Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - What Really Happened to Michael Milken with Richard V. Sandler

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

This week, Anthony talks with executive vice president, secretary, and a trustee of the Milken Family Foundation Richard V. Sandler about his book Witness to a Prosecution: The Myth of Michael Milken.  Why did Michael Milken accept a plea deal? As Mike’s personal attorney since 1983, Richard tells us what really happened during that famous prosecution based on the facts. He discusses how Michael was viewed as a threat to finance, and Rudy Giuliani’s personal ambitions which led to his aggressive pursual of the Milken’s. He then moves on to Mike’s imprisonment, the aftermath and his later, much-deserved pardoning from President Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Loops get closed. With ServiceNow, you can do the parts of your job you're best at and delegate the rest. To put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest This minds out there about everything surrounding the written word from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones.

I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know. Let's get to it. Michael Milken, one of the most innovative financiers of our time and someone I'm proud to call a friend. For decades, Michael faced media scrutiny and condemnation surrounding the historic federal investigation against Drexel Burnham-Lam-Lambears, high yield and convertible bond departments, which he was head of. My guest today, Richard Sandler, was Michael's personal attorney during that time and shares

the untold reality behind the prosecution. I'd like to take a second to recommend my friend Andy Astroy's great podcast, The Back Room. Every episode is a fun, incredibly honest take on our society and the political situation, along with some brilliant guests. I've been honored to join Andy on the show, and you know anywhere that accepts me with no filter deserves a shout-out. So joining us now on Open Book is Richard V. Sandler. He's an executive vice president, secretary, and a trustee of the Milk and Family Foundation.

He's the author of the book, Witness to a Prosecution, the myth of Michael Milken. And so, full disclosure, I consider Michael Milken a friend. I consider him a mentor. And Richard, just to let you know, when I started my conference business, Michael was nice enough to be my first keynote speaker. And he has spoken at my conference now as a keynote in Singapore, Las Vegas, New York. And I consider him a very dear friend. He's a very special guy. And your book is about the prosecution of Mr. Milken, which you'll tell us a little bit about.

It's a great rendition. But it also explains the miscarriers of justice to a man like Michael Milken. And despite the fact that Mr. Trump and I no longer get along, one of the best things that he did during his administration is pardoned Michael. And so that's the backdrop, sir. You wrote an amazing book. It reads like a legal thriller. John Grisham could have written the book, okay, in terms of, what happened. But let's talk a little bit about your relationship first with Michael and Lowell Milken,

and then we'll get into the book. Okay, Anthony. So just once again, thank you for doing this. I think it's an important story, not just for historical purposes of what happened to Michael, but how the system works, how this could actually happen to anybody who really comes within the sights of an ambitious prosecutor who feels that that prosecution could enhance their career. So, you know, and that still happens today. But going back to my relationship, we go back to we're very, very young. Mike's brother, Lowell and I are the same age. We met actually in the first grade, as I talk about on the first couple pages of the book, and have been very, very dear friends. He's my closest friend ever since. Mike was the older brother. So I would say in the first grade, Mike two years older was a generation

separated from us. By the time we went to college, we all went to college together at Berkeley. that gap between us, it's certainly narrowed. And we've been very dear friends also ever since that time. And you work for him now, but I want to go back. We have young viewers and listeners. You and I know who Michael Milken is. We know what he did for corporate America, how we transformed Wall Street, how he created an entire investment class of securities, which were known as junk bonds, are now known as high yielding securities. But take us back. Tell us about the innovative of Michael Milken, some of the things he worked on in college and business school, and then he implemented as a professional on Wall Street. Okay. So Michael was always somebody who was very

interested in people. He was interested in the world around him. And you always knew that he was going to try to make a mark in the world to try to make a difference. And when he was in undergraduate at Berkeley, he was very interested in investment in the investment world. He had done lot of work for his father, who was both an accountant and a lawyer, who had clients who were very entrepreneurial, and it interested him. And he studied a book of an analysis of every corporate bond that had been issued over a number of decades and how they had done. And what he saw was bonds were traditionally rated by S&P and Moody's. And if it was a good company or deemed to be a good investment, it got what they called it an investment grade rating. And in those days, the only companies

