well, the whole point of the episode is that we connected-
46:23 Speaker 01 If Ballmer wasn't paying that 50 million in order to pay Kawhi, what's the point of the episode?
46:29 Pablo Torre? We just gotta remember that we had so much more evidence in the episode.
46:32 Speaker 01 But you made the point, did you not?
46:33 Pablo Torre? I'm trying to simplify it down in the conversation that we're having now.
46:36 Speaker 01 I'm just going back to episode one, when all this started.
46:39 Pablo Torre? In episode one, it was 28. I had not mentioned the 20.
46:42 Speaker 01 Because you didn't know about it at the time?
46:43 Pablo Torre? I could not report it, absolutely.
46:45 Speaker 01 Besides-
46:45 Pablo Torre? But, but the point being that now, we have the proof, it was-
46:48 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, no, not the point. Right, the point is you tied-
46:51 Pablo Torre? 49 to 48.
46:52 Speaker 01 You tied, no-
46:52 Pablo Torre? Is that a coincidence to you? Is it, yes or no? Is it a coincidence?
46:55 Speaker 01 Yes.
46:56 Pablo Torre? It is?
46:56 Speaker 01 Yes.
46:57 Pablo Torre? That's a hell of a physical-
46:58 Speaker 01 Because you do, no one looks at the gross delta as the number when it comes to choosing between one team versus another if it's based off of economics. Nobody. So, Texas teams know, Florida teams know, that you have, Oklahoma teams know, you have a state tax advantage.
47:14 Pablo Torre? I get the difference that these are not, of course, what the take-home pay is gonna be, depending on where your team is based.
47:19 Speaker 01 Is that what matters?
47:20 Pablo Torre? Of course it does, but I'm saying, in terms of how this got roughed out, I just, I'm pointing to the question of, there is a difference of 40- Forty-nine, the deal was very coincidentally forty-eight, and it was also in the way that Kawhi's camp was asking. No-show deals and also equity.
47:36 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, no, no, you're putting words in their, in their mouth.
47:38 Pablo Torre? That's according to the reporting from Toronto Star.
47:40 Speaker 01 No, no, no, that's in Toronto. That has nothing to do with LA.
47:43 Pablo Torre? But Kawhi's camp asked the Raptors that in 2019. The Raptors were like, we're not doing that. He asked that of the Lakers reportedly. Lakers were like, we're not doing that. And in 2021, guess what happens? Forty-eight billion dollars, a million off from the forty-nine in exactly that fashion.
47:57 Speaker 01 It's okay. Let's, let's segregate two different things here. Like I said when I first came on, I don't care if Steve is guilty or not, right? It's better for the Mavericks if he is, right? My issue is when you came out with podcast one, you had nothing.
48:11 Pablo Torre? That's not true.
48:12 Speaker 01 It's very true, right? And you tied the things you tried to get, the things you tried to tie together.
48:17 Pablo Torre? Plus three thousand pages of documents.
48:19 Speaker 01 Can sources be wrong?
48:20 Pablo Torre? One hundred percent. In this case, they've been, but they've been, but they've been proven right for now six episodes.
48:26 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, no. You want, you make them appear to be right. Okay, but let's just go back, let's just go back to what caught my attention.
48:33 Pablo Torre? Even from you, you're not even factually correcting me. You're just bringing out other stuff.
48:36 Speaker 01 No, no, I am factually correcting you because you tied specifically the fifty million dollar investment.
48:42 Pablo Torre? Fifty million in.
48:43 Speaker 01 To twenty-eight million.
48:44 Pablo Torre? Twenty-eight million out.
48:45 Speaker 01 Right, but they weren't tied at all. They were not connected in the least bit.
48:49 Pablo Torre? Of course they were.
48:50 Speaker 01 No.
48:51 Pablo Torre? I had seven sources saying this was for salary caps or convention. That is what.
48:54 Speaker 01 Then why was the money not paid to him?
48:58 Pablo Torre? It was a company run by a clever, but ultimately criminal co-founder.
49:02 Speaker 01 Oh, so when it comes to supporting your facts, you can use the fact that he's a criminal.
49:07 Pablo Torre? I've been using that from the start. It's the fact.
49:09 Speaker 01 No, but it's not. You're using it only to subs, to, to.
49:13 Pablo Torre? It's just reality. I'm merely describing reality.
49:15 Speaker 01 Your first podcast was very clear.
49:18 Pablo Torre? We have to agree to disagree, I think, on what the first podcast was, but I'm happy to.
49:22 Speaker 01 Let me just finish and tell me if I'm wrong, right? The first podcast, podcast said fifty million dollars, which was earmarked specifically.
49:32 Speaker 01 For the 28 million of quiet, yes or no?
49:34 Pablo Torre? Ear mark specifically? No, I said 50 in, 28 out.
49:38 Speaker 01 Right, so isn't that saying earmark?
49:41 Pablo Torre? I mean, look, Mark, I can refer you, generally speaking, out of journalistic caution, to the definition of how one does provide a pass through.
49:48 Speaker 01 Because it's fungible now, but why would, so the point is, you're coming out with this thing that's really, you know, just destroying a man's credibility and integrity.
49:57 Pablo Torre? It's reporting based on-
49:58 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, no. You knew what was at stake for Ballmer. You knew what was-
50:02 Pablo Torre? 100%, we made it very clear.
50:03 Speaker 01 Right, but you said 50 in, 28 out.
50:08 Pablo Torre? Yes.
50:08 Speaker 01 That looks like you're tying-
50:10 Pablo Torre? In a deal that never got announced.
50:11 Speaker 01 Of course not- Put aside, put aside-
50:12 Pablo Torre? The dots were connected by the seven sources that I have.
50:16 Speaker 01 You, if the sources, okay-
50:19 Pablo Torre? I'm just saying, we can, we can, we have to disagree that the sources are meaningful.
50:24 Speaker 01 Mark, even a criminal, criminal, would know, pay the 50, if you're getting the 50 to keep this guy happy, for a circumvention that he needs for his business, make sure he gets paid on time, at least the first time.
50:37 Pablo Torre? Well, I just want to make clear that like what I am reporting is that Steve Ballmer did not know at the outset that he was gonna get victimized by Joe Samper.
50:44 Speaker 01 No, of course, that's not the point. That's not the point. The point is-
50:47 Pablo Torre? The question is, why was it that the payments were late? Right?
50:51 Speaker 01 Or not prepaid, or not prepaid, or not done something-
50:54 Pablo Torre? And the carbon credit stuff we did in the episode before.
50:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you didn't do the margin dollars, but anyways, it's okay.
50:59 Pablo Torre? I want to get to this thing, okay?
51:03 Pablo Torre? Oh, Mark, Mark, Mark.
51:05 Speaker 01 Papa, papa, papa.
51:06 Pablo Torre? Um, I am enjoying this, by the way.
51:08 Speaker 01 Me too.
51:08 Pablo Torre? Okay, good. The thing that I'm trying to get to here, though, is that Aspiration truly was like horrifically run. Financially, they were toast, and I want to show you actually just like, so this other document in here, you know so much more about business and forms than me. So this is a series of disclosures that Aspiration had to present to potential investors, and it lists a number of very real problems.
51:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, you talked about this before.
51:34 Pablo Torre? If you can just like-
51:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, these are all in Schedule 310, yeah.
51:38 Pablo Torre? So the company is in default, is what this is on the first page?
51:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, this is all the [BLEEP] that are false.
51:41 Pablo Torre? What does default mean? Just for people who don't know what that means. Seriously?
51:44 Speaker 01 I'll let you define it.
51:45 Pablo Torre? Okay, it means they're broke. KPMG-
51:47 Speaker 01 It doesn't mean they're broke, right? It just means they're late and there's a good chance that they won't be able to-
51:51 Pablo Torre? That's why I asked. Broke ass is the more colloquial.
51:54 Speaker 01 So like, but here's a good example of what you were trying to.
51:58 Pablo Torre? No, I want to list what it is.
52:00 Speaker 01 Right, but here's.
52:02 Pablo Torre? Pick whatever you want.
52:02 Speaker 01 KPMG resigned as the company's independent auditor. So while on one hand, that's a red flag, right?
52:08 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the independent auditor was like.
52:10 Speaker 01 They didn't give why, yeah, they didn't say why, right? And that's.
52:12 Pablo Torre? Why do you think in retrospect, they might have done that?
52:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, because they couldn't, because Joe Samper was doing all these round trip deals and they couldn't.
52:19 Pablo Torre? Because the company was in default and otherwise facing litigation and probes by the government.
52:23 Speaker 01 They couldn't confirm all the.
52:25 Pablo Torre? It was fishy, it was all fishy.
52:26 Speaker 01 Whatever reasons they had.
52:28 Pablo Torre? Whatever reasons KPMG had, yes.
52:30 Speaker 01 From an investor standpoint.
52:31 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
52:31 Speaker 01 They just changed auditors.
52:33 Pablo Torre? Okay, but it resigned, it didn't.
52:35 Speaker 01 Again.
52:36 Pablo Torre? They didn't change it.
52:37 Speaker 01 They resigned for.
52:38 Pablo Torre? They lost their independent auditor.
52:39 Speaker 01 They didn't give a reason.
52:40 Pablo Torre? So, so the company is in default, KPMG resigned as the company's independent auditor. The next page, schedule 3.11.
52:45 Speaker 01 The company is default, but let's say what it is. Inherent notes, inherent ends up being the company that acquired them after it was all said and done.
52:51 Pablo Torre? They were this inherent was the senior lender.
52:53 Speaker 01 Right.
52:54 Pablo Torre? Mark's reading. It's pretty bad, man.
52:57 Speaker 01 It does, this doesn't really say anything.
53:00 Pablo Torre? The deep company is in default, I believe, I'll just back to it. There's some stuff on here that's pretty good.
53:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I read this in the SEC.
53:07 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the company is in default.
53:10 Speaker 01 Look, I get your point there. Why would somebody invest in a company that shows you this?
53:14 Pablo Torre? Litigation, 8.7 million in damages alleged by Nanobank.
53:17 Speaker 01 There must be some ancillary thing, right?
53:18 Pablo Torre? Claims of breach of loan, breach of the implied covenant of good faith.
53:21 Speaker 01 But you have to ask the same question.
53:23 Pablo Torre? FINRA is conducting five inquiries.
53:25 Speaker 01 Right, right.
53:26 Pablo Torre? SEC is conducting a review of the ESG representations, it's just.
53:29 Speaker 01 And what was the date, what was the date on these?
53:31 Pablo Torre? Well, so, let me ask you this, because.
53:34 Speaker 01 What was the date, because it's important.
53:35 Pablo Torre? No, it's in there, it's in there. If you were pitched to invest in this company at a $2 billion plus valuation.
53:40 Speaker 01 No, it wasn't, first of all, they weren't, the investment wasn't at a $2 billion valuation. So there's.
53:45 Pablo Torre? This one, this one, I'm saying, if you were, hypothetically, if you were presented with this at a $2 billion plus valuation.
53:51 Speaker 01 It wasn't a $2 billion valuation, you're pivoting, so here, if I was selling it on Shark Tank, right?
53:57 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
53:57 Speaker 01 I would say, look, we went, we were aspiration bank and we screwed up. We were in the. Consumer business, we screwed up. We even paid money to endorsers that we didn't even use. That's how screwed up we were. But now I'm going to show you the P and L for our B to B business where we're selling carbon credits, higher margin, bigger deals, right? Which are the things that they
54:17 Pablo Torre? Regime change, new CEO, getting rid of the old execs.
54:20 Speaker 01 Right, so now let me show you a pro forma based off of just this business and excluding all the other business. The 2.3 billion dollar number is very misleading because that's only realized if it goes public with the SPAC.
54:34 Pablo Torre? Exactly, exactly.
54:35 Speaker 01 And if it doesn't go public, which is all about, all Churney cares about, right? That's why, not Churney, Samberg cares about, that's why he's lying. They do, but Churney's gone in a minute, right? Right, so this SPAC isn't going to happen, right?
54:50 Pablo Torre? Oh yeah.
54:51 Speaker 01 Joe knows it's not going to happen unless he pulls a rabbit.
54:53 Pablo Torre? Well, at a certain point, it does. Well, but in this case, in this timeline, it's absolutely still what the goal is.
54:58 Speaker 01 You're right, no, the goal is still right because it's 21.
55:01 Pablo Torre? Raise the money, yeah, yeah, yeah.
55:02 Speaker 01 It's 21, it's still, but the investment that they're making at that point in time isn't at the valuation of 2.3 until it converts.
55:10 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
55:10 Speaker 01 And that was the point you missed before in your podcast, right?
55:12 Pablo Torre? Okay, I know, I'm trying.
55:13 Speaker 01 So let me explain to you, right?
55:14 Pablo Torre? Yes.
55:15 Speaker 01 You're buying it lower, right? And you're getting a price, they had rolling closes all the time. That's why they would have a C1, C2, C4, C, you know, series closed, right? And that's why it was like confusing that Ballmer put in in September and Dennis Wong put in in December of 22 and then Ballmer puts in in March 23 because they had these things called rolling closes, right? So at that point, so there's basically two businesses here. Two businesses that are being sold, Shark Tank approach, right? The two businesses are, at the beginning, at this point in time, when everybody thinks the aspiration bank itself is going to happen and there's this SPAC merger going to happen. You're only going to invest if it's considerably lower than the 2.3 billion dollars.
56:00 Pablo Torre? I see what you're saying.
56:01 Speaker 01 Because you see that as the grand prize.
56:03 Pablo Torre? But this is, but this thing, the reason I'm jumping in here is because this presentation, these disclosures were made to outside investors, 19 of them, according to court documents, who heard this pitch like you and said, "No, no, no." You would say to, to, to this Series of disclosures, no thanks.
56:20 Speaker 01 No, I wouldn't necessarily say that. I don't know what the pitch is. Companies pivot every day.
56:25 Pablo Torre? So, so, so, let me put this in the timeline specifically because this was the raise in Q4 of 2022.
56:33 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
56:34 Pablo Torre? And so all that stuff is disclosed.
56:35 Speaker 01 So what happened in October of 2022?
56:37 Pablo Torre? A lot of bad shit for aspiration, man.
56:39 Speaker 01 No, a lot of good shit for aspiration. A lot of good stuff.
56:43 Pablo Torre? What was good about a company going into default that was losing its entire executive structure as employees were saying, are we gonna make payroll ever?
56:49 Speaker 01 They went to Katana.
56:50 Pablo Torre? Katana?
56:51 Speaker 01 Katana, right?
56:52 Pablo Torre? Katana.
56:53 Speaker 01 So, December 22, they changed and they were able to show a P and L based only off their B to B. They did, again, the, the execs that were pitching.
57:03 Pablo Torre? But, but, but Mark, the, the reason why they were pivoting was because, um, the company as it existed was, of course, pardon my French, totally fucked. And so they were figuring out, okay.
57:14 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
57:16 Pablo Torre? Oh, I'm sorry. Now you're a big aspiration fan.
57:18 Speaker 01 No, I'm, you know, the more I got to know about Katana, the more I liked it. Katana, right? The more I liked it, right? So I could see.
57:25 Pablo Torre? You liked, okay, very good.
57:27 Speaker 01 Cause when you, look, the base numbers going back to September 30th of 2021 show their B to B business where they didn't waste all that money on marketing, right? Was, had a chance, had a chance.
57:38 Pablo Torre? So for that reason, you're in?
57:40 Speaker 01 I at least would look at it, right?
57:42 Pablo Torre? Okay.
57:42 Speaker 01 But, not, not that I would invest in that business, but it's not unheard of for a company to pivot to a new business, have multiple lines of business.
57:51 Pablo Torre? It's in fact the only thing left for this company to do is pivot. But the reason I'm saying is that because 19 outside investors looked at this and said, as aforementioned, hell no.
58:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, but.
58:02 Pablo Torre? And so the question I have now is, since.
58:04 Speaker 01 You know how many people said no to Airbnb?
58:07 Pablo Torre? Okay, but, but I guess.
58:08 Speaker 01 Everybody, Federal Express, everybody.
58:10 Pablo Torre? Of course, that's of course, an insane comparison to aspiration which went bankrupt and is embroiled in lots of fraud and humiliation. Airbnb, FedEx and so forth. But in this case, the question I have is just since my, since the first podcast, which you hated, came out on September 3rd. Have you communicated at all with the vice chairman of the Clippers, Dennis Wong?
58:30 Speaker 01 No.
58:31 Pablo Torre? Okay. Dennis Wong is Steve Ballmer's close friend and college roommate, the one and only co-owner that Ballmer trusted of Equity and the Team. He also wound up being the only person who did not have money in aspiration, who saw these disclosures that I presented to you in December 22.
58:45 Speaker 01 Not the only person.
58:46 Pablo Torre? The only person who had never put in money into aspiration before.
58:49 Speaker 01 Oh, that put in money in aspiration before.
58:51 Pablo Torre? And said, you know what? I want a piece of this. This is the signature page for Dennis Wong that's attached to the same disclosures that I just handed you. That's what he saw. What you just saw is what he saw.
59:00 Speaker 01 But to your point, right? Now, let's think this through.
59:03 Pablo Torre? Please.
59:04 Speaker 01 There were other investors, because we got to see the pictures.
59:07 Pablo Torre? Yeah, they were all previously.
59:08 Speaker 01 The point is, right? The point is, those other two investors that invested around the same time as Dennis Wong, right? They, as best I can remember, so they also said, you know what? I like what I'm seeing in this pivot.
59:28 Pablo Torre? But I do need to just take a quick beat here to clarify something that we had reported previously on the show.
59:35 Pablo Torre? When it comes to the identities of the only other investors, the two other entities who gave aspiration money in December 2022 in that same Series C5 round, having been presented with that same exact set of disclosures and all of their bleakness as Clippers co-owner Dennis Wong. Because one of those two investors was aspiration board member Ibrahim Al-Hussein. The same guy who pleaded guilty to wire fraud in March 2025. The same guy who was the alleged co-conspirator of aspiration co-founder Joe Sandberg. And the other investor was, yes, Joe Sandberg himself,
1:00:17 Pablo Torre? who of course pleaded guilty to wire fraud in August of 2025.
1:00:24 Pablo Torre? So the question I have is, those disclosures are the things that Dennis Wong signed off on, and Aspiration's quarterly payment to Kawhi Leonard was, at this point, more than two months late. Dennis Wong put in $1.99 million. He acquired 0.072% of the company in default, facing those problems, as aforementioned. Why do you think he put in that little money for that little equity?
1:00:53 Speaker 01 Maybe to make his daughter happy, his daughter worked there, right? Maybe to keep him alive, maybe to keep him, give him one more month, maybe they said...
1:01:00 Pablo Torre? Do you think that that would save the balance sheets of Aspiration, $2 million? And by the way, lots of people came in and out of the company. I'm not here to interrogate them at the moment.
1:01:10 Speaker 01 So the people who went back to work there.
1:01:13 Pablo Torre? But why would Dennis Wong put in specifically that little amount of money after $300 million had already been raised the year before?
1:01:19 Speaker 01 Because maybe that was a bridge loan.
1:01:21 Pablo Torre? 0.02.
1:01:22 Speaker 01 Maybe it was a bridge amount, maybe they said, you know what, we gotta make this one payroll, right? And we have more money coming in. We have more money coming in after that, which turned out to be true. I get asked all the time...
1:01:33 Pablo Torre? But this wasn't a loan, this was an investment.
1:01:34 Speaker 01 Whatever it was, a bridge...
1:01:36 Pablo Torre? It was an actual purchase agreement. It was a Series C5 preferred stock purchase agreement.
1:01:41 Speaker 01 Right, I can't tell you how often I hear, right? Hey, we're close, right? We have this other money coming in, which turned out to be true, right? Because they ended up raising 68 million... Kind of, they raised 68...
1:01:53 Pablo Torre? Just spoiler alert, the company is [bleeped].
1:01:55 Speaker 01 Well, no.
1:01:56 Pablo Torre? We're getting to relive decisions with the benefit of hindsight, I admit.
1:02:00 Speaker 01 Joe Sandberg is [bleeped]. Joe Sandberg is [bleeped].
1:02:04 Pablo Torre? The company, literally, is in default at the time that this payment is made.
1:02:07 Speaker 01 Joe Sandberg is the one...
1:02:08 Pablo Torre? And Aspiration needs to pivot to a totally different business.
1:02:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's what companies do, Pablo.
1:02:13 Pablo Torre? But that is also a synonym for being [bleeped]. They filed for bankruptcy.
1:02:17 Speaker 01 So, okay. Why would a new CEO take the job of CEO?
1:02:21 Pablo Torre? That's a great question for Olivia Albright. Great question.
1:02:24 Speaker 01 Right. Why did she stay there for an extended period of time?
1:02:27 Pablo Torre? But I want to ask about Dennis Wong. I don't care about Olivia at the moment.
1:02:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, we do care about Olivia.
1:02:30 Pablo Torre? No, I get, but lots of people, lots of people either fell for or went eyes wide open in for a [BLEEP] scenario as described.
1:02:37 Speaker 01 But no, but see, no, no, no, no, no.
1:02:40 Pablo Torre? Okay.
1:02:40 Speaker 01 Our mutual friend has been very clear that he didn't know that they were...
1:02:43 Pablo Torre? He's not my friend. He is a source and I appreciate the distinction. Um, with the point being, and I, and I want to leave him to the side for a second. Because what Dennis Wong decided to do nine days before KL2 Aspire LLC finally, after months of delay, got paid 1.75, are you suggesting that is another coincidence?
1:03:03 Speaker 01 Look, there were 16 contractual payments. You have one payment that was in proximity to an investment.
1:03:11 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the week before, after months of delay.
1:03:13 Speaker 01 After months of delay.
1:03:15 Pablo Torre? I asked you the question, why would he put in 1.99 specifically? And your only response was, maybe he wanted to save the company, which doesn't add up.
1:03:21 Speaker 01 No.
1:03:22 Pablo Torre? Maybe he wanted to make his daughter happy. By the way, his daughter, according to people who worked with her, quote, "She 100% knew that the company was a sinking ship," end quote. Kawhi got paid 1.75 the day they laid off 20% of the staff.
1:03:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's because they were pivoting. Of course, you're going to lay off staff. Look, you're trying to put everything in. Joe Sandberg is his own unique entity. Aspiration to people doing the work, the people that came every day believing. Yeah, they believed in the mission.
1:03:49 Pablo Torre? And those are my sources for the record.
1:03:51 Speaker 01 But, and that's great, but they had no idea or understanding of why Joe Sandberg did what he did.
1:03:56 Pablo Torre? I mean, what they did, though, was see, wire in and wire out knowledge in the finance department. Like, this is Dennis Wong's wire in, this is KL2's wire [BLEEP] the week before.
1:04:06 Speaker 01 This is bookkeeping [BLEEP].
1:04:07 Pablo Torre? It's booking [BLEEP] literally the flow of funds. The question I have, though...
1:04:12 Speaker 01 Let me say this again, Paul.
1:04:13 Pablo Torre? No, I, I hear you.
1:04:14 Speaker 01 16 payments.
1:04:16 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
1:04:16 Speaker 01 16 contractual...
1:04:17 Pablo Torre? But why this one?
1:04:18 Speaker 01 16 contractual payments.
1:04:20 Pablo Torre? Why this one, though? But I want to focus on...
1:04:21 Speaker 01 You have one payment.
1:04:22 Pablo Torre? But why is this one the one that Dennis Wong put in money nine days before to a degree that is inexplicable to everybody?
1:04:31 Speaker 01 Any, look, any payment that's going to be made is going to be within some X number of days.
1:04:37 Pablo Torre? This was months late, Mark.
1:04:37 Speaker 01 What's that?
1:04:38 Pablo Torre? This payment to Kawhi was months late.
1:04:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I don't know, maybe the...
1:04:41 Pablo Torre? And nine days later, it got paid magically.
1:04:44 Speaker 01 Who benefits the most from that payment?
1:04:47 Pablo Torre? Anyone who wants Kawhi to finally get paid.
1:04:50 Speaker 01 Uncle Dennis?
1:04:51 Pablo Torre? Kawhi's camp, the Clippers are the two parties that I am constantly trying to-
1:04:57 Speaker 01 So, as a-
1:05:00 Pablo Torre? Link to the logic here in your brain.
1:05:01 Speaker 01 As someone who's had companies that have done well and poorly for a period and fortunately turned around, right, when you have a vendor that is calling you all the time, right? The squeaky wheel moves to the top. Did it cross your mind that the guy was just so annoying that they want-
1:05:21 Pablo Torre? Yes, but lots of people weren't getting paid. Lots of clients were getting screwed, right? And they were all calling. And the question is, why did this guy get prioritized?
1:05:29 Speaker 01 Because maybe he was the squeakiest wheel, maybe because Joe Sandberg's a Clippers fan, maybe because Joe Sandberg would see Kawhi at games that he would go to, sitting on the front row or right on the court, wherever, I don't know exactly where he was sitting, right? And maybe he already had a relationship with Kawhi and he would be embarrassed next time because maybe Kawhi would say something. Uncle Dennis was going to those games, maybe Uncle Dennis was saying something specifically to Joe Sandberg. And that guy is saying, okay, we gotta pay this guy, you know? I'm the one raising money, I got more money coming in.
1:05:59 Pablo Torre? It's just a very funny thing for the number one priority, according to my sources here, to be pay the guy doing nothing for us in a deal we've never announced.
1:06:09 Speaker 01 He's driving everything, he's the one raising all the money. He who raises money gets control.
1:06:14 Pablo Torre? What does he benefit from in terms of this deal existing? And my theory has been consistent throughout, which is that he benefits because he preserves a relationship with Steve Ballmer in which his obligation-
1:06:26 Speaker 01 So, the more I learned, so when I did the first podcast, I didn't really know all that much about Joe. So, it was interesting and thank you, deep research, right?
1:06:32 Pablo Torre? Oh, boy.
1:06:33 Speaker 01 So, it was interesting. This is a guy, what else was on Joe Sandberg's plate? What else was he doing?
1:06:39 Pablo Torre? Please educate me.
1:06:41 Speaker 01 He was actively involved in politics.
1:06:43 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
1:06:44 Speaker 01 He was one of the largest.
1:06:45 Pablo Torre? These are the good guys, Mark. These are the Democrat donors, the biggest in California, some have said.
1:06:49 Speaker 01 Biggest in California, right? He's on the court. He's got a famous girlfriend, right, who's taken to games.
1:06:56 Pablo Torre? She's a media personality.
1:06:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And so his, his whole spiel, his only, if he collapses, if his image collapses.
1:07:05 Pablo Torre? Oh, I.
1:07:06 Speaker 01 His whole thing, taking over Blue Apron.
1:07:08 Pablo Torre? Oh, sure.
1:07:09 Speaker 01 Like, all that stuff collapses.
1:07:10 Pablo Torre? But it's so weird to prioritize the deal that no one knows about amid all the public pressure you're feeling.
1:07:15 Speaker 01 No, no, no, you're missing the whole point then. I'm not doing a good job explaining it.
1:07:18 Pablo Torre? No, no, he has lots of things that he's trying to keep the plate spinning simultaneously.
1:07:22 Speaker 01 It's not just spinning, it's his whole image.
1:07:24 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:07:24 Speaker 01 He's selling, that's what criminals do. They sell their image.
1:07:28 Pablo Torre? But I suppose what I'm pointing out to.
1:07:28 Speaker 01 And if the one guy that you see in a uniform or at that point in time in 21, well, I guess he didn't sign it till 22.
1:07:36 Pablo Torre? Well, he didn't play in 21, 22.
1:07:38 Speaker 01 Right. No, that's what I said. He didn't sign, and they didn't sign it till 22, right?
1:07:41 Pablo Torre? April.
1:07:41 Speaker 01 And they signed April of 22, right? And so that season starts in November, right, of, or October, November.
1:07:49 Pablo Torre? Yes, the 22 play three season.
1:07:50 Speaker 01 Because we're talking about him getting paid in December, right? And so now he's seeing him at the games again. The guys got from, they've got a big suite where they entertain.
1:07:58 Pablo Torre? Yes, they do. This is at Staples at the time.
1:08:00 Speaker 01 Right. They've got the, the seats on the floor.
1:08:02 Pablo Torre? Yep.
1:08:03 Speaker 01 He's probably seen him in the tunnel before and or after every game.
1:08:07 Pablo Torre? Sure.
1:08:07 Speaker 01 And he's seeing Uncle Dennis, and I'm sure Uncle Dennis is in his ear, and Uncle Dennis is.
1:08:12 Pablo Torre? I fully agree that Joe Sandberg was essential to the story of why Kawhi was getting paid.
1:08:18 Speaker 01 So let me just ask you a question.
1:08:19 Pablo Torre? Yeah, please.
1:08:19 Speaker 01 If you're Joe Sandberg, which is more impactful to your life? Paying Kawhi Leonard or paying some random vendor?
1:08:28 Pablo Torre? I would say that making sure that I paid Kawhi above and beyond, not a random vendor, but my other financial obligations is insane because he's returning zero ROI to my company.
1:08:41 Speaker 01 No, no, he's
1:08:42 Pablo Torre? No, he's literally doing nothing. He's actually just net negative.
1:08:45 Speaker 01 You've got the wrong hat on, Pablo.
1:08:46 Pablo Torre? Oh, I know, I know. You're talking about public pressure and I know you're talking about who's bothering me day to day.
1:08:52 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, I'm talking about-
1:08:53 Pablo Torre? If I'm Joe Sandberg about what is the actual health of my company? Why am I prioritizing somebody?
1:08:58 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no.
1:09:00 Pablo Torre? Mark, the goal is to get to SPAC.
1:09:01 Speaker 01 Right, right, but okay, by 2022-
1:09:04 Pablo Torre? And so you need a functional company.
1:09:05 Speaker 01 So he's spiraling in 2022.
1:09:06 Pablo Torre? Absolutely.
1:09:07 Speaker 01 You gotta have a functioning company. So paying Kawhi 1.75 isn't going to change in functioning company. The 1.99 is not going to change whether it's functioning or not.
1:09:15 Pablo Torre? You know what it would do, though? It would keep Uncle Dennis Robertson and Kawhi's camp happy.
1:09:19 Speaker 01 And it keeps, it keeps him from bothering Joe Sandberg.
1:09:22 Pablo Torre? Who else might be bothered if there were payments that were late?
1:09:26 Speaker 01 Joe Sandberg.
1:09:27 Pablo Torre? What about, I don't know, potentially, according to my reporting, the Los Angeles Clippers? You think that could be a pressure?
1:09:33 Speaker 01 I mean, it's possible that Uncle Dennis pressured whoever there and said-
1:09:37 Pablo Torre? Like Lawrence Frank saying that he heard, or rather, wouldn't say no to whether he heard.
1:09:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you can't, I mean, look, that's ridiculous to even bring that up.
1:09:45 Pablo Torre? Using his words. You got the yes or no questions.
1:09:48 Speaker 01 But what do you think he's going to do? You don't think he's got a prepared statement? He knows exactly what he's going to say before he responds?
1:09:53 Pablo Torre? I'm just saying it's a terrible way to convince me that-
1:09:54 Speaker 01 No, you think he gives a [BLEEP]. Look, it's a big deal-
1:09:57 Pablo Torre? He just doesn't want to be caught lying.
1:09:59 Speaker 01 It's not even about that. There's no point. There's no point. Kawhi addressed it. So think about this. Andrew Churney says it wasn't a work, a no work deal.
1:10:09 Pablo Torre? You trust that guy? So the three names, Mike Shaker, the general counsel, Roger Evans, Izzy, and the CMO, and Eric Anderson, who was the CTO, they came out with a signed statement provided to me saying, Andre Churney, in so many words, is not representing our experience.
1:10:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you're proving my point and you don't even know it. You're making my point and you don't even know it.
1:10:32 Pablo Torre? Those three named sources are corroborating what my seven anonymous sources were telling me. And Andre Churney is on an island as the co-founder and friend of Joe Sandberg, who's now trying to say, according to his public statements, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this was a normal deal. The Kawhi thing was a normal deal.
1:10:48 Speaker 01 No, he said the contract was normal.
1:10:51 Pablo Torre? So look, what I want to get to here.
1:10:53 Speaker 01 He said, because he even agreed, like, because the Joe Samberg email to everybody in May of 22, where he said he would provide the stock.
1:11:00 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah, Joe wanted it.
1:11:01 Speaker 01 He even said in the email.
1:11:02 Pablo Torre? So Andre signed it. Andre signed the contract?
1:11:03 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, that's not where I'm going.
1:11:05 Pablo Torre? Oh, I know. Joe said that Andre didn't want this either.
1:11:08 Speaker 01 And all the marketing team didn't want it either.
1:11:10 Pablo Torre? Nobody, so.
1:11:11 Speaker 01 Nobody, which was par for the course for Joe Samberg.
1:11:14 Pablo Torre? He rammed it through. He rammed it through.
1:11:16 Speaker 01 That 29.5, did you read the lawsuit, the 29.5 million dollar lawsuit?
1:11:20 Pablo Torre? Mark, I've read so many lawsuits.
1:11:22 Speaker 01 I bet you have. I bet you have. So you know that that's where you brought up the, they brought up the, not the audit committee, the investment committee, right?
1:11:28 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
1:11:28 Speaker 01 The investment committee said no. And then the general counsel said, we want escrow. Guy sends an email to Joe Samberg and the next day it's all changed. The next day, that's how he did business.
1:11:41 Pablo Torre? The whole thing here is that he was and is, according to his own guilty plea, a fraudster. The question is why he wanted to do this. And so for me, what I'm getting to is also, as you foreshadowed, March 9, 2023, those same disclosures Dennis Wong saw. Steve Ballmer is like, you know what? I want in $10 million more.
1:12:01 Speaker 01 And I'll tell you exactly how that goes.
1:12:03 Pablo Torre? Please.
1:12:03 Speaker 01 Okay. Guy comes to you, Pablo, we've had problems, right? We're pivoting. And I've got my GC coming back, right? I've got people that I think are going to do great. I've got a new CEO. And Pablo, let me just show you this, this information, these numbers. This business-to-business stuff, this enterprise business is good.
1:12:26 Pablo Torre? The carbon credits business.
1:12:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, carbon credits. We have Meta lined up. We have, you know, Bank of America lined up. And you know what, Pablo? This is so good. I'm going to put in 40, you're putting in 10, Steve. I'm going to go four times that amount and I'm going to put my own cash in. That's how committed I am to this business. Mark, you're putting in 40 million, whatever it was, dollars in yourself? All right, I can see the numbers. My marginal cost is 10 million of already in 50. So the marginal value of this, and remember, this is March of 23 when he invested. And by that point-
1:13:04 Pablo Torre? This is the same round as Dennis Wong, it was the long round?
1:13:07 Speaker 01 Right, yeah, which is not unusual.
1:13:08 Pablo Torre? December to March?
1:13:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, they keep it open, right, right. And that was also the time when Sandberg was paying InterPrivate two $5 million payments to extend the outside date, which is the drop dead date for the SPAC.
1:13:24 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
1:13:24 Speaker 01 Right? So, so he's going, so it wouldn't be the first time.
1:13:27 Pablo Torre? Oh, no, no, but, but-
1:13:28 Speaker 01 So, the idea that he's doing this, how stupid is he? Because he reads this, well, he's so stupid that the guy who he still trusts, that he doesn't know is a fraudster, is putting in four times as much cash as he is. 20 times as much cash as Dennis Wong.
1:13:42 Pablo Torre? Right.
1:13:42 Speaker 01 That's why he's doing it.
1:13:43 Pablo Torre? Right, so I guess it's worth pointing out, though, that at this point, when you go to December, before Steve Ballmer made that decision, the SPAC as a premise had basically collapsed.
1:13:52 Speaker 01 No.
1:13:53 Pablo Torre? No?
1:13:54 Speaker 01 No.
1:13:54 Pablo Torre? There was a meeting held in which 90% of the investors were like, "We're cashing out."
1:13:58 Speaker 01 Right, but it still was alive, that's why-
1:14:00 Pablo Torre? But 90% said we're out.
1:14:03 Speaker 01 You can, yeah, but you can, it's, it's, um-
1:14:04 Pablo Torre? What, 90%?
1:14:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you can go replenish-
1:14:09 Pablo Torre? This is documented.
1:14:09 Speaker 01 You can replenish those investors.
1:14:11 Pablo Torre? Okay, but how big an uphill climb is all of this in context?
1:14:14 Speaker 01 But you're, in context, you have to look-
1:14:17 Pablo Torre? It's insane.
1:14:17 Speaker 01 No, you have to look at what's happening with SPACs at the same point in time.
1:14:20 Pablo Torre? Yeah, and by, and over time, SPACs were revealed to be a giant illusion.
1:14:25 Speaker 01 Not necessarily, but they weren't doing as well, right? But they're, they're not doing as well.
1:14:29 Pablo Torre? I mean, yeah, but the point being-
1:14:30 Speaker 01 No, you're using this as some type of indicator-
1:14:32 Pablo Torre? No, I'm just giving you like-
1:14:33 Speaker 01 It's not an indication of anything, Pablo.
1:14:35 Pablo Torre? The company we're talking about is documented to be-
1:14:36 Speaker 01 Pablo, it's not in-
1:14:37 Pablo Torre? Losing its appendages, its identity, its employees, its very basic thesis.
1:14:43 Speaker 01 No!
1:14:43 Pablo Torre? The SPAC as a thesis-
1:14:45 Speaker 01 Just look at Katona's website, Twitter feed, right?
1:14:47 Pablo Torre? That's the, so I'm giving you 90% of the investors are cashing out within InterPrivate, and you're saying, "Look at the Twitter feed"?
1:14:53 Speaker 01 Pablo-
1:14:54 Pablo Torre? Because they got posts? Because they're, because they dared to post?
1:14:57 Speaker 01 It's a blank check, a spot, yeah. A blank check SPAC, right? And so they have the option to extract their money. They have the option to get more money to put in there in a variety of ways. They have to come up with a total of $400 million at some point. The fact that these investors pulled out- Could be a thousand different reasons. What data did they have available to them to make a determination if it was a good?
1:15:22 Pablo Torre? What if they saw that everybody who was in the executive structure was fired?
1:15:27 Speaker 01 They didn't have any data.
1:15:29 Pablo Torre? Okay, but as an investor, would it be concerning to you if they were having massive layoffs? And needed to pivot the entire premise of the company?
1:15:37 Speaker 01 It depends on where they were pivoting. A lot of companies have pivoted.
1:15:39 Pablo Torre? What they're saying is, hey, you guys are pivoting. This is most generously. You guys are pivoting. We think that we're best.
1:15:45 Speaker 01 I'm saying, no, no, I'm saying you're coming to a conclusion. Pablo, you're coming to the conclusion that these people left, 90% left, because it's obvious that it was a fraud or there's something wrong.
1:15:54 Pablo Torre? They smelled that it was a bad deal.
1:15:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm saying you have no idea that that's the case. None, not even a smidgen of them.
1:16:01 Pablo Torre? I have a sense.
1:16:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's all you have.
1:16:04 Pablo Torre? No, no, no, I have a sense based on nine sources who are telling me this is why this is happening. Here is the flow of funds. Here are the 3,000 pages of documents.
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1:17:00 Pablo Torre? Can I just get to the whole thing of like, the Clippers say to us, we saw this deal was fishy in the 22-23 season and we terminated it.
1:17:09 Speaker 01 Mm hmm. For the end of the 23 season.
1:17:12 Pablo Torre? So, you know how the NBA season works. So Bomber puts in 10 in March, March 9th. So that's pretty close to the end of the season.
1:17:20 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:17:20 Pablo Torre? So when do you think the Clippers would have said, oh no, we should terminate this?
1:17:24 Speaker 01 I don't know if they told him at all or when they told him or what was going on. I'm sure they mentioned, I would say they mentioned to it because you're closing a big deal, right? So. You know, and when did he start the investment process and when did he close it? You know, he closed it in March of 23, right? We don't know when they determined that they were going to shut off the aspiration. We do know they tweeted happy birthday to Kawhi.
1:17:46 Pablo Torre? In June?
1:17:47 Speaker 01 Yeah, in June, so, you know, because the NBA dates are June 30th, right?
1:17:52 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:17:52 Speaker 01 That's when the season officially financially ends.
1:17:55 Pablo Torre? Oh, the league year.
1:17:55 Speaker 01 For the, yeah, for the business.
1:17:57 Pablo Torre? For the CBA. I guess what I'm saying is, when Steve Ballmer says, and I believe him on some key level, that he is a victim of Joe Sandberg, and there is no disagreement from me.
1:18:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, we both agreed there.
1:18:06 Pablo Torre? Of course he was. The question is whether he was deceived by a guy he was entrusting to help him deceive the NBA.
1:18:13 Speaker 01 Right.
1:18:13 Pablo Torre? And you firmly push back, Team Ballmer. So the question I have now is, look, you're a businessman who has said over and over again that like, we are not immune to mistakes, we are fallible, we are smart.
1:18:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've been scammed, yeah, I've been scammed.
1:18:27 Pablo Torre? But we've been scammed. Genuinely, this is just me like doing a bit of just, I imagine to be that rich and to lose money from someone you trust, that sucks.
1:18:37 Speaker 01 Yeah, of course.
1:18:38 Pablo Torre? You must feel like, because you're supposed to be the smart guy, you're humiliated.
1:18:41 Speaker 01 It's not even that, it's not even that, right? It's because you trusted somebody.
1:18:43 Pablo Torre? Yes.
1:18:44 Speaker 01 That's it.
1:18:45 Speaker 06 This is not a fun thing to be through. I was personally defrauded. Remember, they defrauded me, they defrauded many other investors. These were guys who committed fraud. How would I be able, look, they conned me.
1:19:03 Pablo Torre? You're one of the richest men in America.
1:19:04 Speaker 06 They conned me. I made an investment in these guys, thinking it was on the up and up, and they conned me.
1:19:10 Pablo Torre? Why did Steve Ballmer donate 1.875 million dollars to the charity Joe Sandberg personally founded and was still the board chair of in December 2024?
1:19:17 Speaker 01 And when did he start donating the money? When was the first time he donated?
