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

Episode Date: January 9, 2026

As the NBA's investigation heats up, Pablo goes behind closed doors — and emerges with fresh sunlight: What exactly did the Clippers know about Kawhi Leonard's no-show deal? When did Steve Ballmer really get to know the fraudster who paid him off? And what do Doc Rivers, the Ritz-Carlton and a topless fashion shoot have to do with the origin story of a "match made in heaven" that the richest owner in sports would rather you ignore? Amin Elhassan and David Samson shake their heads, as we fact-check a timeline that the Clippers want you to believe.Previously on PTFO:• Part I: The Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree• Part II: An Argument with Mark Cuban• Part III: The Mystery Investor, the No-Show Payday and the "Smoking Gun"• Part IV: Steve Ballmer, the Other Cuban and the $118 Million Infusion• Part V: Steve Ballmer's "Inconceivable" Donation, the $20 Million Guarantee and a Head on a Spike• Part VI: An IRL Showdown with Mark Cuban• Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter for exclusive access, documents and invites• Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson"• Subscribe to "Basketball Illuminati" with Amin Elhassan(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. I believe the Clippers are well aware. Right after this ad. We published our last episode about the Los Angeles Clippers and aspiration about three months ago. And since then, the scandal has seemed quiet. There's been no public update from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver or Clippers owner Steve Balmer. Even Mark Cuban stopped tweeting about it.

But behind the scenes, a lot has been happening, especially here in New York City. I can't believe you got me out of the house for this. I don't take your time for granted. We now have nine sources from Inside Aspiration, who alleged that Balmer hit a $48 million scheme to pay his superstar Kauai Leonard through a no-show contract. And that aspiration, which was also an enormous Clipper's sponsor,

never even announced this endorsement deal for a simple reason. The richest owner in all of sports who had personally invested $50 million at first into this tree planting company was circumventing the salary cap, breaking a cardinal NBA rule that tries to limit what billionaire owners can pay to win. This is not a small investigation that started. on September 3rd, with us and you. Team Balmer, however, has been telling their own version of this story, a version where Balmer himself is the most reliable narrator

of this fraud-laden timeline and his secretive social network. Just remember what we're doing here. This is their investigation, not you. Do you plan on, do you have stuff you need to find out from them? I mean, I just have this brief case. I just need them to also have what's in here, which you have, as my attorney, been carefully advising me about. It's their investigation.

Right. And they're being paid a pretty penny to investigate. Because the NBA hired a law firm, Wachtel Lipton, to do their own investigation. And so, yes, that is the voice of my on-air counsel, former Marlins president, David Sampson, on this Manhattan sidewalk in November. Walking with purpose as we make them wait at $2,100 an hour. Charging it to the NBA. After I accepted an invitation for a private meeting

with the lawyers hired by the NBA commissioner to probe one of his 30 bosses, who happens to be one of the dozen wealthiest people in the world. And just for the record, you're okay accepting, like, halal cart as your hourly... No, I want a steak dinner. Okay, well, you can build that levittard. He pays for everything else. Amin hasn't seen that video.

Didn't know what we did. I remember talking about doing this. I didn't think you guys actually did it. Oh, we did it. I normally would be very verbally effusive about, like, thank you both for being here. Amin Alas and David Samson, we haven't done this in months. The three of us in studio for Part 7,

of this series. But there's a briefcase on the table. There is. Do not touch the briefcase, I mean. Please describe, though, the briefcase for the audience. It is more of a leather satchel

than an actual briefcase. When I hear a briefcase, I think about the hard top, you know, with the locks, with the locks and the combo locks. That's what I think about. Very 1980s business guy chic.

This is more the guy that works for newspaper, like that, maybe the editor-in-chief. He's got a satchel like that. Fake vintage. Ink-stained. Hey, that's Game Warren. What do you mean fake vintage? Also, for those not watching, you should know that there are folders in front of both Amin and David. And David, don't. Don't. Please don't, for real. There are stuff in there that you have not seen either.

People love that you do this, and I've been approached about this, that they love the fact that we come in here, I mean, and he surprises us. And the number one question I'm asked, do you really not know what's in the folder? We're not that good at acting. Oh, my gosh. For those who have not watched any of the previous many, many parts of this investigation, this is an episode that's born of what the NBA and Adam Silver, the commissioner, chose to do two days after he released Part 1. They hired their preferred law firm for its internal investigations, a law firm by the name of...

Wachtel, Lipton, and then the other two gentlemen whose name escapes me. Those four bastards. Rosen and cats always get left off the marquee. Proskauer Rose, used to... to be Prosker Rose, Getson Mendelsohn, and then people were just like forget Getson and Nelson. And thank God you are here to remember them, David. That is why you as my attorney are here today to provide that level of intimate knowledge

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

And as my attorney, who I requested to bring to this meeting, you can now explain what the rule was. It was all confidential. Really? Not the record. They asked whether or not we'd be doing shows. And Pablo May have said, maybe. and you know what I did?

I just stayed quiet because I knew this guy. I didn't know what we were doing today, but I knew he was going to do something. Everything that happened inside the headquarters walked out Lippton, they cannot be described. Okay.

They don't even want to describe the room. Really? Like, they were dead serious. Like, they led with this. You guys walk in. You sit down and they go... We can't even say that we sat down. The game rules started before you sat down.

It was early. When that video ends, we walk into the building. silence. Can't say what happened. That's the rule. You just told me you didn't sit down. I said that I can't say if I sat down. Oh, okay. Are you actually going to discuss the meeting? No, what we are going to do, though, is what I made peace with and why you're here today,

which is that I realize that what I can do, especially for a means sake, is show you and the audience the pieces of evidence I ultimately and very carefully did decide to bring with me. To the meeting. Wow. What I brought, I can describe. What happened inside the meeting, I cannot. And so there is some actual new documentation that you and our audience will be seeing for the very first time today that Wachtel already has. David is laughing. I'm laughing because that's why his folder is thicker because I've seen it.

And I was, it was something. I don't want to get anything away. You haven't seen everything, though, David. And that's the key part of this episode. That's why you have a folder. And I want to stress that the foremost priority that I had as a journalist, of course was to do right by my sources. And this also meant ensuring that the league's internal probe, which is ongoing, clearly,

could not simply dismiss or claim ignorance of the growing mountain of evidence we have collected in this series, which is why I decided to do this. And yes, my reporting into this house of cards, this penthouse of cards even, it continues. And some of the stuff I mean that we brought, like the first document in the folder before you, will be familiar. Okay, this is the endorsement agreement between. Aspiration and KL2 Aspire LLC.

It says it's effective as of April 1st, 2022, and also KL2 desires to allow company to use athlete endorsement as defined below, and perform certain services for company,

in each case, subject to the terms and conditions contained herein. And David, you'll remember, according to your copy of this contract, you may open your folder now as well,

that there were, in fact, those certain services, a few deliverables, that aspiration bought the right to request. It's under H autographs. If requested to do so by company, KL2 shall cause Leonard to be available to sign 50 autographed items. Kauai Leonard, by the way, is playing great right now.

Oh, my God. Too little, too late. He's averaging almost 40 a game over the last couple weeks now. I don't think it's too little too late because all you got to do is get to that playing and they're only a couple of games back. And they're in New York City this week. Oh, wow. Are you going to go?

Will they stop by? Well, in fact, we did, for the record, ask the Clippers if Kauai Leonard, Steve Balmer, President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank were available for interviews, even in studio about aspiration during the road trip here, playing the Knicks and the Nets. They declined our request, citing the ongoing investigation that is at the core of this episode. The chances of Kauai Leonard walking in this room are zero. 0.0, Blutarski's GPA. But what I have been told independently

is that Wachtel has in fact been methodically making its way towards the Clippers C-suite. As we speak, over the last four months they've interviewed a number of aspiration employees. They're still trying to interview more. And they're trying to get to the origin story as they see it of the Clippers and aspiration

relationship. And so from there, they will then turn to Balmer and Kauai and Lawrence Frank and other Clippers officials in a denouement that is unfolding truly in the new year. And this sort of operations, I mean, may be personally familiar to you on some level

because you happen to work in the front office of a team that was investigated by Wachtel. Yeah. He worked for the Phoenix Suns under, and I, this is a great phrase, under now disgraced former owner Robert Sarver. And there was a league investigation there that was also triggered by a media report. Yeah.

I believe Baxter Holmes was the reporter who had the story that broke November of 2021. And they reached out to me in February of 2022 asking if we could sit down and have a chat. Amid these allegations reported by ESPN, allegations of racism, misogyny, all that stuff. What was your response to Wachtell? None.

You didn't sit down with them? Didn't sit down with them. Were you nervous about your career? Not about my career. I didn't do anything wrong, but I just, I did not want to speak to lawyers. Were you told not to speak? No, no.

Do you realize you're speaking to a lawyer right now? Well, yeah. Well, I'm not a league lawyer, but that's noted. And I'm sort of clocking that. Yeah. It was one of those things where I was following the story very closely. And it was easier for me to read what the report was and to be like, that's not exactly how that happened. Rather than actually tell them and correct them.

Well, this is the wrong episode for you to be a part of episode. It's terribly, hopefully the wrong country to live in for that to be the view, too. But you don't respond. And did they follow up? Nope. Very good. What I tell, in my opinion, Pablo, they were not going to take no for an answer from you.

Well, and I want to say, like, the reason I met with them, too, is because they expressed a seriousness about wanting to talk to me and get to the bottom of this story. There's been a lot of balloons floated already, which is what leagues do when they're doing these investigations. And I've seen a lot, including recently,

where it was, hey, it may be a couple draft picks, nothing too crazy. I do not believe they're going to make Steve Bomber sell because they need to have a gulf between what Sarver did, what Sterling did. As in Donald Sterling, noted racist, and now fellow disgraced former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers preceding Steve Bomber.

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

Right. It was not actually Roger Goodell forcing Snyder to sell. It was all of his partners. It was the corporate partners. There was like a mutiny on the bounty. And so to me, what you're doing is Wattel is taking this as seriously as they took the Phoenix Suns. And I can tell you that from the meeting.

This was not just a, hey, let's check the box and sit with Pablo. This is what I'll say, though, to that point, to that end, which is, Even if Wachtell finds Steve Bomber's guilty, there is not a single corporate partner of the Clippers that say, well, I can't be affiliated with this man anymore. And the second part is there is a massive downside to getting out of business with Steve Bomber.

One basic question at the radioactive core of this entire saga, which Team Bomber has somehow avoided answering for more than four months now, and this is the question I want to help answer today, is pretty simple. The question is, did the Clippers' know that Aspiration's secret no-show deal with Kauai Leonard even existed. Because in a September 2025 statement, the Clippers had stressed how the marketing deal was, quote,

independent from Steve Balmer and his franchise. This is the Clipper statement, courtesy of Shams Sharano. He tweeted this out. Neither Steve nor the Clippers organization had any oversight of Quay's independent endorsement agreement with aspiration to say, otherwise is flat out wrong. And Team Bomber, their most public defender, Mark Cuban, in this studio, in fact, previously stressed that he personally couldn't possibly say if the team was aware of the contract either.

Do you think the Clippers knew that Kauai had this deal with aspiration? I don't know. I don't know. Would you have known if you were the owner of a team and your most important player signed a deal with the... Not necessarily, but probably. Probably. Yeah, possibly. As president of the team, I would know every single one of them.

Well, in your folders is one new thing that I shared with the NBA's internal investigators of Wachtel-Leptin in November. I'm going to ask you guys to table read this because it is an email chain from inside of Aspiration. It starts on August 29, 2022. This is five months after Kauai's endorsement contract had already got into effect. David, please play the role of Mike Shuckero. This is Aspiration's chief legal officer. officer who was writing to Asperations Senior Director of Brand Marketing and their chief business development officer.

In our contract, Kauai will sign 50 items. Open parenz that we have to purchase per year for him to sign, close parenz. We should get that done before year one gets deep and we are into the NBA season. In my view, the only things we're signing are NBA official game jerseys and NBA official game basketballs. I am certain Joe Sandberg will want some of the. the signed swag. The rest should be user, he meant used,

by biz dev as gifts and or marketing as promotions. Here's the ball link. The 2022-2020-23 shirts are not out yet. And there's a hyperlink to Wilson.com and a basketball that you can purchase. And the Senior Director of Brand Marketing and Chief Business Development Officer then proceed to loop in aspirations, director of brand marketing. We're going to call this person the DBM.

And the DBM, Amin, replies. Hi, Mike. Since we haven't publicly announced this endorsement deal, I wanted to double check if it's okay to talk about this Kauai partnership with the Klippers partnership team. I asked because I know that they could likely provide us

with a bunch of free or discounted basketballs and Kauai merch, as well as facilitate signing. coincidentally, the Clippers are planning a few bobblehead nights this season and one of them will feature Quai. I want our logo to be on it. Let me know if I can start these discussions with the Clippers. Thanks. To which the Chief Legal Officer of Aspiration replies that very same night in writing,

I believe the Clippers are well aware. So in response to the chief legal officer saying that the Clippers are well aware, And the DBM Director of Brand Marketing then replies. Perfect. Thanks for confirming. I'll ask, name redacted, about merch for Kwai to sign and report back. I should disclose here that I was in touch with the DBM, Aspirations Director of Brand Marketing, who left the company last year in an attempt to include their perspective.

And the DBM, unfortunately, ghosted me, as in like, stopped replying altogether. Once I sent over excerpts from the very emails that. that we have just read at this table, which did feel a little strange. But multiple sources have confirmed to me the identity of this Merch Connect, the redacted name that the DBM reference when they wrote, quote, I'll ask blank about merch for Kauai to sign a report back, and quote, was the director of partnership marketing at the Los Angeles Clippers. That's who would be intimately involved in any situation with aspiration as a sponsor

and would understand what the deliverables are, and that's who you would have. It wouldn't be Steve Balmer talking to them at that level about something like autographed items or even about bobbleheads at that moment. So that, to me, that tracks how a team is run. There has to be a level of knowledge, right? You don't operate independently,

even if the clippers say that they had no knowledge. That doesn't matter, because in order to do this, even if we're above board, You still have that connection and that communication. Because remember, if they would ask, if Aspiration would have asked, hey, listen, we'd like some Kauai stuff. And what you'd say is, well, you're a sponsor, you can have, because we would allocate sign stuff per sponsor per level. And if the ask was off, the question would come like, no, why do you need, you're not getting that. And then the response to be, wait a minute, we have an agreement that we get that.

I think that's a real important thing to keep in mind. This is an aspiration, you know, a company that's in. business with Kauai reaching out to the Clippers out of the blue. This is aspiration, a company that has a business relationship with the Clippers itself. So these kind of communications are part of it. The thing that strikes you about these emails, right? It's like, let's get the merch, let's get the sign jerseys, let's get this bobblehead thing. There's like a checklist of like stuff we can get in the framework of our very deeply commingled endorsement deal with Kauai that is also existing alongside our sponsorship deal in which we pay.

the Clippers. And so you can see that on the Clippers side, right, in totality, what we're seeing is the Clippers are saying we had no oversight, no understanding, Team Balmer, Mark Cuban, they're saying we have no idea if the Clippers even knew about this crazy deal at all. And meanwhile, on the Asperation side, we have these emails where they're just like, yeah, let's reach out to the Clippers. We all are talking about it. This is a deal that we're trying to activate. And they resolve to go and reach out to their counterparts at Los Angeles Clippers. Clippers exactly as you would do as if this deal was meant to be done. And then there's the matter of what happened a couple months after that August 22 email chain,

which is the 261 page document sitting in a means folder. It is the Aspiration Partners Inc. Series C-Fi preferred stock purchase agreement dated as of December 9th, 22. This is, in fact, the $1.99 million deal, which you will recall, signed by the Clippers. only co-owner, Dennis Wong, one of Steve Ballmer's oldest and best friends dating back to their days at Harvard. This was signed. Yes, December 22 when aspiration was two and a half months late in paying Kauai Leonard's quarterly check of $1.75 million. But Wong, who had not invested in aspiration before, wired in his $1.99 million. And nine days later, Kauai gets paid. Although the written disclosures flagged in

Wong's agreement in front of you, David, they say what? The company is in default. Walt. KPMG resigned as the company's independent auditor. These are... Is that bad? I can answer that. Finra is conducting five inquiries. But wait, there's more.

The SEC is currently conducting a review of the ESG representations made by the company. In other words, aspiration could not pay its bills. at this point. The company actually fired 20% of its staff on the same day, December 15th, 2022, that they secretly chose to pay Kauai his $1.75 million to do nothing. That is where the Clippers, co-owners, $1.99 million went. But as for what was not written into that agreement, we just read, because, you know, the whole point of this scheme was to not get caught. I also need to acknowledge another big concern expressed by Mark Cuban. and Team Balmer and all of their carefully framed denials.

But just that for all these documents, nobody actually mentions the phrase cap circumvention in writing. Right? And I've heard this. It seems a little convenient to have non-sports employees at this weird tree planting company in retrospect. Years after the fact identify a very explosive NBA salary cap scandal, a scheme perpetrated by the Clippers.

And so the next document in your folders is a text exchange that I also shared with the NBA's lawyers at Wachtall in the interest of transparency, that I would now like you guys. to table read two. This is February 2023. Around this point of the timeline,

according to court documents, Joe Sandberg has asked at least 19 outside investment firms to put money into aspiration, which is in default, as said, but his company is still making it a priority to pay Kauai Leonard. And so these are two high-level

aspiration employees with direct knowledge of the company C-suite talking about what kind of bankruptcy aspiration is going to file for. Chapter 7, and in Chapter 7, the company has to completely liquidate. In Chapter 11,

the less extreme version, You can restructure, try to repay your creditors. Amin, please be gray bubble. Okay. David, please be Blue Bubble. I'm so curious, how they decide between 7 and 11? The courts will. We can file for Chapter 11, which we likely will.

And then a bankruptcy court will come in and either verify that's the appropriate action, and we continue unwinding the business while they move through it with creditors or the courts see the books and they say, yeah, no, cease business. This is Chapter 7. You can't be trusted to keep doing business right now. Oh, interesting. I see. So maybe there is a grand plan.

Unlikely. And to Blue Bubble's credit, by the way, that is basically what happened. So Aspiration filed for Chapter 11, then pivoted to Chapter 7 last July, and then the conversation proceeds. Imagine when Balmer finds out. Balmer has to be in on the take. I am so suspicious of him. I mean, I think they meant to say, I mean, he's C-Close with J.S.

Especially with the salary cap and Kauai and just all the shady dealings. So the salary cap and Kauai and all the shady dealings and mentioning Balmer being in on the take and being suspicious of him, here's some writing. I want to go back a little bit to Wachtel,

I mean, just to paint a little picture with Pablo not wanting me to, but I don't care. So you have to understand that Pablo is handing stuff. Right. And Wachtel is investigating and they're taking it. And I was doing some eye reading because I want to see that's what negotiations are. You're looking always at your adversary.

You're looking for any tells. Cues. Looking for anything. And I was looking for, have they seen this before? Is there any element of surprise? Or are they just like, yeah, whatever, man. I got five copies of this. Like, this is no big deal.

And there were, in the course of this, several times where I saw some pupil dilation. And because I'm just, I was looking for that. I don't think the pupils are on the record, David. I disagree. I'm comfortable telling you that I saw pupil dilation. These bubbles are meaningful, at least to me. Well, look, speaking to the analysis in the bubbles, right? Mm-hmm.

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

Ha ha. Learn that from AC? An AC, by the way, quite multiple aspiration sources, is not Al Cowlings, unfortunately. You know, sackicking the Fort Bronco. White, right in the Broncos? Yes, I was thinking, my first thought was AC Green. That popped into my head immediately. Alex Caruso.

There's so many different jokes that I can make here. But this is, in fact, a different confidant to a man in Los Angeles who we get in trouble with the law. This AC, you can find in SEC filings and also in this NASDAQ.com press release about the food delivery company Blue Apron. Upon closing, Alex Chalunco, Mr. Sandberg's chief investment officer will join the Blue apron board. The thing about Alex Chaluncle is that he was close enough to Sandberg, such that Samberg said, you will be on the board of this company that I'm going to be an early investor in. And Alex Chaluncle, I should say, did not respond to our request for comment. Well, I don't have this information except I would say that what a chief investment officer would

have input and knowledge of is everything. Right. One of the things that I liked is cash management, where you are taking an endowment or you're taking extra cash you have and you are figuring out how you're going to invest it because that's part of how you fund operations is making money with your money. The second thing a chief investment officer does is they are in charge of the capital structure of the company. Working in conjunction with the CFO, always with the president and CEO,

as they figure out what's called the cap table. The cap table is the list of people who own what and at what number they're at in terms of percentage ownership and what their base is. And Steve Balmer did not furiously sever ties with aspiration upon learning that the company was insolvent. It's worth recalling what happened the month after these texts, right? So now we're in March 2023.

Like his old buddy and co-owner of the clippers, Dennis Wong, Balmer decided to invest millions of dollars. Another $10 million in 2023 to go along with his initial $50 million from 2021. And even more bizarrely, David, he invested at the same multi-billion dollar valuation that Aspiration had in 2021 as if nothing was going wrong with the company. And so what all of this indicates is simply this.

The Clippers, the relationship between Steve Balmer and Joe Sandberg and these two companies, their respective companies, you know, again, this is the context. They're both Harvard graduates. They're huge Democratic donors. They are people who are in business together in both directions.

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

Would I know what our player is doing? I would. And if I do, that means our owner does. And so there's a follow-up question then, given the framework of how you do business, which is, when did the Clippers even discover aspiration as an entity? Because it might not be as late in this very long con as Team Bomber would have you believe. Are you saying that they were aware of aspiration prior to aspiration

becoming a sponsor of Intuito? I am saying that we're going to discuss this after the break. Oh, that's a tease, folks. So I do need to remind everybody, you two guys included, in fairness to the clippers,

that Steve Bomber and Dennis Wong were not the only investors of note in aspiration. In fact, on Aspirations Twitter account, which is since rebranded itself after filing for bankruptcy as we discussed. Yep. And then seven. They rebranded themselves as at GreenFi banking. Okay.

And I found this post from when it was still Aspiration from back in December of 2021. And this is a key year of 2021 in Steve Baumers' version of this timeline, I mean. And so it's a tweet that I would ask you here to describe for us. Right. This is at GreenFI Banking. We're honored to be joined in our mission of providing sustainability services to people and business by marquee investors Oak Tree Capital Management LP and Steve Balmer. Hashtag spend sustainably. And it links to this Bloomberg.com article with a splashy headline covered by Steve Balmer's giant face.

Oak Tree Balmer bet 300. $115 million on aspiration before SPAC deal. We first mentioned Oak Tree Capital Management, which is a very blue-chip investment firm in part one of the series. We'll come back to them, by the way, in a minute. But just remember what Steve Bomber told ESPN the day after he dropped part one, right? Which is that he didn't even know about aspiration until the company aspiration approached the Clippers in the year 2021.

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

the Wall Street Journal on the front page took it a step further. This was last October. This was after our reporting. The journal cited a team Balmer source who actually increased the distance between Balmer and Sandberg even more. And David, if you could read that,

quote in front of you from the journal. A person close to the Balmer group, his investment company, said the two hardly knew each other. He said that Balmer and Sandberg had their first significant interaction at the press conference

announcing the partnership between the Clippers and aspiration. I wonder, is significant mean they're next to each other? Is it dinner? How many dinners do you have to have to have significant interaction? One, can't be one. Three? Three? Significant.

It's not about volume. It's about intensity, right? So, if I could have dozens of interactions with you, but all my interactions are, hey, David. All right, bye, David. Hey, Happy New Year, David. So we've had volume. But remember what Palmer told ESPN, right, in the first interview. This is a company that I got to know, frankly, through them approaching us about a sponsorship deal. Boy, does he regret that interview? Well, what we can do here, though, is rewatch the presser from September 2021 between Aspirations Marquis investor and the man he picked to be a,

quote, founding partner of his crown jewel, the Intuit Dome, because unfamiliarity isn't exactly the impression? Is this the part where we look at their pupil dilation? Steve Ballmer is one of the most underappreciated, unheralded philanthropists of our time. I know that because he has quietly been an ally of some of the most important social justice movements that I've been involved in to fight poverty, to fight racial injustice, to fight economic inequality. and he always does it without taking any credit. So I'm not going to blow his cover too specifically,

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

In fact, the year you need to start with, it turns out, is 2018. You actually need to start with the first day, January 1st, of 2018. Oh, boy. Because on January 1st, 2018, a nonprofit called the Golden State Opportunity Fund first started receiving annual donations from the Balmer Group. This is the group who sourced the journal quoted before, and this is notable because, as we reported in part five of our series,

the lone founder and chairman of the board of this charity, whose face also is plastered on the website and the marketing materials, is who? Joe Sambord. And look, I get that Steve Balmer has billions upon billions upon billions of dollars. And I even understand that you can't take his quote to say, 60 minutes in which Balmer and his wife Connie said that they strategize about the Balmer group's donations, quote, grant by grant, literally. 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. We can't do population level measurement. But place by place, you know, grant by grant, we can do that. You may also recall that Steve Balmer went on to donate $1.875 million to Joe Sandberg's charity, as aforementioned in late 2024, which was 10.5.5.4. 10 months at least after Balmer already knew that the federal government had investigated Sandberg for conning people like Steve Balmer. This was even after another aspiration board member had already been arrested by the FBI

in connection to Sandberg's scheme. He's a very forgiving man, Pablo. I don't know what you're not understanding. The point is that Balmer started sending money to Sandberg at the very start of 2018. So, let's just stay there for a minute. And I want us to keep scrolling through Aspiration's old Twitter account, which has since rebranded itself after filing for bankruptcy. At Greenfye Banking, these are all posts from before the rebrand

because you get to a post eventually that someone maybe forgot to delete. David, what is the date and time stamp of this post? 10 a.m. on August 23rd, 2018. Amin, could you please describe what this post says and shows? It is a picture of aspiration employees, I have to assume, all sitting around. It looks like they're mid-applaws. As at the front of the room, one and only, Doc Rivers, former head coach of the Clippers, with a smile on his face. You want me to read the copy?

I would love you, too, actually. All right. Basketball emoji. What better way to get motivated in the team meeting than having our very own coach, Special guest, Doc Rivers, stopped by to share why he's excited about aspiration and encourage us to keep our heads in the game at LA Clippers. It's not Blake's fault. The fact that there is this photo from that same year

at this office, which happens to be, by the way, we did the Google Maps on this, conveniently located less than 10 minutes away from the Clippers practice facility at the time. Playa Vista. Yeah. So this was a Marina Del Rey office of Aspiration. Playa Vista was where the Clippers used to practice

before the whole Intuit thing came to be. Hold on, man. They have a relationship with the Clippers in 2018? Doc Rivers, by the way, at the time, was not merely the head coach of the Clippers in 2018. He had just been replaced by Lawrence Frank as President of Basketball Operations, but he was still reporting directly to Steve Ballmer.

Right. And the next thing, David, I'd like you to review here are internal documents that I obtained that mentioned two other assets. Aspiration investors that we have not discussed so explicitly yet. Can you please name those investors? The Glenn A. Rivers Revocable Trust, U.A. September, and the Kristen Rivers revocable trust, UA, September.

And I will bet you a dollar that Glenn A. Rivers is known as Doc, and that Kristen is likely someone in his family, I mean. It is his former wife. It was wife at the time. Yes. as of February of 2018. So... It's normal to do it through a trust.

Oh, yeah, that part. That's not, that's normal. This is episode seven, right? Yes. How are we still... I feel like I should have called this from the beginning. From episode one, as soon as we found out, aspiration, clippers, money on the table,

there's a lot of kind of moving parts and caps are a convention. Why didn't the name Doc Rivers come out my mouth immediately? So I reached out to Doc Rivers, who declined comment. But I should just observe that these investments,

yeah, they came more than a year before Kauai Leonard, by the way, would officially be a free agent in 2019. So I'm just saying that, like, this social network was not only geographically tight, they were investing years before all of this. Incestuous. This is incestuous.

It doesn't go speak to that, gentlemen, in my opinion. It certainly speaks to knowledge. This is not wrong on its face to tell your friends, hey, I'm investing in this company, let's do this, but it certainly goes to knowledge. The social network that we're describing would have known more than hardly knowing anything,

which was the previous quote. They're still going with that. This is the part, again, that test credulity. I'm merely saying that these investments happened, that team-building speech happened years before, Steve Balmer says he heard of the company. We're just going based on what's been documented. This is out there.

This is just people not putting together what the social network consists of. And so speaking of, by the way, I now want to take us to what Sam Amick at The Athletic reported in December of 2019. Because this was after the NBA and its attorneys opened the original investigation into alleged Clippers' salary capser convention

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

So what I've been doing, by the way, is going back now in our... timeline from 2018 to 2019. And so I've been living in 2019 for the past several months. There's this thing called COVID that's coming. Prepare. I don't know. Buy a lot of toilet paper. I just love bats.

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

Love that. And this interview also came with a high-end fashion shoot, which we're showing to you guys right now. I can't pull that off. Could you describe what you're seeing, I mean? He's wearing a duster of some sort, or maybe it's a p-coat and he's on the beach. He had a surfboard.

Now he's wearing flowing linen kind of robes. Now he's wearing a Celine kind of varsity jacket. Now he's lying down on a couch. and he's wearing a gray hoodie. Now he's got no shirt on at all. Yes, he's showing us that ripped physique. This is as out of his shell as I've ever seen him. He kind of has like captive Venezuelan president vibes.

He's just like not totally loving being out here in public, like performing. Right. And so in this interview, by the way, to get back to just the content of it, Kauai didn't talk about secretly getting a house in 2019 or an endorsement deal with aspiration in 2021 or anything involving Steve Ballmer. or Oak Tree Capital Management. But there was one excerpt, David, from Flaunt that I found interesting.

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

Lavish Mountain is a conspicuous name, and it's so conspicuous that I found it in the state of Florida? It turns out, because that is where Uncle Dennis Robertson registered a company called Lavish Mountain LLC. But he didn't do this recently, as Fawn magazine suggests,

according to the public filing, a mean, which is the next document in your folder, he registered it when? November 4th, 2019. Which would be around when? The beginning of the first season, Kau Leonard plays for the Los Angeles Clippers.

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

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

And so, David, I'd just like you to now look at your next document, which is the grant deed for Unit 43G, the unit in question, because I'd like you to please tell me who sold it to Lavish Mountain LLC. Larry W. Kiel. Larry Wayne Kiel. Should I know that name? I think that name is pretty unknown to, I guess, our entire audience at this point. Most people listening wouldn't recognize it. But, I mean, please open the next thing in your folder

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

Well, I'm not needing you to judge how they aged. Well, I mean, that's just how it works, how it happens. Do you want me to read the caption underneath? Yes, please. So, as I said, five gentlemen, and the caption says, from left, oak tree founders, Larry Keel, Sheldon, Richard Mason, Howard Marks, and Bruce Karsh in 1995 and in 2020. So I was right, it was in the mid-90s. I just guessed it by looking at it. Larry W. Kiel is in fact the co-founder of Oak Tree Capital Management. He's the only guy sitting in a chair in these photos, taking 25 years apart. He served on the board of directors through 2019

before becoming an advisory partner to Oak Tree. And you may recall Oak Tree, of course, from like 10 minutes ago or whatever it's been, as the other marquee investor in Aspiration, that Aspiration tweeted about being so honored to have on board right alongside Steve Balmer. And he owned a place at the Ritz. Guys. I mean, we here at Pablo Tori finds out, just to be very diligent,

asked Larry W. Kiel and Oak Tree Capital Management, how it is that in November 2019, the same year, Kauai Leonard's Uncle Dennis, notoriously demanded a house from prospective teams who wanted to sign his nephew, that Larry W. Kiel wound up selling Kauai Leonard a panhouse through an LLC that his uncle created the day before.

And how it is also that two years after that transaction in November 2021, Uncle Dennis created yet another LLC, through which Kawhi Leonard would be paid millions of dollars in secret endorsement money from aspiration, which happens to be the same company that the firm Larry W. Kiel founded had invested in alongside Steve Balmer, and Larry W. Keel did not respond.

Maybe, in fairness, all of this is an insane coincidence. The transaction itself can be above board. Again, the important, the pertinent information is that Who sold it to whom? And in that sense, that it wasn't anyone else in the world. It wasn't David Sampson that sold it. It wasn't But Sealing. It was Larry Keel, the co-founder of Oak Tree,

which has, again, going back to where we talk about Steve Balmer, another thread connecting his orbit to this company. But also, there are transactions that often happen amongst friends where they buy each other's places and you hear, hey, He bought the house of the movie star and they did a deal because we have players who do transactions when they're traded. Yeah, they buy each other's houses. So that shows to me there's a relationship. It doesn't show that that is a deal that is nefarious.

Absolutely. But to me, that's all this is about. It's not, everyone wants it to be like, aha, we got it. That's the house that he asked for. Like, no, it's just demonstrating yet again. There's no way these people don't know each other, which is comfortable with that. Which is what they keep trying to tell us. Oh, I don't know.

I don't know anybody. This has nothing to do with me. Yes. This is, if nothing else, a social network that keeps drawing the money behind aspiration and the clippers closer together. So I need to acknowledge here that we have presented a lot more evidence from the aspiration side of things and the clipper side of things. And that's despite my best efforts, but that's where our information clearly, admittedly,

seems to be the strongest. And in fact, the only time I think Kauai has ever been asked or had to answer questions about aspiration at all was a Clippers Media Day before the season, and Kauai, David, was not especially impressed without reporting. Like I said, I don't deal with the conspiracies or the click-date analysts or journalism that's going on. So that's what it is.

I think the allegation was that you didn't perform any services for them. Is that accurate or did you give things for them? I don't think it's accurate, but it's old. This is all new to you guys. The company went bankrupt a while ago, so we already knew this was going to happen. You called you a journalist. So that's a positive. That is a lot more than others have done lately.

But before we abandon our microphones. Okay. And in the interest of yet more sunlight in a world of many unplanted, We need to return to that August 2022 email chain that we started with, where Aspirations chief legal officer said about Kauai's $28 million endorsement deal, quote, I believe the Clippers are well aware. And the director of brand marketing, the venerable DBM of Aspiration replied by saying they'd ask the director of partnership marketing at the Clippers

about getting Kauai to sign some merch and, you know, have the team put the Aspiration logo on a Kauai bobblehead. and I want to acknowledge again in the skepticism of all of this yeah look I can imagine team balmer saying like yeah you have aspiration side conversations and I haven't provided proof that those conversations with the clippers actually took place and so I mean this is where I finally need to ask you to please open the briefcase that you don't think of the briefcase oh I get to touch the briefcase has been patiently waiting for your touch this whole time.

All right. It's very weathered. Yeah. A good patina. You're saying this is vintage and not... No, I said it was vintage. All right. It is literally vintage.

It's like decades old. Okay. I'm making sure that we didn't get this from anthropology or something like that. March 21st, 2023 was less than two weeks after Steve Balmer quietly invested another $10 million into aspiration. Less than two weeks before another quarterly aspiration payment was due to Kauai on March 31st. And on that day, March 21st, the Clippers gave a free gift.

I mean... How did you get this? I know, it's a bobblehead. But it's not any bobblehead, folks. It's a one-armed Quy Leonard bobblehead. He's wearing his Los Angeles Clippers number two jersey. His head is babbling. And underneath, it says Quy Leonard.

And right above Quy Leonard, there's a little plaque that says, Aspiration. The arm fell off in terms. Transit. eBay. eBay. This is... Have an armless bobbleheads.

I've got a whole collection. Art imitating life. Truly. That's a thread. I mean, look, in the words of Aspiration's director for brand marketing from the email chain, the clippers are planning a few bobblehead nights this season, and one of them will feature Kauai. I want our logo to be on it.

Let me know if I can start these discussions with the clippers. You know, I've seen a million of these. This little tile on top of it. it is, you know, you know when you go to a house and you say, oh, that part of this house was not built with the rest of the house. This is an extension. I get the vibe that this thing was like a last second. Well, it is important to note that this is the one and only Clippers bobblehead that has ever had an aspiration logo on it. And that the month before Kawhi's aspiration bobblehead, for instance, February 2020, 23, Nicholas Batum's bobblehead was

sponsored by Cedar Sinai. And I can see a photo of that. on the Clippers' Twitter account. There is. Showing it to you on video. That doesn't look like Nicholas Batum at all. And the year before that, by the way, the first season aspiration was a Clipper sponsor, Cedar Sinai, also happens to be who sponsored Kawhi's Bobblehead.

This was the spring of 2022. There was a whole set you could pick up. I also need you guys to tell me if you notice anything about how the Clippers' Twitter account promoted Kawhis' Bobblehead, the one sitting in front of us, in March, 23, in contrast to how they promoted the others, including Nicholas Batum's,

the month before. Oh my God. Did they take out, I mean, they took off the aspiration logo. Look at that. It's blank. I should read for the listening audience.

Tomorrow is Tuesday. I get it, the number two, and then a prosopi S day. Be one of the first of 10,000 fans in the building and receive a Kwai Leonard bobblehead exclamation point.

That's it. And then it's a picture, as we said, of the bobblehead. The placard that says aspiration in real life is blank. And that's it.

Compare and contrast, the Batum one says, hashtag Clipper Nation, we are back in action on Friday, be one of the first of 10,000 fans in attendance, and receive a at Nicholas 88 Baton bobblehead, courtesy of Cedar Sinai. So obviously, I don't think Quiet has a Twitter account. That's why they couldn't tag him. They just said Quiet Leonard. But certainly you would tag the sponsor because that's the whole point of why we're having a bubble. Do not do a bobblehead give away without a sponsor. Period. That's who's paying for, pretty much.

And so the question of, like, why isn't there the aspiration word anywhere on this public post on the Clippers account is followed up by a question that our graphics department raised, which is, why did they edit out? According to an error-level analysis that they performed for us here at Pablo Torre finds out so that it's just a white. side of Kauai's feet. So, wow, look at this. Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Wait, say this again. I don't understand what you're saying. So he's saying they did an analysis of the image.

It had aspiration on it, and it was digitally removed. It reminds you of the Epstein files where they redacted, but they didn't know what they were doing. They redacted. They made it very easy for you to just basically read the redacted parts. So what you found out is that they took a picture with the aspiration logo and they photoshopped it out before tweeting it. Look, like, we can't say definitively,

that this is Photoshop, but I urge you to look at what the white box looks like. Right. And how black that, almost like a redaction, that boxes versus the other white objects on the bobblehead in the photo. So the name Quay Leonard, right? The words Los Angeles, which are kind of behind him, the Los Angeles clippers font on the jersey,

the socks that he's wearing, the white in the sneakers, The white on the piping of the jersey. They all have digital noise. Very noisy. Very noisy. And then you have this perfect black box where that white placard is. If it were a picture of a blank plaque, basically.

Yeah. In real life. In real life. A white blank plaque. Then we would see the same sort of noise that we see on his socks, that we see on his name, that we see on the Los Angeles, that we see on the piping of the jersey. Instead, we just see perfect black like something that was redacted, digitally altered. That's what it would seem. So, hold on.

Let's go back to this timeline again. Aspiration is on the edge starting when, when are things going down at aspiration? So, Balmer puts in the $10 million when pretty much no outside investor will in this same month, two weeks before this. Got it. And the federal government is closing. in literally around this time. So at this moment in time, the clippers, we are inferring that they know that aspiration is going into a bad place.

Can we assume, though, I mean that aspiration was not making its sponsorship payments? Yeah. So they wouldn't get that. So then you would take it out now. But I would, the question is, would I even give away the bobblehead with the sponsor who hadn't paid its bills? Certainly, I wouldn't promote it. Right.

I would Photoshop it from the tweet. The question is, would I blow the whole thing off? Yeah, would I still give it away? That's an end. But you know, David, teams announced when the bobblehead nights are at the beginning of the year. And people buy tickets for those games. For Boboheadhead night? I would still give it, Pablo, just so you know.

But I would not promote it on Twitter. I'd be so pissed off if Aspiration were not paying its bills. But Aspiration not paying its bills, once again lets us know, hey, this company seems to be having some problems. Why would you put in $10 million more dollars? When you have inside knowledge, not even outside. This is exactly my point. I think there should be an investigation. But listen, at the end of March, 2023,

Kauai landed was to another quarterly payment, simultaneous to this aspiration, was having trouble paying its bills to the Clippers. And the Clippers, meanwhile, were doing shit like this that raises all of these questions in retrospect about why and how, and what did you know and when did you know it.

This brings me back to a point I made after we record the very first episode and hearing the reaction from people, from Mark Cuban to Clipper fans to NBA players, everyone's talking about this. And the thing that they kept coming up with, I think Cuban did as well, like, oh, why would they be this sloppy? Why would they be this sloppy?

And I cannot stress this enough. Look how much work and how much digging and how much you, Pablo, and your wonderful team had to do for us to uncover any of it. This wasn't sloppy. This was sophisticated as fuck. Like, oh, they were so sloppy.

No, this should have been the perfect climb. Look, in fairness, again, Kauai Leonard may think that I'm a conspiracist, that we are conspiracists. And, well, you know, he, Kaui Leonard also, like Aspirations brand marketing director, may not want to answer any more of my questions.

The Clippers, for the record, when we asked why there's no mention of aspiration on their post about Kauai's bobblehead, which has it on the physical thing, declined to comment citing the whole league investigation. But I can tell you, and David can now confirm, that Wachtel Lipton also now has its own Kauai aspiration bobblehead in its possession. And so if you're going to ask the basic question that we started this episode with, did Steve Bomber's clippers know that the KL2 Aspire deal existed? Were they, in fact, well aware and behaving so shadily because of that, I just think we also need to pose that same question to Lil Kauai Leonard. Because he, like his taller self, may be silent. But I do think that he is nodding yes. And that's what we call journalism.

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 Tuminello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick and NGW Post, theme song, as always, by John Bravo, and we will talk to you next time.