that could really access the public markets were large companies that can get investment grade ratings. But if a company got in trouble, they started having losses or other issues, they would get re-rated, then they could get downgraded. And if they got downgraded below what was called a triple B rating, they were considered high-yield securities. And because the companies were in trouble, pejoratively, some people started calling them junk bonds. Well, the study that Mike saw when he was in college showed that if you had bought bonds whose ratings went below investment grade, became high yield, you probably did better than if you had just bought investment grade bonds, because the discount that these bonds would trade at when they lost their ratings was greater

than the amount of defaults there were in these companies. So I don't know how basically we want to get, Anthony, but, you know, a bond, unlike a stock, is a contract. It's a loan. It's a promissory note. Company says, we will pay interest on certain dates and we'll pay principal on certain dates. And if the company's able to do that, then the person that buys the bond gets paid the full amount. So if you buy it at a discount and the company actually makes all its payments, you will make more than if you bought an investment-grade bond at full price that was paying a less of an interest rate. So Mike was fascinated by that study. He continued that work in finance when he was in business school at Wharton. And when he came out of

business school, he decided he had a number of offers to go to work at a firm called Drexel. I think it was called Drexel Firestone then, then became known as Drexel Burnham Lambert. And the reason he went to Drexel is Drexel was the top research firm on Wall Street. And Mike believed if you were going to invest in this type of class of security, you needed to do your research. You need to understand the companies you were investing in. You know, I mean, I mean, everybody has the same questions. So I'm going to ask a little bit differently. He grows this business. He becomes an incredibly profitable business for Drexel. The likes of firms like Solomon no longer with us, but Goldman still with us. They copy him and they go into these businesses alongside of him.

And he creates, through his ingenuity, these wonderful companies. He makes them leaner. He makes them more efficient. He brings entrepreneurs like Henry Travis and George Roberts into the mix. He helps out the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Steve Wynn and John Malone and he has this coterie of people around him and he becomes an extremely powerful man. And you write about him beautifully and you write about him exactly as I know him by the way. And so I see him as a brilliant thinker. I see him as somebody that has a, he's almost like a Renaissance man. He can can tinker at something and look at a problem. And whether it's in health care or junk bonds or philanthropy, he can figure it out. But he becomes very, very powerful. He's a private guy. He becomes very, very powerful. And he becomes a threat

to the status quo on Wall Street. And I would say the status quo in corporate America. So if you don't mind, sir, in your own words, describe that threat. Okay. So here you have this guy that has come to Drexel. He's interested in an asset class that most people do not pay any attention to. And he starts trading in this area. He gets Drexel to allocate certain amount of capital to them. He doubles that in a short period of time. He goes out and he starts talking to investors about his theories on high-yield securities and why he thinks they're a good investment if you do your work and your research. He starts meeting with the companies and he creates a trading operation that is larger than anybody else's in this asset class. It wasn't that they didn't exist and people didn't trade them,

but they didn't trade, let's just say, with great volume and great regularity. So now he's created a market. He's probably the biggest market maker. Drexel's a biggest market maker. So they have this idea, if we could make a market and show there's value in securities that do not get high ratings, why don't we do original issues, which was never done at the time. In the 1970s, they started financing companies that could not access the public market. That was the revolution that he started. That was the innovation that really changed Wall Street forever with this asset class. So rating agencies rated companies based upon the past. Mike's view of the world was the greatest value are new companies that are going to do well in the future. And if we finance those companies, we do our

research, we meet the management, we understand the industries, we could get capital to people to entrepreneurs, such as you mentioned, to John Malone, to Steve Wynn, to Craig McCaw in the cellular industry, to Ted Turner in communications industry. These people could not access the markets before, and he's now created a market. And the competitors on Wall Street that you talked about, tried to get, some of them tried to get into the business. Some of them try to just downplay the business. You know, we're above this. This is not, these are junk bonds. We're not going to do this. But what happened was, as he became more, and more powerful and others could not compete with him. They looked at him as a disruptor. They looked at him as a competitor. And when he started financing individual entrepreneurs who thought they could

create value in some established companies that they thought were trading below what their value was, he then became a threat to the Wall Street established firms who had large clients that the Drexel clients were thinking of acquiring. So he became very, very well known. But as you said, he's very media shy. He's very private. He just wanted to do his work, finance his companies, make a difference and did not talk to the media. And meanwhile, he wasn't making friends on Wall Street because when traditional firms would do financings or do stock deals, they put put together a large syndicate. And everybody would benefit. Everybody would get a piece of the syndicate. Everybody would issue some securities. Drexel didn't put together any syndicates because nobody else really

knew how to sell these bonds or understood them as well. So he was looked at somewhat as an outlier because he wasn't sharing with others and others really didn't understand his business and put him down. But he was creating a whole new industry. And when you mentioned Henry Kravitz and George Roberts, you know, they were sort of the forbearers of the what is now known as private equity. And that whole business developed because he was able, Mike Milken and Drexelburner and were able to finance these individuals who are in the marketplace looking for value for companies, and now they could get financing where they could never get it before. Okay, but he's wreaking havoc.

He does one other thing, by the way, then I think you'll agree with me on this, because Michael has said this to me. Because of his relative privacy, he's not close to politicians. He's not engaging the political community, so he's an unknown to them, and a result of which when the Department of Justice reigns down upon him, he doesn't really have a lot of connectivity into Washington or the processes of Washington. And so, I don't know, I think that hurt him. And I think he said that to me once,

that you've got to make sure that people understand who you are, which helps you in life. Let's go to Friday. It's November the 14th, 1986. You're sitting at your desk, and you were going to leave. Eve early for your son, Nicholas's birthday. A client of the firm, Ivan Boski, who is famous to you and me because we're old guys now, you and me, Richard, but not famous to some of the young people that listen to this call. Ivan Bosky is a very rich arbitrageeur in the mid-80s, and he is a very well-known man in the

mid-80s on Wall Street. He's running a risk arbitrage fund, but it's Friday, November 14th, 1986. he pleads guilty to securities fraud. What happens after that, sir? So, as you say, somebody comes in and says, did you see the tape? It's 1 o'clock in the afternoon, 4 o'clock in New York. The market has just closed. And it was announced that Ivan Bowski was paying, I believe, like $100 million to the SEC

or to the U.S. Attorney or some combination thereof, and was going to plead guilty to something related to insider trading. At the same time, I get a phone call that there are federal marshals serving subpoenas downstairs, both SEC subpoenas and grand jury subpoenas from the Southern District of New York, Justice Department Office. And I didn't really know what to do or what to make of it at the time. It was a little shocking. Drexel had done a financing for Boski, who, as you said, was the most revered and respected arbitragee at the street at the time that prior March, I was involved in working on that transaction. We had entities that invested in that transaction, and we're all getting subpoenas.

And what we figured out very quickly is we have to know what we don't know. And this is a world none of us ever thought we were going to be involved in. And we had to identify attorneys that lived in this world and figure out what did we need to do. And it was Friday afternoon. We got gathered together, had a meeting. And somebody had mentioned, I think Mike had mentioned that he had been introduced to Edward Bennett Williams by a mutual friend some months earlier. Edward Bennett Williams, who probably most of the listeners are two, young to remember, was certainly the most respected criminal defense lawyer, defense lawyer of his time. He had quite a presence in Washington. Unlike Mike, as you said, Anthony, he was the owner of the Baltimore Orioles. He formed the firm of Williams and Conley, which still exists today. And we got Ed on the phone and started talking about what did we need to do. And could we meet with him the following week? and Ed made one comment to me, I'll never forget, when I sent him and faxed him. In those days, you had a faxed things to people. There's a copy of the subpoena.

He says, I know this subpoena from the Southern District in New York references a statute known as the racketeering statutes, the RICO statute. And he says, that was never intended for a case like this, but I'm not surprised because the U.S. attorney for the Southern District from New York, a guy named Rudolph Giuliani, is the biggest piece of political meat I have seen. since Tom Dewey. And it rang with me because Tom Dewey was the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, went on to become governor of New York, and eventually ran for president of the United States. And he said that Giuliani had that same political ambition and would use that

statute and use Mike's notoriety or anything else he could to enhance his political career. But, you know, we should stay calm through the weekend. Nothing's going to happen overnight. Let's meet next week and talk about what we can and can't do. Okay. So I'm going to say something to you and I want you to react. Okay. I read your book. This is what I think.

And you're going to say to me, I'm right or wrong. Okay. Michael, in order to commit insider trading, you have to have a tip or and a tip-e. And so you have to, I have to pick up the phone and say, Richard, I have inside information that Apple computer is going to buy Walt Disney tomorrow. and I have this information and I'm an insider and I know it, then you go out and you purchase call options or the stock of Walt Disney days before or hours before the announcement and you make money off the announcement.

And this is a form of manipulation. This was stuff that was barred in the securities acts after the 1929 stock market crash. But if I'm Michael Milken and I look at the balance sheet of something like a company like Chris Kraft and I say, okay, you know, this is a media. company and it may be an interesting acquisition for Rupert Murdoch. And so you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to buy some Chris Kraft and then I'm going to call Rupert Murdoch and I'm going to suggest to him to potentially buy Chris Kraft. And if he decides to do it and I help him finance it, that's obviously not inside information because there's no tip board, no tip B. There's just a good

research analyst in the name of Michael Milken who's, a resourceful guy. What did I miss, sir? Have I missed something? No, I think if Mike did that, okay, he would need to disclose to Mr. Murdoch in this case that, look, I think it's a good thing. I own some of the stock. He'd have to give full disclosure, at which point if there was an interest by Mr. Murdoch or anybody else, then Chris Kraft would go on the restricted list, what's called a restricted list of Drexel, and neither Mike or anybody else could trade. further in the security. So I think what you're missing is he would never do that because you wouldn't buy something and then lock yourself up and not be able to trade it. Okay. You would probably,

in his case, with his business being what it was, if he thought it was a good idea, what he was really be looking for is the business of Drexel would be to finance the acquisition of Chris Kraft and to have Murdoch as a client, you know, and they would make their fee on financing, not on buying the stock in advance of doing that. Because that, that probably, gets into it a gray area that they never would want to get into. Okay. So what did Michael do? And what did Michael get accused of doing?

Okay. So one of the things about insider trading is one of the things Michael did is he financed people that did buy other companies. So he financed in your example, you know, he would finance the person that wanted to buy Chris Kraft or he would finance KKR that would want to buy something like Nabisco. Okay. Right? They wrote a whole book about that. So he would finance the people that were buying companies. So he actually

had access to tremendous amounts of inside information because he knew which companies were looking at other companies. He's not a lot of trade on there. Never would. He just financed that. So the difference between that and what it turned out Mr. Boski did, Mr. Boski would go to people on Wall Street that would work on those kind of transactions. And he would buy the information from them knowing that, that company A was looking at company B. He would buy the stock of company B. He would pay the people that gave him the information who also were violating the law, literally in bags of cash, and make hundreds of millions of dollars trading on these securities, having the information that you're not supposed to be able to trade on. Okay. So you know he didn't do anything wrong. I know he didn't do

anything wrong. They expand the prosecution, include this thing called RICO, and then they make accusations against Michael's father and Michael's brother. Tell us what happens when this unfolds. Okay. So just to make it clear, they made accusations against Michael's brother. Michael's father had passed away from cancer many, many years before this had happened. But Michael's brother, Lull, who I'd mentioned earlier, dear, dear friend of mine, I was working with both of them at the time, had worked with Mike at Drexel. So Ivan Boski comes in and as part of the process, which I said It's one of the reasons I wrote the book so people understand the process. Part of the process is if somebody is found out to have violated the law and is willing to

plead to something, they could lessen their penalty, the sentence that they get by cooperating with the government and giving the prosecutor's information about others who they say violated the law. They can help the prosecutor make other cases against other people. And they get leniency for doing that. So when Ivan Boski pled guilty, he also made a deal with the government that he would only have to plead to one regulatory violation, even though he might have done a number of things. And that in exchange for that, he would be a cooperator and help them make cases against others. And he did. And he gave them a number of other people who pled guilty to similar things and told them that one of the people

that he could help them make cases against was Michael Milken. And the SEC at that time had been hearing complaints about Michael Milken from others on Wall Street, from large companies, from politicians, as you mentioned. Jealous, jealous competitor. Right. And so he was, he was throwing on the radar screen of the SEC at the time as somebody that was doing something different. Look, Mike was a disruptor.

We all know what happens with disruptors. People are constantly investigating them. Elon Musk is a disruptor. Okay. Mark Zuckerberg is a disruptor. Bill Gates was a disruptor. Okay. All these people, you know, throughout history, get into the United.

investigated a lot because they changed the way business is being done. Mike created an industry within an industry, clearly the most important and innovative financier of our generation. And people were very jealous. So when it came to the attention that maybe they could do something to Mike Milken, which would make a lot of people on Wall Street happy, the lights went off. And they decided they were going to come after Mike. And, you know, Boski was going to be the main witness and they were going to start this investigation, which they did. Mr. Giuliani, who my understanding is probably never heard of Michael Milken until this case hit the headlines. But the next day in the newspapers, the top headline of the New York Times was the Ivan Boski made this deal with the government. And that got Mr. Giuliani's attention.

And then the rumor started that Michael Milken was somehow involved in this investigation. And the media frenzy really incurred for the next several years. Okay. So Mr. Giuliani, years later, it's 33 years since Mr. Milken was prosecuted. He eventually accepts a plea deal because he wants to, well, let me rephrase it because you say it better than me. Why did he accept the plea deal? So, you know, let's go back to your prior question. When they started the investigation issued the subpoenas, they also issued one to his brother. Okay. His brother did very, almost no business at all with Boski. actually didn't even like doing business with him. He really was not involved in these situations. But they were able to bring more pressure on Mike by including his brother in the investigation and eventually in the indictment. And the line prosecutor, the young prosecutor who was in charge of this case when they brought the indictment and who was in charge when we eventually agreed to

the plea deal later admitted to me in a class that I taught at Stanford Law School that they probably should never have brought an investigation or certainly an indictment against Lowell-Milkin, that they really didn't have a great case and that they did bring it. He was encouraged to do this by his superiors, this is a prosecutor talking, to bring pressure on Mike, or is I think the term he used, to give them more leverage against Mike. So now here we have case starts at the end of 1986. In 1989, well, at the beginning of 1989, Drexel, Mike's employer, who had been fighting charges itself settled with the government. And as part of that settlement, agreed that they would get rid of Michael, Milken, even though Mike had not been even indicted yet.

Mike and his brother get indicted. The government case keeps changing from what it is. They can't make an insider trading case. It's not what he did and they couldn't make that case. But they did indict him first for that. Then they indicted for a number of other kinds of regulatory issues. And they started giving potential witnesses immunity, which was can get into if you want to what that means. But yeah, no, we, we, I mean, people generally know what that means. They, they tell witnesses you may have done something wrong, but you're going to go after the big fish and we're going to give you immunity.

We're going to not prosecute you for your wrongdoing. Exactly. And what certainly has an effect on a person's memory are what they want to do, because they have two choices. The prosecutor could say to them, you can either help us and we'll give you immunity. So you won't be prosecuted for anything as long as you tell us the truth. or if you don't think you can help us, that's okay. But if later we find out that you were involved, we're going to indict you and you're going to go to jail and you're going to lose your wealth.

So this was going on to the point where Mike said, you know what, I'm getting beat up in the press every single day. My lawyer that I was relying upon, Edward Bennett Williams, passed away from cancer. I'm being depicted as a caricature of a human being that doesn't exist in the media every day. I'm being vilified. I made a lot of money. I have a lot of, enemies on Wall Street. I don't know if I have a chance if I go to trial. I got to do something to protect myself and my family. And by the way, my brother's going to get indicted and he didn't do anything. So finally, we approached the government and said, look, Mike Milken cannot do what traditionally has done. He can't make a deal with you and give you others, make cases against others. He didn't do

that kind of business and he's not able to do that. Is there a way we can resolve this? And the government, which wanted a victory, said, okay, yeah, plead guilty to six counts, pay a lot of money. You don't have to make cases, but you're going to have to plead guilty to at least six felonies, one of which could be a conspiracy to commit the other five. So you've got to find five things. We've got to find five things that you're willing to admit to and that we're willing to accept in a plea. And that's when the negotiation of the plea started. Okay. We are now fast forwarding 33 years. But even before that, we're talking when Michael was pardoned.

Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, who prosecuted and got the plea from Michael Milken, is asking then President Trump pardon Michael Milburn. So take us through that, sir. Why did that happen? So as you stated at the beginning, Anthony, Mike's a very unusual individual. Okay. Mike is a people person. Mike is a person that doesn't become bitter.

I always say one of the most amazing features about Mike is that you could knock him down and he'll get up and dust himself off and go about trying to be productive the next day without bitterness. So Mike has now gone through a plea. He's been sentenced. He's gone to prison. He's come out and he's diagnosed with prostate cancer. And he finds that very little work is being done in this area and he starts a prostate cancer foundation, which totally changes the way medical research is done in this country and is saving millions of lives as he becomes very knowledgeable and brings together the world's greatest scientists and doctors to look at prostate cancer to see what's done. A friend of his calls him one day and says, Rudy Giuliani has prostate

cancer. Would you mind meeting with him to see if you could help him out? And Mike being Mike said, if you want me to do that, I'll do that. He did meet and he was helpful to him, to which Mr. Giuliani appreciated it. And when Mike sought to get a pardon, Mr. Giuliani wrote a letter on his behalf. He actually did it twice, both when we try to get a pardon from President Bush and one from President Trump supporting the pardon of Michael Milken. I don't believe that's why Mike got a pardon. I think he would have gotten it anyway, but I appreciated the fact that Mr. Giuliani was willing to do this. Yeah, Stephen, Stephen Mnuchin, actually, and the late, very special Gary Winnick was involved with that. I was present for those meetings with Mr. Trump. This happened during

the transition prior to Mr. Trump becoming president and then Mnuchin pushed the situation. And to Donald Trump's credit, everything that you said, Mr. Trump took into account and he pardoned Michael, which was a well-deserved pardon. And here's a man who I would say, and Bill Cohen says it better than me. Michael was bored for life on Wall Street, but he comes one of the most respected men in the United States, which is a real tribute to who he is as a human being and his resilience. Okay, so we're at the part of my podcast, our podcast. We have the five famous words. I'm going to say these words. And then you react, sir, you know, you give me a sentence or you give me something that comes to mind. Okay. Ready? So the first word is Drexel.

I think Drexel was a somewhat of a backwater financial services firm on Wall Street until Mike came there and it developed the high-yield security industry. It financed all these major companies who were talked about and became one of the most powerful firms on Wall Street and probably created one of the most talented group of individuals who have all gone on to be immensely successful after the government was able to bring down Drexel. Ivan Boski. Ivan Bosky, the most revered financier of his time. Everybody did business with him. He was a very flamboyant individual. And everybody thought that he was the best at what he did. It turned out that he made his business on insider trading, paying people in cash for insider trading. And when he was

discovered and had to plea, he had no trouble trying to help the government go after other people that he had done business with. Unfortunately, he went after Michael Milken, though the government never, ever was able to prove any of the allegations that Boski had said. I just wanted everybody to understand what Mike pled to was not what he was indicted for and was not what he was accused of, even though some of it did have to do with Ivan Boski. Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani was, as I said earlier, a very ambitious prosecutor, very smart guy, had a lot of ability.

Unfortunately, because he was smart and had that ability, he was able to use the power of his office to enhance his own career and his own political career. I went on to become a very effective mayor of New York, to his credit. We know where he is today, but I take no pleasure in that whatsoever. That has nothing to do with us. But unfortunately, as the prosecutor, not knowing Michael Milken or understanding the case, he brought a RICO case against him and his brother and quite frankly try to destroy their lives in order to enhance his political career. Okay. The words Michael Milken. Michael Milken is a unique individual in many, many ways. A lot of people talk about how smart he is and he's brilliant or he's a genius and I don't know what all those terms mean. I would say that Mike has the most unique mind of anybody I ever met. He has an ability to absorb

information, retain information, use that information in creative ways to create value for society and for the world. He's a person that has a great heart. He's a people person. He likes to do good. It's part of who he is. And I consider it, you know, really unfortunate that he's had to have this cloud over him, though he has gone on to be very successful in what he's done in philanthropy. with respect to an unfair prosecution. And I hope that this book clears the public record because it is based on fact. Yeah, no, listen, it's an enormously great book. And obviously, it's a tribute in many ways to Michael, but when I hear the words Michael Milken, I think friend, that's the first thing it comes in my head. I think he's a universal friend. I know so many different people from different

walks of life, different income strata, Richard, different ethnicities, different backgrounds, They would all look and say friend. They would say Michael Milken is my friend and something I have a lot of respect for. Now, I'm going to say the word Milken. And when I say the word Milken, I think of the Institute and I think of the foundation. Tell me your reaction to that. Yeah, I think it's wonderful that after all this happened, that the word Milken is associated with so many positive things, whether it's a Milken Family Foundation and the Milken Educator Awards that it gives throughout the country it is given for almost 30 years. years, $25,000 award of public school teachers. Almost 3,000 teachers will have received this award by the end of the, actually by the end of this year, we'll go over 3,000, whether it's the Milken Institute and Faster Cures, which is trying to cure diseases, whether it's the Milken Community School, Jewish Day School here in Los Angeles that I sit on the board, I actually chair the board of here, which is educating young students to have the name Milken associated with so many things positive. Mike has his own foundation that does amazing things. Lowell Milken has a foundation.

There's a Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes in Kansas. So the Milken name is associated with giving back to the world, giving back to society, and making the world better for as many people as possible. I'm going to end it right there because I think that's exactly, you know, a beautiful way to end things. The title of the book is witness to a prosecution. The myth of Michael Milken. It's written by Richard V. Sandler. It's an outstanding book. And I really appreciate you joining me on Open Book today. I hope I get a chance to see you soon. Look forward to it, Anthony. And thanks for taking the time and for actually reading the book and for your kind words. So Richard wrote an incredible book, which finally gives the whole story. He, of course, explains why Milken received a pardon. I actually worked on that pardon when I was part of the Trump transition team. I thought it was very important for Michael to get a pardon. I was in law school.

as I point out in the interview during the time of that case, and our professors felt that Michael never broke the law. Of course, Rudy Giuliani, trying to make a career for himself, went hard at Michael, and then very ironically needed Michael's help when he had prostate cancer himself. So it's just a weird Shakespearean twists of protagonists and antagonists going after each other. But Michael Milken will go down in history as one of the more brilliant people of his time, not only innovating in the junk bond space, his work as a philanthropist with faster cures, I think is helping cancer therapies immeasurably. And if we eventually cure cancer, someone will look back and say, well, there was a billionaire who lived in the 20th and 21st century that dumped a ton of money into

cancer therapies. But in addition to that, helped to change the thought process about how we think about these diseases, which ultimately will lead to more immunotherapy and more cure. So for this and so many other reasons, I have this huge respect for Michael. And I am super excited that this book is coming out to right size the record. All right, you want to come on the show? All right, you're ready? Go ahead. That's good timing, Ma. Do you remember Michael Milken? He's a friend of mine. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Remember he went to jail for 18 months for the insider trading scandal? Yeah. Okay. Did you ever meet Michael Milken?

I can't remember if I introduced you to him or not. No, no. Okay, you didn't meet him at any of the Mets games or anything. But I met a lot of people. Okay. All right, but what did you think of that whole scandal? Do you remember anything about it or not really? Well, what did you think about me going to Wall Street, Della, versus practicing law?

And he held the bar. I didn't study for the bar. I was going to work at Goldman Sachs, the investment bank. You told me crazy. Yeah. But once you passed on. Okay. And I felt loud of you.

No, but you weren't. You weren't happy that I went to work on Wall Street. You wanted to be a lawyer. Yeah. Okay. What about? You know, I think that you're very well. All right.

All right. Let's talk about Rudy Giuliani for a second. What do you think of him? But he's like go-goots, right? He's probably bipolar, right? No? He's a little go-gooots, right? Terrible.

Terrible. Yeah. All right. All right. All right. Thank you, baby. All right. Love you.

Bye. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was over. open book, thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.