1:19:21 Pablo Torre? 2018.
1:19:22 Speaker 01 Okay, so you think that he said, hey, I want to keep you on the line because you have this business and I'm going to use you at some point in the future, and so I'm going to keep on.
1:19:33 Pablo Torre? I don't know why this happened. I'm just wondering, how could you feel like your trust was so broken and yet donate 1.875 million dollars? To the dude's charity.
1:19:42 Speaker 01 How much does his foundation, you, you looked up his foundation and you looked at the nine niners, right?
1:19:47 Pablo Torre? At last check, one of the 10 richest people in the world.
1:19:49 Speaker 01 Put that aside.
1:19:50 Pablo Torre? Oh, he has a zillion donations to zillions of places.
1:19:53 Speaker 01 Right, and you really, really think he checked?
1:19:56 Pablo Torre? I would say that if I was embroiled in this giant scheme.
1:20:00 Speaker 01 No, right? I wouldn't know, like, if one of the guys who scam me, my foundation was giving them money, and we had an overall deal, I would have no clue, it's not worth my time.
1:20:08 Pablo Torre? Mark.
1:20:08 Speaker 01 It's not worth my time.
1:20:10 Pablo Torre? If you had made a series of, of donations to Joe Sandberg's charity since 2018, meaning you knew this guy since at least 2017.
1:20:19 Speaker 01 Do we know that he knew him?
1:20:21 Pablo Torre? He was the chair, and it's a tiny charity.
1:20:23 Speaker 01 So, was it specified by Ballmer to give to him? Or was it the foundation that found it and it aligned with Ballmer's goals?
1:20:31 Pablo Torre? So, according to 60 Minutes interviews, of course, Steve and Connie, his wife, go through grant by grant their donations.
1:20:39 Speaker 06 It really is kind of grant by grant. You can't look back and say, well, people's economic mobility this year was a two, and next year it's going to be a 2.3.
1:20:49 Speaker 02 Yeah, now, we, we can't do population level measurement. But place by place, you know, grant by grant, we can do that.
1:20:56 Speaker 01 Right, it's a list. I get the same [BLEEP]. It's a list. When the Mavs did their, with, of their foundation, I'd get the list. And I'd be like, you guys like this? Done.
1:21:06 Pablo Torre? Okay, there's a lot of like, you have no idea what your money does when the money does bad stuff. But when it does good stuff, you know exactly what it is.
1:21:13 Speaker 01 No, no, no, no, not true at all. It goes the same way.
1:21:15 Pablo Torre? I don't want to bring up the Simpsons meme again, I apologize. The thing I'm saying is, if you were making the series of escalating investments into a charity, and the charity was run by, in this hypothetical, Bernie Madoff, wouldn't you think to yourself, man, that guy, Bernie Madoff, who's been [BLEEP] my entire life, that guy, do I want to keep donating to the thing I keep on signing off on? I probably don't, is what I would imagine. And he's like, you know what? I'm back for more, December 24.
1:21:47 Speaker 01 What was the name of the charity?
1:21:48 Pablo Torre? Golden State Opportunity Foundation.
1:21:49 Speaker 01 And he started it, but was he the president that ran it and filled out the applications?
1:21:54 Pablo Torre? He's, when it started, right?
1:21:56 Speaker 01 When he first started, okay.
1:21:58 Pablo Torre? He is the founder, the sole founder. It is in his image. It is his life story. He is the board chair through this time period.
1:22:05 Speaker 01 And there's somebody who operates it. He doesn't operate it, right?
1:22:09 Pablo Torre? Over time, he appointed a president.
1:22:11 Speaker 01 Right.
1:22:13 Pablo Torre? Mark.
1:22:14 Speaker 01 Right. That person fills out the forms every year.
1:22:17 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:22:18 Speaker 01 And every year they submit it. And unless there's a reason that someone brings it.
1:22:21 Pablo Torre? But Joe Sandberg was the only person other than that president who had the title of president according to their 990s.
1:22:28 Speaker 01 So what? I give money to organizations.
1:22:31 Pablo Torre? It's just federal documents, I guess.
1:22:32 Speaker 01 So like, I give money to different organizations and if somebody goes rogue in one of those organizations, I'm not gonna know.
1:22:38 Pablo Torre? If you were donating to a guy as central in your suffering as Joe Sandberg has been presented to be.
1:22:45 Speaker 01 Okay, no. So here's the presumption that you're making.
1:22:47 Pablo Torre? I'm saying December 24th, the federal government has been announced as investigating.
1:22:53 Speaker 01 The reason I'm in this chair right now.
1:22:55 Pablo Torre? You ended this deal with the Clippers.
1:22:57 Speaker 01 I'm one of the few people that has experienced all of these things.
1:22:58 Pablo Torre? And that's why I love that you're here.
1:23:00 Speaker 01 Right. Cause I can, I've been there, done that, every single piece of these things, right?
1:23:03 Pablo Torre? Well, I hope not every single piece.
1:23:05 Speaker 01 Well, no, I've been fatted, no, not, well, no, because I don't think he did anything, so, right? So, but at the same time, there are charities I've made, I've given money to. And if somebody at that charity, even the founder, even the original chairman goes rogue.
1:23:19 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
1:23:20 Speaker 01 The chances of me knowing unless somebody at the foundation catches it are minimal.
1:23:25 Pablo Torre? Even if the guy was the guy who was around your games, sitting in the front row.
1:23:28 Speaker 01 Even if the guy was the guy around my games.
1:23:30 Pablo Torre? Even he's the guy who that you gave 50 million dollars to.
1:23:32 Speaker 01 There could be a guy who sits two seats down for me at the Mavs games.
1:23:34 Pablo Torre? 300 million dollar partnership. Signage all over the building that you built with your bare hands, this founding sponsor.
1:23:40 Speaker 01 Yes, because you're.
1:23:41 Pablo Torre? It's not any guy, it's the guy.
1:23:42 Speaker 01 No, you're trying, that's right. That's the whole, that's what you do, Pablo. You're trying to put all this on, you know, if there's a connection, the connection.
1:23:50 Pablo Torre? I'm trying to hold adults accountable for the decisions they make that are documented.
1:23:53 Speaker 01 Look, if the guy decided to give to the charity, you're presuming now, he's saying, "Oh, this guy [bleep] me." Go, somebody go look up to make sure that I'm not involved with him anywhere, any shape.
1:24:04 Pablo Torre? If you say that you were victimized, that your trust was broken, humiliated, this was a guy that you did not trust, that you only met in this one way.
1:24:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, but he probably has no idea that his charity is giving money to Sandberg's charity. Probably has zero idea.
1:24:17 Pablo Torre? His public commentary about how they'd make decisions about donations say otherwise.
1:24:21 Speaker 01 Right, so, no, no, no, it does not. No, it does not.
1:24:23 Pablo Torre? They go grant by grants.
1:24:24 Speaker 01 How much time, how much time do you think that would take?
1:24:27 Pablo Torre? I assume that if you are sincerely somebody who cares about charity, as they present themselves to be, you would have some awareness that this person, who is in business with you so many different ways, and has been embroiled in this same year, by the way. It's not like any year, it's the same year when the feds-
1:24:44 Speaker 01 No, you're presuming, you're presuming-
1:24:45 Pablo Torre? No, no, no, this is- Bloomberg in January reports that the federal government is investigating-
1:24:49 Speaker 01 Let's go back to my point.
1:24:50 Pablo Torre? Into a dome is the picture of the article.
1:24:52 Speaker 01 Let's just say Pablo gives to 20 charities, okay? Do you go back and review the applications? Because the way the rules work is if you give the 20, there's probably 100 plus, because they have to be-
1:25:04 Pablo Torre? I assume they're a bunch.
1:25:05 Speaker 01 They have to be independent, right, there's a bunch. The thought that, when they're going through, I never read the detailed application.
1:25:12 Pablo Torre? Okay.
1:25:12 Speaker 01 Not one single time.
1:25:14 Pablo Torre? I just, I just wanna-
1:25:15 Speaker 01 Not one single time.
1:25:16 Pablo Torre? That's what you would do, and I wanna, I wanna agree on, on that perspective. Why don't you think the Clippers or anyone else associated with them have like made any of these arguments that you've been making?
1:25:27 Speaker 01 There's no upside. There's no upside, you gotta deal with the NBA. Look, what happens on Twitter-
1:25:34 Pablo Torre? It just feels like they should want someone, but no one's even leaked it.
1:25:36 Speaker 01 There's only downside.
1:25:37 Pablo Torre? But no one's leaked it, Mark.
1:25:38 Speaker 01 There's only downside, that means they have a good organization, no one leaked it. There's only downside. There's only downside to somebody misspeaks.
1:25:47 Pablo Torre? You're making arguments and I'm just wondering why they don't anyway.
1:25:51 Speaker 01 Cause they're gonna have to tell everything to the NBA anyway.
1:25:53 Pablo Torre? Okay, so, look, if we get to the Mavs for a sec.
1:25:57 Speaker 01 Sure.
1:25:57 Pablo Torre? So, the Mavs of it, because.
1:25:59 Speaker 01 But, but wait, wait, again, I want to make my point.
1:26:01 Pablo Torre? Oh, no, and we can, we can keep on, this is not me trying to get you out of here, I'm just saying, I got another question.
1:26:05 Speaker 01 Right, what got me mad.
1:26:07 Pablo Torre? Yes.
1:26:08 Speaker 01 Is that you didn't have anything concrete, you had conjecture.
1:26:11 Pablo Torre? I had seven sources and 3,000 documents.
1:26:13 Speaker 01 No, that, those are physical, in, in, you know.
1:26:16 Pablo Torre? I had the contract, that was never announced.
1:26:19 Speaker 01 Great.
1:26:19 Pablo Torre? He did nothing for ever.
1:26:21 Speaker 01 Great.
1:26:21 Pablo Torre? And we had.
1:26:22 Speaker 01 That has nothing to do with whether or not Ballmer violated the CBA.
1:26:27 Pablo Torre? But, but, with, with the whole, okay, we're gonna, we're in circles here and I.
1:26:30 Speaker 01 Look, if you would come up, if you find a smoking gun, even if you had more.
1:26:33 Pablo Torre? Change your mind, then, if that was in episode one, you'd be like, oh, that makes more sense.
1:26:37 Speaker 01 No, no.
1:26:38 Pablo Torre? A little bit?
1:26:38 Speaker 01 No, because I learned more between episode one and two, as I dug in more.
1:26:41 Pablo Torre? But the Dennis Wong thing is exactly what we're talking about. Nine days separation between money in, money out.
1:26:47 Speaker 01 Okay, let's start, going back to the beginning, where I was, what got me mad, if you will, not mad, but.
1:26:52 Pablo Torre? That's okay, I'm not, I'm not here to be mad if you're mad.
1:26:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, made me interested, is you shit on somebody's reputation without having any real fact.
1:26:59 Pablo Torre? That was a deeply sourced, documented.
1:27:02 Speaker 01 The fact that it's deeply sourced is irrelevant. No, kudos to you for finding your sources, no, no issues there. The conclusions you came to, shit on Steve Ballmer, and that was wrong. Because you didn't have enough information to make that connection.
1:27:20 Pablo Torre? I totally respect that you feel that way, I do. And I, and I, I want you to have said it, so, nothing.
1:27:27 Speaker 01 Okay, moving on.
1:27:28 Pablo Torre? Nothing about that, that I want to disagree with, I think it's okay for you to feel that way. The Mavs, so, part of the reason why it's funny to be in this eternal conversation with you is because people are like, are you ever gonna ask him about the Mavs and the Dirk Nowitzki sweetheart deal in 2014 to stay in Dallas, where he resigned for about eight million a year, when, of course, he had max offers on the table that I have confirmed. There's a conspiracy theory out there, and by the way, this is just me asking, this is like, I don't have.
1:27:55 Speaker 01 I'm here to confess.
1:27:56 Pablo Torre? So, so.
1:27:57 Speaker 01 I gave him 48 million dollars.
1:28:00 Pablo Torre? That is not Sora, that is actual Mark. The conspiracy out there, you know, is that why would he take so much less?
1:28:07 Speaker 01 He wanted Tim Duncan money. He was at his age, and remember, the cap, I went back and looked, was $58 million, three years in a row, right? It wasn't going up at all. And it was, how do you manage your cap? And Tim Duncan had done a three-for-30 deal, and I vividly remember having the conversation. And then he's like, I'd like to get Tim Duncan money. I'm like, Dirk, you know, cap stayed flat. Here's what we want to do. And he was like, okay. And then the next year, 2016, when the cap went up, we were able to pay a lot more.
1:28:38 Pablo Torre? But the money he left on the table, the question is like-
1:28:40 Speaker 01 No, you presume, okay.
1:28:41 Pablo Torre? He had max offers.
1:28:43 Speaker 01 I don't even know that they spoke to him. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I don't know. But, look, if he had-
1:28:48 Pablo Torre? I can tell you that he did, from those other teams.
1:28:51 Speaker 01 Who'd you talk to? Daryl and who else?
1:28:53 Pablo Torre? I can tell you that there were max offers on the table.
1:28:56 Speaker 01 Daryl would have come to me and said, let's make a trade. I can pay Dirk, I want to pay Dirk more.
1:29:01 Pablo Torre? So you're saying that he didn't get max offers at that time, in 2014?
1:29:04 Speaker 01 I'm saying it's highly unlikely for the, at the age he was, and the fact that they knew that he wanted to stay, that is highly unlikely.
1:29:11 Pablo Torre? Look, Dirk wanting to stay in Dallas is so clear to me.
1:29:13 Speaker 01 I'm not saying he's getting offers, not getting offers. The cap was $58 million at the time, right? So 35% of, right?
1:29:20 Pablo Torre? So the question is, and this is truly like not my reporting, so, but the conspiracy out there, Reddit, our buddy Bill Simmons- When Dirk had that documentary and Cuban's company bought it, and I would- Is this documentary?
1:29:34 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:29:35 Pablo Torre? So, the theory here is that Magnolia Pictures-
1:29:40 Speaker 01 Uh huh. My company, they don't have offers.
1:29:41 Pablo Torre? That's right. Circumvented the cap by, you know, overpaying to distribute a documentary about Dirk. How he spent like Iron Man level money on the Dirk doc.
1:29:50 Speaker 01 Here's 48 million for your, like, who knows what he spent, but. How much you think we paid?
1:29:55 Pablo Torre? Well, what we did was we checked with the producers of the film. And to your credit, they poured cold water on the whole conspiracy. The head of the production company told us that your company did a $100,000 deal for US distribution rights.
1:30:06 Speaker 01 For how many years?
1:30:07 Pablo Torre? 10. So, yeah, I'm just, look, I'm not here to, like, say, "Gotcha." I'm just here to legitimately say, "I..."
1:30:14 Speaker 01 No, no, I appreciate you looking. You know what, and I thank you. I thank you for just dispelling all the nonsense.
1:30:19 Pablo Torre? I called the producer. And I, and so, just to confirm, did the Mavericks circumvent the salary cap with Dirk Nowitzki in 2014?
1:30:25 Speaker 01 No.
1:30:26 Pablo Torre? Very good. Do you think the Knicks may have circumvented the cap in taking Jalen Brunson from your Mavericks?
1:30:31 Speaker 01 I don't know.
1:30:32 Pablo Torre? A different answer.
1:30:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, I don't know. Okay, I just think there was a lot of play there.
1:30:36 Pablo Torre? Yeah. Luka.
1:30:38 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:30:38 Pablo Torre? I want to get to the Luka Doncic thing, because your first public comments on that trade were kind of incredible.
1:30:43 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:30:43 Pablo Torre? They were very funny. February 2025 of this year.
1:30:46 Speaker 01 Funny to me.
1:30:47 Pablo Torre? Oh, I mean, it was hilarious, the setting. I mean, you had sold your majority stake of the Mavs by then. Do you remember where you were?
1:30:54 Speaker 01 No, I don't.
1:30:55 Pablo Torre? Let's play the video.
1:30:56 Speaker 01 And so I wanted to start off with a question, because you've been in, you know, in unique situations, and maybe you can help.
1:31:07 Speaker 01 If after you left Microsoft,
1:31:13 Speaker 01 you found out that Steve Ballmer traded
1:31:21 Speaker 01 Windows 11, like, the new hot operating system, for Windows 10, the Hall of Fame, but older operating system?
1:31:31 Speaker 01 What would you do?
1:31:36 Speaker 01 I might have to hide from the press.
1:31:41 Speaker 01 I know a couple other people that are in that situation.
1:31:44 Pablo Torre? So can you now refresh our memory?
1:31:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, I appreciate you showing that. That was fun.
1:31:47 Pablo Torre? Who are you onstage with?
1:31:48 Speaker 01 Thank you. Um, Bill Gates.
1:31:49 Pablo Torre? You remember where it was?
1:31:51 Speaker 01 It was in Dallas. I forget what the venue was.
1:31:53 Pablo Torre? Dallas Museum of Art?
1:31:55 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:31:56 Pablo Torre? And so I bring this all up because what Dallas is like when that comment is made and the organizations you support.
1:32:01 Speaker 01 I thought you were gonna tie it to Bill Gates, to Steve Ballmer.
1:32:04 Pablo Torre? Oh, so, I mean, it was available for me. But actually, like, what I've been doing is I'm like, okay, here are the organizations that Mark's involved with, the networks he moves in. And we've mentioned a number of them in the conversation already. We've mentioned your Major League Pickleball team, the George W. Bush Presidential Center, where you gave a talk. I asked about DeAndre Jordan.
1:32:23 Speaker 01 We're not rehashing all the details of the DeAndre Jordan commitment. Oh, he had to say his name, okay.
1:32:29 Pablo Torre? The Dallas Museum of Art, where you joked about Luca with Bill Gates, of course, close to Steve Ballmer. And even, I was looking at some other causes. By the way, you do, your charitable work is like real. Like, the Mavs, under your administration, like, the Southwestern Medical Foundation, like, did really good [BLEEP]. But there is something that I realize that you've not volunteered with me in these back and forths that we've had. And I wonder if you know what it is, now that I've built up to this question?
1:32:56 Speaker 01 I have no idea.
1:32:57 Pablo Torre? It turns out that Dennis Wong lives in Dallas.
1:32:59 Speaker 01 Oh, he does?
1:33:02 Pablo Torre? It also turns out that Dennis Wong is involved with every one of those exact same organizations that you are that I just mentioned.
1:33:07 Speaker 01 Really?
1:33:08 Pablo Torre? Dennis Wong also owns a Major League Pickleball team based in Texas called the Texas Ranchers. He's a first face listed on the website's ownership group page.
1:33:15 Speaker 01 Of the Ranchers?
1:33:16 Pablo Torre? Dennis Wong serves, he owns the Ranchers.
1:33:18 Speaker 01 Oh, I know that.
1:33:19 Pablo Torre? Dennis Wong serves on the Executive Advisory Council of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
1:33:23 Speaker 01 I did not know that.
1:33:24 Pablo Torre? Dennis Wong's on the Board of Trustees of the Dallas Museum of Art.
1:33:28 Speaker 01 I did not know that.
1:33:28 Pablo Torre? Where his best friend's old business partner, Microsoft, Bill Gates, their old Harvard classmate, was invited to give a talk this year with you.
1:33:35 Speaker 01 Did not know that. Let me just say, on this, that was the first time I had met Bill Gates. And so his PR people called me and said, would you be interested, he's doing a book tour. Would you be interested in interviewing Bill? He's had different people interview him at all the different stops. I'm like, I'd never met Bill, and it sounds interesting. So that was the first time I had met him.
1:33:54 Pablo Torre? When was the first time you met Dennis?
1:33:56 Speaker 01 He came to a Mavs game, probably towards the end of last season. And there's probably, I think there's a picture of him being close to me in proximity. So somebody introduced me to him and said, yeah, he's Steve Ballmer's partner.
1:34:08 Pablo Torre? Right. He's also, you know, the alternate governor. Of the Clippers.
1:34:13 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:34:13 Pablo Torre? Has been, according to LinkedIn, since April 2017.
1:34:16 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:34:17 Pablo Torre? So I'm just saying, like, did you guys ever encounter each other at the Board of Governors meetings for like a half dozen years and when you were there together?
1:34:22 Speaker 01 I don't know that I have.
1:34:24 Pablo Torre? Like as an Asian dude?
1:34:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's possible.
1:34:26 Pablo Torre? Not exactly looking like the other owners?
1:34:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, because Ballmer, as best I remember, he was there every meeting.
1:34:31 Pablo Torre? But the alternate governor also can, you know?
1:34:33 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, but, yeah.
1:34:34 Pablo Torre? Attend, tag along.
1:34:35 Speaker 01 But Ballmer, like, to his credit.
1:34:37 Pablo Torre? That's what they did this year, by the way.
1:34:37 Speaker 01 What's that?
1:34:38 Pablo Torre? This year, Steve and Dennis both were in attendance at the Board of Governors.
1:34:41 Speaker 01 Okay, I don't recall. I may have met Dennis, but I do remember meeting him at a game. Yeah.
1:34:46 Pablo Torre? So just to reiterate, he's not somebody that you talk to or anything like that?
1:34:50 Speaker 01 Never.
1:34:50 Pablo Torre? Okay.
1:34:51 Speaker 01 I've never had a conversation with him outside of being face to face.
1:34:55 Pablo Torre? Not even at pickleball?
1:34:56 Speaker 01 Not even at pickleball.
1:34:57 Pablo Torre? Not even when the ranchers are playing the Flash?
1:35:00 Speaker 01 The, never. I have, I've yet to be, I'm sorry to admit, at a Flash game, or match, or whatever they call them. But I root for him.
1:35:08 Pablo Torre? I can tell. I can tell. So I guess, uh,
1:35:14 Pablo Torre? we're near the end.
1:35:15 Speaker 01 No, don't let it end.
1:35:17 Pablo Torre? I know, I know. Um, so I just want to reiterate, you haven't talked to Steve Ballmer, you haven't talked to Dennis Wong.
1:35:22 Speaker 01 Haven't talked to the NBA, haven't talked to Adam Silver, haven't talked to anybody associated with him.
1:35:26 Pablo Torre? How do you think they feel about you?
1:35:28 Speaker 01 Oh, I don't care.
1:35:28 Pablo Torre? Being in studio with me?
1:35:29 Speaker 01 They're probably like annoyed by it, knowing Adam, they're annoyed.
1:35:32 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
1:35:32 Speaker 01 You know, but they know that I take, you know, this is what I do. I like doing this stuff.
1:35:36 Pablo Torre? Right.
1:35:36 Speaker 01 I like the challenge.
1:35:37 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:35:38 Speaker 01 And, and I've been there, right? I've been accused. I've been accused by people who did no [BLEEP]. And, you know, I was under the, in the firestorm.
1:35:45 Pablo Torre? Oh, and?
1:35:45 Speaker 01 And so I've been there.
1:35:47 Pablo Torre? And I just want to make clear, billionaires are people too.
1:35:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's not like we all hang out, the whole billionaire meme thing.
1:35:53 Pablo Torre? I don't know, yeah.
1:35:54 Speaker 01 My friends are still my friends from high school, from college, from rugby. Those are my guys.
1:35:58 Pablo Torre? I'm merely saying that I am trying to understand the networks and how the money flows, because I'm not one of you guys. Um, I give opportunity to comment and fact-check and push back at every opportunity for every episode.
1:36:11 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm. And you deserve credit for that.
1:36:12 Pablo Torre? And no, and I appreciate that. I'm not looking for, you know, a pat on the head, but I just want to make clear that none of this is a bad faith effort. It's why you're here.
1:36:18 Speaker 01 Right.
1:36:19 Pablo Torre? It's because I want to.
1:36:20 Speaker 01 No, and I appreciate it.
1:36:21 Pablo Torre? Steel manning, as they call it, right?
1:36:22 Speaker 01 Steel manning, right.
1:36:23 Pablo Torre? I want, not straw men, but steel men, even those that get shot by Mark Wahlberg on, you know, Amazon Prime. Do you think the Knicks at the end here should be worried about an upcoming episode of Mark Cuban finds out?
1:36:35 Speaker 01 You know, that's behind me. You know, more power to JB, more power to everything. Was I happy that they only got dinged for a second round pick? No. No, it should have been far worse, but is what it is.
1:36:48 Pablo Torre? Do you remain, Mark Cuban, at the end here, Team Bomber?
1:36:52 Speaker 01 Yes. I mean, 16 contractual payments, one investment that's within nine days of one of the payments is not enough to [BLEEP] with Steve Ballmer. I think that was wrong. But thank you for letting me say my piece. I appreciate that. You deserve a lot of respect for that, and I appreciate that. And there's no personal animosity at all.
1:37:11 Pablo Torre? Not at all. At the risk of being my own greatest enemy, I might even want to do this again.
1:37:17 Speaker 01 We'll see what comes up next, right?
1:37:19 Pablo Torre? I mean-
1:37:20 Speaker 01 My disappointment is only one folder access.
1:37:24 Pablo Torre? Hold on, do we have anything else?
1:37:26 Speaker 01 I seriously thought about bringing my own folder.
1:37:30 Pablo Torre? Mark, I will simply say, be careful what you wish for.
1:37:44 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.
1:37:50 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
Previous "Parenting First Take" (and the Super Bowl Halftime Stakes) with Mina Kimes Next Share & Strap-On & Tell with Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated