Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Exclusive: Phil Mickelson, the Pipeline and Trump's (Alleged) 14-Inch Pipe About this episode Why has the famous golfer (and notorious gambler) been hooking right and tweeting incessantly about insider trading? Hunterbrook Media's Sam Koppelman got inside a group chat even more bro'd-out than the defense secretary's Signal messages — and uncovered audio about trading 18 holes with a cabinet secretary to pump up a gas company. His investigation's findings are... huge.
• Read the full Hunterbrook investigation https://hntrbrk.com/sable-2/
(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 Hunterbrook Media and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.)
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript 7,725 words · 13 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 Big Daddy Trump, ready to swing his 14-inch [BLEEP] in front of Newsom's face, will drive up any stock.
0:17 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
0:20 Speaker 02 Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals. No kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
0:52 Pablo Torre? This episode is brought to you by apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes,
1:36 Pablo Torre? from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at apollo.io. That's apollo.io.
2:00 Speaker 01 What's your caffeine intake?
2:02 Pablo Torre? I just do coffee.
2:05 Speaker 01 All day?
2:05 Pablo Torre? Which I didn't do until two years ago. I do like two.
2:08 Speaker 01 You didn't do it at all until two years ago?
2:09 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
2:10 Speaker 01 This show.
2:11 Pablo Torre? This, this show.
2:12 Speaker 01 Did it?
2:13 Pablo Torre? Has ruined my nervous system.
2:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:16 Pablo Torre? That's what I need to meet you at this desk again. Sam Koppelman.
2:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, here we are.
2:22 Pablo Torre? The last time you were at this desk, by the way, the two of us investigated whether the Chinese government had been stealing athlete brainwaves.
2:29 Speaker 01 Which ended up spurring an investigation by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce announced in September. I did not know that that committee was listening to the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast.
2:41 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I like to think that they came for the taste testing athlete weed episodes.
2:46 Speaker 01 Yes, come for the weed episodes, stay for the Chinese brainwaves.
2:49 Pablo Torre? Stay for the geopolitical scandals we uncover with you. And yet, the story that you're here at the desk to discuss today, the story you've been working on, is even weirder and even bigger in its own key way, I dare say.
3:01 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a bit girthier, this story, for sure, absolutely.
3:04 Pablo Torre? I want to get into this story, as it were, by explaining a thing that I think all of us are numb to in America. I mean, you're still quite familiar with politics in the United States as an author, as a former speechwriter, as a guy who studies the political system. And it's mind blowing, once you take just a beat to think about how there is this playbook for every single person who's in trouble legally, financially, which is to just appeal directly to Donald Trump.
3:37 Speaker 01 If you can just get in front of him, you've got a shot.
3:39 Pablo Torre? Yes, I'm thinking of, of course, former New York Congressman George Santos, who has a resume that you'd laugh out of, I mean, was almost literally laughed into jail because of it.
3:52 Pablo Torre? I think of the co-founder of Aspiration, a guy I'm quite familiar with now, Joe Sandberg, hiring Mark McCasie, a former Trump attorney. And then I discovered that Chauncey Billups, another subject of our investigations, hired McCasie as well because of the NBA gambling and poker stuff. Only to then see that Terry Rozier, the current NBA player embroiled in those same indictments, hired a gentleman by the name of Jim Trustee, which is of course, a perfect name for a Trump attorney, which of course, Jim Trustee also was.
4:26 Speaker 01 The reason people are doing this is because it works. I mean, there's a couple of examples. Like, there's this guy Trevor Milton. I don't know if you remember that company Nikola, they had those giant trucks? And the scam was that, there was this video they posted of this massive truck coming down a hill, and it turned out the truck didn't actually have an engine or anything. They were just dragging it down. And he hired a guy named Brad Bondi. And if the reason that last name is familiar to you, it is because his sister is Pam Bondi, the United States Attorney General.
4:59 Pablo Torre? Oh, yes.
5:00 Speaker 01 And Milton gets pardoned and ends up on Tucker Carlson as a conservative icon. Another one that I love is CZ, the guy who ran Binance, you know, the the bete noir of Sam Bankman-Fried.
5:13 Pablo Torre? Yes, FTX's rival.
5:14 Speaker 01 Who himself, exactly, went to prison. And his indictment was one of my favorite ones ever, one of the great smoking guns, because his CCO said in writing, "We are operating a [bleep] unlicensed security exchange in the USA, bro." And he was sentenced and put in prison, and then CZ backed the crypto company of Trump's kids. And he had his sentence commuted, just like Milton.
5:40 Pablo Torre? Right. And then, in the media circuit, we hear Donald Trump on 60 Minutes.
5:46 Speaker 03 The government at the time said that CZ had caused significant harm to US national security, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?
5:58 Speaker 04 Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is. I know he got a four-month.
6:02 Pablo Torre? And the thing that bothers me is that we're numb. As a country to the fact that this is just a practice.
6:08 Speaker 01 It's an everyday kind of a thing.
6:10 Pablo Torre? I mean, I remember playing like Thumb War. Growing up and then you'd get the kid who just like goes helicopters and like comes over the top. And it's like, that's what the justice system is like. You can just call for help from up above and the rules don't matter anymore. But I think the best, or at least my favorite case study as it relates to this trend of corruption. Has to do with arguably the most prolific gambler, it turns out, in athlete history. And Phil Mickelson. Is someone who has tweeted at both of us in the last week, by the way, which we will explain here. But the message he sent, that is the core of why I invited you into this studio. Was both private and about privates.
6:53 Speaker 01 It was indeed about privates. It was, dare I say, a fairly erotic message.
7:01 Pablo Torre? It was a new addition to, uh, yes, a canon of literature that I didn't quite know existed.
7:09 Speaker 01 Phil Mickelson messages, a group of people will identify later. This erotic fanfic from Phil Mickelson reads. Big Daddy Trump, ready to swing his 14-inch [BLEEP] in front of Newsom's face. Will drive up any stock.
7:26 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I think everybody in America has been waiting for the Gavin Newsom, Donald Trump. Yeah, just like deeply sexual fanfiction.
7:34 Speaker 01 Totally. This is the erotica the kids have been waiting for.
7:39 Pablo Torre? Complimentary and also very open-minded and, uh, potentially deeply, uh, legally problematic.
7:46 Speaker 01 Deeply and, and bigly, as, as it were.
8:07 Pablo Torre? This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.
8:39 Speaker 05 Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
9:10 Speaker 06 I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone, and I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.
9:47 Pablo Torre? So just as a matter of what this message is, how it got into my memory, seared there for all time now, to whom was Phil sending this?
9:59 Speaker 01 He was sending it to a group chat.
10:01 Pablo Torre? Right.
10:01 Speaker 01 So this is a group chat of investors in a company called Sable Offshore.
10:08 Pablo Torre? And so I want to just visualize for everybody who is not familiar with anything related to finance, and certainly not Sable Offshore. If this group chat was a physical room full of real-life people, what would we be looking at?
10:22 Speaker 01 It'd kind of look like...
10:25 Speaker 01 The Hangover 2, The Hotel Room in that movie, but with fewer women.
10:32 Pablo Torre? Right, and a deep passion for this specific company, it sounds like.
10:39 Speaker 01 Yes, for Sable Offshore, which I can tell you a little bit of the lore behind. I don't know if you remember, but in 2015, there was this giant oil spill in California.
10:53 Speaker 07 Overnight, the governor of California declaring a state of emergency in Santa Barbara as disturbing new images show the growing impact of the major oil spill off the coast. Volunteers collecting hundreds of buckets of oil from this beach, yet hardly making a dent.
11:10 Speaker 01 Sable Offshore is trying to bring the pipeline responsible for that spill back.
11:19 Pablo Torre? Just based on that news coverage, it does not seem like that pipeline would be a great investment?
11:25 Speaker 01 Well, Exxon did spend seven years trying to reopen this pipeline. And every time, they ran into problems getting it approved by California, which is understandably worried about a travesty like this happening again.
11:44 Pablo Torre? All the animals covered in oil.
11:46 Speaker 01 Exactly. And for Exxon, cleaning up this pipeline, closing it down, would cost billions of dollars. And so instead, they did something else with it.
12:01 Pablo Torre? And so as a matter of corporate strategy, that something else is?
12:06 Speaker 01 They basically gave this oil project, the Santa Inez Unit, to this kind of cowboy oilman named Jim Flores, better known as Big Jim Flores on account of his large stature.
12:22 Pablo Torre? And so it's hard not to paraphrase, "There Will Be Blood Here," but Big Jim is an oilman.
12:26 Speaker 01 He is indeed an oilman. And his career has been one befitting a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Big ups, big downs, big swings, sold a company for over a billion dollars, had another company go into bankruptcy, and this is kind of the last big swing for Big Jim.
12:48 Pablo Torre? And the way it works, so like Exxon... Gives Big Jim the pipeline?
12:54 Speaker 01 They basically gave him a huge loan and was like, you can use our money to go take over this pipeline. And maybe it doesn't work, maybe you have the same fate as us, and then Exxon will take the pipeline back. But if you can get it approved, if you can get it online.
13:07 Pablo Torre? If you can bring this thing back.
13:08 Speaker 01 You will make billions and billions of dollars. It's, in a way, the ultimate gamble. And so, of course, it appeals to the ultimate gambler, Phil Mickelson.
13:22 Pablo Torre? And that superlative is not one that we can claim ourselves. Uh, this is a reputation that is actually, it seems empirically validated by no less a source than his now estranged gambling partner, Billy Walters, who provides, in his book and audiobook, a dossier that is also, uh, overflowing with some pretty crude material.
13:45 Speaker 01 Billy Walters, who, it should be noted, was known as the greatest sports better of all time.
13:51 Speaker 08 The truth is, Phil liked to gamble as much as anyone I've met. I've known some of the biggest gamblers in the world. To give you an idea of how much Phil liked to gamble, he called me in September of 2012 from a dining country club outside Chicago with an astounding request. He asked me to place a $400,000 wager for him on his own United States team to beat the Europeans in the 39th Ryder Cup.
14:15 Pablo Torre? The narrator here is, in fact, Billy Walters himself, not Sam Elliott, which is an understandable bit of confusion, if you have that.
14:23 Speaker 01 At least it was on his own team.
14:25 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, that is, that is better than the alternative, on the one hand.
14:29 Speaker 01 I can't believe that, that, that, that Phil Mickelson did this. He's never gonna get into the baseball Hall of Fame.
14:34 Pablo Torre? Well, this was a concern, actually, that Billy Walters articulated, because Billy Walters very clearly wants you to know that he did not take this wager.
14:43 Speaker 08 He asked me to place a $400,000 bet for him on the US team to win. Once again, I could not believe what I was hearing. Have you lost your mind? I told him. Don't you remember what happened to Pete Rose? The former Cincinnati Reds manager was banned from baseball for betting on his own team. You're seen as a modern day Arnold Palmer. You'd risk all of that for this? I want no part of it. All right, all right, he replied before hanging up.
15:11 Speaker 01 I do think it's worth noting here that Billy Walters himself went to prison for insider trading.
15:16 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
15:17 Speaker 01 He is personally mad at Phil for reasons we'll get into later. And so what he says should be taken with some hefty grains of salt.
15:26 Pablo Torre? Well, look, the sheer accounting of all of this, if you trust Billy Walters as your narrator, can also be backed up by just a general accounting of how much money Phil liked to throw around.
15:38 Speaker 08 Based on our relationship and what I've heard from others, Phil wagered a total of more than a billion dollars during the past three decades. The only person I know who surpassed that kind of volume is me. During a 20 year period beginning in the mid 90s, Phil's losses approached $100 million. That amount is two and a half times higher than the $40 million reported by Alan Shipnuck in his bestselling unauthorized biography of Phil. He's a big time gambler and big time gamblers make big bets.
16:08 Pablo Torre? All which is to say that this big time gambler making big time bets meets Big Jim.
16:13 Speaker 01 Yes, they were allegedly on the board of a company together. And by allegedly, I mean that Phil Mickelson tweeted that before deleting that tweet. And at some point during their conversations, Big Jim tells Phil about this company he's starting with his son and a bunch of other guys called Sable Offshore to go get this old oil project from Exxon back online. And over the last few months, if any of you follow Phil Mickelson on Twitter.
16:45 Pablo Torre? Yes.
16:46 Speaker 01 Or X, you will see that Phil has tweeted hundreds of times.
16:51 Pablo Torre? It's basically his identity now.
16:52 Speaker 01 Yes, he just tweets about like Gavin Newsom and California and Sable Offshore because he is a big investor in this company. And Pablo, I know it might sound kind of outlandish, but what you should understand is that for a minute, that seemed like an incredible bet, the kind of bet that could allow you to retire from the live tour or at least switch from the live tour to the PGA Tour. Because Sable started getting some momentum. The stock went from $10 to $18, which is, we'll come back to this later, around where I think Phil got invested in it, all the way up to $35.
17:35 Speaker 01 And there was one final thing they needed, which was approval from the state of California, from the Fire Marshal and a couple other agencies to get this project back online.
17:48 Pablo Torre? But as someone who has been following Phil Mickelson and is friends with golf writers, lots of golf reporters who have been following him for even longer, the texture of his, I would say, hundreds of tweets about Sable Offshore, that texture mostly feels like desperation.
18:05 Speaker 01 Yes, there is a, there is a patina of gamblers anxiety in there. Because Pablo, after Sable's stock hit $35, things started going a little bit worse for, for Big Jim and the gang. Despite telling Phil and other investors that approval from California was just weeks away, days away, and I have lots of sources who have told me that Jim and Sable kept making those kinds of assurances. As the stock price started going down, and as those approvals didn't come day after day, week after week, and as Sable started getting charged with felonies by California for some of the work that it was doing in the state,
18:50 Speaker 01 Phil and other investors started to become very, very, very worried.
18:56 Pablo Torre? Just how worried was our group chat full of bros about this?
19:00 Speaker 01 They were angry enough to reach out to me, someone who first wrote about Sable around 18 months ago, where I called it "a pipe dream." And I think they reached out to me because they started to become afraid. That I was right.
19:14 Pablo Torre? Right. So Hunter Brook, Hunter Brook Media, I want to explain the premise here as to why these bros are turning to Sam Koppelman.
19:20 Speaker 01 So Hunter Brook's whole thing is we do accountability reporting, investigative reporting, dig deeper than anybody else. You should follow along if you like Pablo Torre finds out.
19:31 Pablo Torre? That's right. Like and subscribe.
19:32 Speaker 01 Hunter Brook is fantastic at investigations. But the thing about Hunter Brook that's different from a lot of other investigative media outlets is we don't monetize with ads or paywalls. We monetize the impact of our reporting through two other businesses. One is called Hunter Brook Law, where if a company is committing crimes or poisoning a lake or poisoning the air, we can sue that company and get some restitution for the people who are harmed. And the other business is called Hunter Brook Capital, which can take positions in the market based on Hunter Brook Media's reporting, all of which we disclose in each of our articles. And so I think some of these Sable Long investors saw some of our disclosures last year that said that Hunter Brook Capital had bet against Sable Offshore.
20:12 Pablo Torre? And so the bros, seeing all these disclosures, all this information that you're digging up, and you're transparently providing, they send you what?
20:20 Speaker 01 Okay, so they send me two key things, two key pieces of evidence. One is a leaked phone call of Big Jim, some other execs from the company, with a select group of elite investors, who they tell certain things that they did not tell the public, which we'll get to in a minute. And the second thing is this treasure trove of a group chat, where Phil Mickelson seems to be sharing what I have heard some securities regulators describe as inside information that he got directly from Big Jim. And just to give you an example of this, because some of these aren't particularly close calls, on September 29th, Phil writes
21:04 Speaker 01 the group, "I spoke with Jim this morning."
21:08 Speaker 01 An announcement is coming today after market closes. It could be an 8K or press release. Not sure exactly what the details will be. I couldn't say anything until after the close. Lo and behold, about an hour later, Sable in fact releases a market moving SEC filing and press release, as Jim told Phil that morning he would, and the stock moves.
21:31 Pablo Torre? Yeah, which sounds suspicious. Just on the base, look, again, as a pure, just like, what's happening here? Phil knows some stuff that people don't know, and he's teasing the group chat about what he knows and maybe what therefore it suggests about the direction of the company.
21:46 Speaker 01 Correct. And a law professor we spoke to told us that this sounds like violations of a couple of different SEC rules, including something called Reg FD that I'm not going to bore you with. But what's weird about this particular potential insider trading story, the saddest part is that even with some of this seemingly inside info, Pablo, I don't think these guys were making money.
22:09 Pablo Torre? So what was happening to their money?
22:13 Speaker 01 They were losing it. The stock price was going down.
22:17 Pablo Torre? And so in terms of that desperation, in the ways that it's expressed on Twitter, I gotta say that when I started looking at the messages you were receiving, it put them into even sharper relief because the excerpts from the messages he was sending, the chat, I mean, I should just read some of them here, we'll show them. Because in one of them, he writes, quote, "We need an actual prayer. I don't see a clear path forward." In that one, he is basically admitting to planning to sell shares. In another one of them that you published, he writes, quote, "I'm very defeated right now." And yet another message, he says, quote, "I'd do it again, given the information we had. It sucks that maybe there's a last ditch effort to save it, and I think there should
23:02 Pablo Torre? be, but it's not a path to invest in right now." End quote.
23:06 Speaker 01 He then, according to the messages, sells half his stock. He says he wants to de-risk a little bit. But then Pablo, there's another message very shortly afterwards where Phil says, "I'm buying it back."
23:23 Pablo Torre? I'm not [bleep] leaving.
23:24 Speaker 01 I'm not [bleep] leaving.
23:25 Pablo Torre? And so, all of this obviously tracks with Phil's alleged commitment to making the big bets that Billy Walters himself, of course guilty of insider trading, had spoken about before in the book, the audiobook that we played. But this particular strategy, I just want to understand it. I want to, again, as I try to do with you, I want to steel man Phil Mickelson's logic. Why was he buying back the thing he said he needed a prayer to save?
23:48 Speaker 01 Because Pablo, Sable does have one real move left. The same move that Chauncey and Trevor Milton and CZ were running, which is appealing directly to the Trump administration. And the reason we know that this is Sable's plan is because of that second leak I got, the phone call between Sable and investors. And the voices you're about to hear in that call include Big Jim, and the Sable guys are laying out a plan to have Donald Trump circumvent California entirely. And instead of sending the oil through Newsome State in a pipeline, they're gonna put it
24:29 Speaker 01 in a boat and hope that Big Daddy Trump saves them.
24:34 Pablo Torre? So just, just because I'm not super fluent in the world of oil pipelines, they're gonna put the oil in a tanker in a boat?
24:42 Speaker 01 According to this call, yes.
24:44 Speaker 04 Absolutely not. And we're the number one project on the, on the, on the EDC, which is the National Security Domus Council, because we're on board. And also, you're right here, guys, I've suggested this, it's been, it's been ramped up to DJT that we're gonna change the name to Ocean America instead of Pacific Ocean, start drilling again out there. And I said, I said, how do you like us? She liked it way too much, is the word I got back. So, if you hear that, Ocean America, that's where it came from.
25:17 Speaker 09 What was he telling you? He said some gold leaf on the, on the platforms as well?
25:21 Speaker 04 Well, we've all also, also added that we were happy to plant, we need to know whether we need to paint the, paint the letters 50 feet tall or 70 feet tall for the Trump one side, so we make sure Oprah can see her, see the, see the tanker for her, on a seat on a mansion, you know, without putting diapers on. And he came back and said, he'd like it installed.
25:48 Pablo Torre? There's a lot going on in that call.
25:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, I should note that at first, when we asked Sable offshore about this call, they said that the phone call was AI.
25:57 Pablo Torre? So the DJT reference, Donald J. Trump, that's AI. The Oprah, like taunting her.
26:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, the Oprah Montecito mansion sound, they claimed that that was AI.
26:07 Pablo Torre? The giant gold lettering on Ocean America, which is just obviously transparently designed in the retelling of this to appeal to Big Daddy Trump.
26:16 Speaker 01 This, they all say, is AI, which if true, my God, we should all just quit our jobs because that is some good, good AI.
26:23 Pablo Torre? I want to invest in that company.
26:24 Speaker 01 100%. In fact, in the group chat, which obviously Sable doesn't know we have access to, we see in messages that Big Jim went as far as to call investors and tell them, go tell everyone this is AI, which by the way, itself might have been securities fraud if they knew that the call was real.
26:42 Pablo Torre? And I just got a sort of like hit on this point here. What's been happening in the reporting of the story is that the bros in the group chat who are reaching out to you, they're not telling everyone else in the group chat that you're now in the group chat with them, basically.
26:54 Speaker 01 Correct. I just get to watch the group chat happen, essentially as it's taking place.
26:59 Pablo Torre? God, it's like that Atlantic story about the Signal, the war plans, except significantly dumber, I would say. You're kind of just like there.
27:08 Speaker 01 This group chat makes Pete Hegseth and the boys look like they were very, very on their [BLEEP] with their operational security.
27:16 Pablo Torre? Yes, their opsec, in this case. In the case of Sable offshore, not great, but of course, these are serious allegations we're describing here. So Phil Mickelson, a very wealthy and famous man, what does he have to say about all of this?
27:29 Speaker 01 So I get Phil's number. Fun fact, Phil seems to change his number all the time. I figure out which is his current number, get him on the phone. He talks for a sec. He's like, who is this? And I'm like, I'm calling from Hunterbrook. He's like, no, thank you. And hangs up right away. And then he does something I've never experienced before as a reporter, which is that he then posts in the [BLEEP] group chat, my number and is like, warning guys, here's the number they called from. They're very curious about our group chat. Doesn't think to leave the group chat and instead keeps posting about it.
28:04 Pablo Torre? The thing that gets posted in the group chat, which is the part that made me laugh out loud when I saw it, unfortunately for you, does involve Craigslist.
28:15 Speaker 01 Yes, they tried to dox me by putting up a Craigslist post with my number on it.
28:22 Pablo Torre? Yeah, so this is a Craigslist post. The title is "Free Dog Food." Parentheses, Lafayette. This is a place in California. Quote, "Hey y'all, sad story, but my old three and a half year Great Dane finally done kicked her bucket. Got here about 350 pounds of Perinia dog chow if somebody just wants to drop by and get it out of the carport. I'm on disability and cannot lift nothing too heavy." There are typos throughout the entire thing, just for the record. "My nephew Tiel will help you load it. Give him a call at your phone number."
28:58 Speaker 01 Correct. And I'm obviously watching this the whole time.
29:03 Pablo Torre? Yeah, they're loving what's happening to you at this point in the story.
29:08 Speaker 01 They are, until I put all of this in our investigation, which we published last Friday. And then we finally got a response from Phil.
29:27 Speaker 02 Network freedom and flexibility. That's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
30:05 Pablo Torre? So to catch people up, the way I enter this story in the public record is me quote tweeting your article at Hunter Brook that you referenced before, when you publish your revelations about these messages in this group chat. And what I said in the quote tweet on X, the everything app, was, quote, "Why do I get the feeling that this is not the end of this story?" And then later in the day, as I'm just like walking through Manhattan, it's Halloween afternoon, I get a reply from Phil Mickelson. And the message that was screenshotted in that quote tweet, just for the record here, was the thing we described before about that 8K or press release coming after market closing, not exactly sure what the details will be, couldn't say anything till after close, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so Phil replies to me, quote, "So a company says, 'I can't say anything to you, but we
30:50 Pablo Torre? will announce something at the close. I don't know if it's a dilution and the stock goes down, or a deal for the stock to go up. I have to wait to see what the info is. I make no trades whatsoever and am ultra, ultra careful given past history. I don't even share that information is coming till after the close. And you insinuate wrongdoing?" Question mark. "This looks like stock manipulation on their part and slander us. Did they make any trades today?" Question mark. And my response to that, naturally, is, "Hi, Phil Mickelson. I'd love to continue discussing this on Pablo Finds Out and provide a real opportunity for you to answer questions. Could you please set up a time for us to talk? Thank you." Exclamation point. And I'm here to regretfully inform our audience that he did not get back to me.
31:33 Pablo Torre? So, did he get back to you?
31:36 Speaker 01 He did not, despite having my phone number. He did tweet that he would have a lawyer reach out to us tomorrow.
31:43 Pablo Torre? Yeah, and so just in the timeline here, when was that?
31:46 Speaker 01 Oh, on Halloween, Friday, last Friday.
31:48 Pablo Torre? So the lawyer has reached out to you?
31:52 Speaker 01 No, we haven't heard anything from Phil Mickelson, who, by the way, as I mentioned, had been tweeting about Sable Offshore every day. After his tweets to you and me, he's gone conspicuously quiet.
32:07 Pablo Torre? Sable, though, just as we get all of the legal responses in order here, did Sable Offshore respond?
32:12 Speaker 01 So to our initial story, they said this is AI. Then, on Monday morning, they scheduled an emergency press conference, where they announced that they had opened an investigation with a special committee to look into our findings. And I will note that on that call, they did not refer to the leaked audio as AI. In fact, they confirmed a core part of it about how they were gonna need to dilute shareholders, which was not great news for that group chat.
32:43 Pablo Torre? Right, and so for the shareholders, for the group chat, for the stock price, what was the share price's reaction then?
32:50 Speaker 01 It did not pump. It's down like 60 or something percent since we published.
32:56 Pablo Torre? Right, the graph that I'm indicating. This seems like bad news for Sable Offshore, but good news, I presume, for Hunterbrook Capital, the financial arm of your company, which took a position on this based on your reporting.
33:08 Speaker 01 Yes, we disclosed that after our story came out, Hunterbrook Capital read it and did not decide to go long on Sable Offshore. They bet against it. And then later this week, there was actually a vote from the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors, where they voted to decline to transfer ownership of the pipeline from Exxon to Sable.
33:33 Speaker 10 The final straw for me was a Hunterbrook article, which was as disturbing as anything I've read. The fallout from that recorded phone call has already been severe, and this is before regulators have weighed in. I have many friends in the oil industry, and I will continue to support efforts to access our natural resources. But it has to be done responsibly by operators who put safety above profits. The evidence in this case is overwhelming. There is something wrong with the strategy of Sable's leadership.
34:08 Speaker 01 By the way, that guy is pro-oil and gas and had previously voted to approve the transfer, but obviously in light of the new information, just couldn't get behind taking that risk for the people of Santa Barbara.
34:21 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that was an unambiguous clip from that guy, who seemed to both credit your reporting and also seemed at a loss for a way to spin this. And if you're Phil, like, I just want to get a sense of how much money he personally lost.
34:36 Speaker 01 So we don't know when he, or if he resold the shares he bought back after selling them after buying them.
34:44 Pablo Torre? Right.
34:44 Speaker 01 But we do have a sense from that same Billy Walters book you quoted from earlier of the size of the bets that Phil Mickelson was willing to take.
34:54 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that book, by the way, has a truly crazy degree of detail, a truly crazy degree of accounting on exactly how much Phil liked to spend as a sports gambler.
35:07 Speaker 08 After my business relationship with Phil ended, I learned a lot more about his betting from two very reliable sources in sports gambling. They said it was nothing for Phil to bet $20,000 a game on long-shot five-team NBA parlays, or wager $100,000 or $200,000 a game on football, basketball, and baseball. Based upon my detailed betting records and additional records provided by the sources, here's a snapshot of Phil's gambling habit between 2010 and 2014.
35:39 Speaker 08 He bet $110,000 to win $100,000 a total of 1,115 times. On 850 eight occasions, he bet $220,000 to win $200,000. The sum of those 1973 gross wagers came to more than $311 million. In 2011 alone, he made 3,154 bets, an average of nearly nine per day. On one day in 2011, June 22nd, he made 43 bets on Major League Baseball games, resulting in $143,500 in losses. He made a staggering 7,065 wagers on football, basketball, and baseball.
36:22 Pablo Torre? And if you're wondering, how is it possible that one man could be both one of the greatest golfers of all time, one of the greatest lefties we've ever seen in sports history, as well as this prolific when it comes to sports betting? Billy Walters also has a bit of surrounding context.
36:38 Speaker 08 Phil didn't let his playing in PGA tournaments get in the way of betting. Indeed, according to the 2010-2014 betting records, he made 1,734 wagers on games during 29 events. This included 70 separate bets on baseball and preseason pro football during the Barclays Tournament in August 2011, where he shot 800 and tied for 43rd. He won $415,000 in bets that weekend. On February 11, 2012, a busy college basketball Saturday, Phil blew himself up by running his betting losses to nearly $4 million, according to the gambling sources familiar with Phil's other bets.
37:21 Speaker 08 Even so, he displayed an incredible ability to compartmentalize. He shot 64 the following day to win the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach while playing with and demolishing Tiger Woods by 11 shots.
37:32 Pablo Torre? All of which is to say that the guy is not afraid to put money down on a thing he thinks there's a shot at winning.
37:39 Speaker 01 Say what you will about Phil Mickelson, the man has conviction.
37:44 Pablo Torre? And so if you're going to mathematically just take an informed... Guess at what Phil was rooting for here, what he lost, what are you, how do you report that out?
37:55 Speaker 01 We don't have the exact financial information here. You know, I spoke to some of the Sable investors who seemed to think at some point he and his partner owned like 2% of the company, which could have been tens and tens and tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars, meaning he could have lost like tens of millions of dollars on this. We do have messages where it's clear Phil is just going through it. He's talking about how Sables making him too anxious to go on a hike or to go fishing, how he's buying certain options but not others, so he'll have peace of mind. It definitely didn't seem like a low-key casual thing Phil was doing, as by the way, is clear to anybody who follows his Twitter account and notices that he's tweeted more
38:38 Speaker 01 about Sable Offshore certainly than golf or his family or anything like that.
38:43 Pablo Torre? Yeah, it does seem to indicate that Phil Mickelson was so stressed out by Sable Offshore that he could not actually touch grass, which is a problem when you're of course also a golfer. But just as a point of clarification, his own personal history that he referred to before, right? He said it in the tweet that he sent me.
39:07 Speaker 01 Ultra, ultra careful, given his history.
39:08 Pablo Torre? Given past history. What is the past history?
39:12 Speaker 01 So you know how Phil Mickelson used to make bets with Billy Walters? He was also embroiled in an insider trading case that the government brought against Walters that accused Mickelson of trading based on tips that were sent to him by Billy Walters.
39:33 Pablo Torre? And this did not go great, at the very least, for Billy Walters.
39:38 Speaker 11 Las Vegas golf course owner and gambler Billy Walters has been found guilty of using inside trade information to make millions of dollars.
39:47 Pablo Torre? And if you just keep digging into Billy's book, his feelings toward Phil about this specific chapter of his life are also unambiguous.
39:57 Speaker 08 Phil had an opportunity to testify at my trial to tell the truth about whether he received inside information regarding one of two stocks that I had recommended to him. Phil decided not to testify on my behalf. How did I feel? Completely betrayed.
40:11 Speaker 01 We should note Walters didn't actually end up serving that full sentence.
40:18 Pablo Torre? Yes, we should note this for legal reasons and also because it turns out that Billy Walters, Phil Mickelson's old gambling buddy, decided to run a very familiar play.
40:32 Speaker 12 Well, news tonight, President Trump is commuting the sentence of a Las Vegas philanthropist and professional gambler. Well, William Walters is serving five years in prison for insider trading. He has already served four years of that sentence and has paid also $44 million in fines as well.
40:51 Speaker 01 Which finally brings us back to the 14-inch [BLEEP] from the first act.
40:57 Pablo Torre? Yes, Chekhov's [BLEEP]. We must, of course, pay it off.
41:03 Speaker 01 We must. And to jog your memory in case it's not seared into it forever.
41:10 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I should now, I guess, be on record quoting it. "Big Daddy Trump," in all caps, Trump, "ready to swing his 14-inch [BLEEP] in front of Newsom's face will drive up any stock."
41:23 Speaker 01 And obviously, the reason that Gavin Newsom is relevant here is that he is in charge ultimately of the office of the state fire marshal that Sable needed for approval. And what Phil is essentially saying is if Trump says [BLEEP] off to Newsom with his genitalia, then perhaps the stock price of Sable offshore can become more tumescent.
41:52 Pablo Torre? I don't think that's a group, that's a group chat word. I don't think that shows up in the record. I don't think two messes is, is, is part of their, uh,
42:00 Speaker 01 I wanted to show some class after saying [BLEEP] all episode.
42:03 Pablo Torre? Well, listen, um, what Phil Mickelson, apparently what he believes now, as your reporting continued, is that the game is actually still not over.
42:13 Speaker 01 Correct. And Sable, for the record, is not dead yet. They are still trying to get support from the Trump administration. And one of the ways that they are gonna try to do this, according to that leaked phone call, which I want to be clear, Phil Mickelson was not on, but he was alluded to on that call as part of this final play Sable wants to run, which involves a round of golf between, quote, "a certain left-hander" and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
42:45 Speaker 09 And by the way, while you're sipping, I'm gonna tell you, you might have a certain golf buddy, lefty. I've got a certain golf buddy that's in the Commerce Department.
42:52 Speaker 04 Nice to know, nice to know. Guy, I'm on my way, uh, bro. I've had to promise Lutnick a golf game on the West Coast with a certain left-hander, so how's that? Listen, I've already committed, so we'll, we'll promise him that, how's that?
43:07 Speaker 09 Howard was totally gunning up one Secret Service guy to play instead of three radio requests. When you drop to the [INAUDIBLE] and take you out.
43:15 Speaker 04 I mean, how? There you go, the [INAUDIBLE].
43:18 Pablo Torre? Yeah, so just to translate that again, like, so, a certain lefty, who happens to be, in this case, pivoting way right, uh, is trying to, it's just hard not to take the layups when they're available. It's just hard not to just put it in when available.
43:33 Speaker 01 I think that, that, I think that that joke was more of a flop shot, but, uh, sure.
43:36 Pablo Torre? That's fair. Um, the plan is, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick is gonna play golf with Phil Mickelson, and this, of course, raises the follow-up journalistic question, which is, what did Howard Lutnick have to say about that?
43:51 Speaker 01 Okay, so I didn't speak to Howard Lutnick, but I spoke to a source very, very close to Howard Lutnick, super familiar with his thinking, who told me that Lutnick says he's never heard of Sable offshore and does not have any plans to golf with Phil Mickelson. Honestly, and they didn't say this to me, but it seems like they might be a little bit offended that... Howard Lutnick would need Big Jim to help him book a golf game with Phil Mickelson.
44:19 Pablo Torre? Hearing it all spelled out like this in these calls in that quote, it does kind of feel a bit insulting to the Trump administration that the way everyone's trying to charm them is very predictable and very like almost infantilizing to the people they're trying to like charm here?
44:39 Speaker 01 Totally. As you listen to that audio, it's clear that Sable Offshore thinks that the Trump administration is going to greenlight them. If only they put up big gold letters, rename the Pacific Ocean Ocean America, and book tea times for their cabinet secretaries.
45:00 Pablo Torre? But by the way, whatever happened to the group chat? What happened to the to the to the room full of bros that you got to know in the course of your investigation?
45:07 Speaker 01 Well, Phil definitely should have more time to play in a golf game with Howard Lutnick because unfortunately, the morning I published the story, there were a few more messages in the group chat, which is mind boggling, where some of the people in the group chat said that they were going to go find the rat responsible and show up at their door. Rat, a term used for people fessing up to crimes. Anyway, they said they were going to find the rat. Then the group chat, unfortunately, may it rest in peace, dissolved.
45:38 Pablo Torre? Which is to say that Phil Mickelson has more time to play golf on the beautiful coast of Ocean America? Or, you know, just keep writing. Keep writing, Phil.
45:50 Speaker 01 You know, I think he's got a lot of promise as a writer. I'm not sure I would deploy it on the platform known as X.
45:58 Pablo Torre? But I do think he should deploy it in a genre that might be described as XXX, you know?
46:08 Speaker 01 Can't top that.
46:20 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersik and NGW Post, theme song as always by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.
46:54 Speaker 02 Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to bill Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
Previous "Your League Is So Cooked": The Best Bettor in NBA History on How to Solve a Gambling Crisis Next Share & Goon & Tell with Desus Nice and Katie Nolan (NSFW) Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated