The Richest Owner in Sports, the Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree: A PTFO Investigation

Summary

Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: The Richest Owner in Sports, the Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree: A PTFO Investigation

Date: September 3, 2025
Host: Pablo Torre
Guests: Amin Elhassan, David Samson
Topic: An investigative deep dive connecting climate finance startup fraud, NBA owner influence, and the mysterious $28 million no-show endorsement deal of NBA superstar Kawhi Leonard

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Overview

In this meticulously reported episode, Pablo Torre, joined by Amin Elhassan (former NBA executive) and David Samson (former Miami Marlins president), unravels a multi-layered "talkumentary" that links a massive climate tech fraud (Aspiration), hidden NBA financial maneuvering, the richest owner in sports (Steve Ballmer), and the most enigmatic superstar in basketball (Kawhi Leonard).

The story careens through Silicon Valley startup delusion, climate greenwashing, sports celebrity endorsements, and a potential exposure of one of the great modern sports cap workarounds: the $28 million "no-show" job that Kawhi Leonard appears to have received for doing absolutely nothing—and what it may mean for the future of the NBA and its supposed financial guardrails.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Setting the Scene: Paper Trails and Trees

[02:01]

• Pablo opens with a tongue-in-cheek reference to the literal "3,487 pages" of documents analyzed — and the metaphoric “trees killed” to investigate Aspiration’s collapse, reflecting the theme of environmental hypocrisy.
• He’s joined by Amin and David for expert commentary on finance, sports operations, and the intersection of climate and capitalism.

2. The Rise and Collapse of Aspiration

[02:53 - 13:35]

• Aspiration: a "green bank" founded by Harvard-connected Democrats Andre Cherny and Joe Sandberg, leveraging huge-name celebrity investors/endorsers, including Robert Downey Jr., Leonardo DiCaprio, Drake, Doc Rivers, Cindy Crawford, and more.
• Aspiration's business model: brokering “carbon credits”—charging firms and celebs up to $1 to plant a tree that costs $0.10–$0.20, and positioning themselves as the new, eco-friendly face of finance.
• The company raised $865 million, topped a $2.3 billion valuation, and branded itself as "Clean Rich is the New Filthy Rich."
• Quote [04:35, Amin]: “What we’ve just established, five minutes of the episode is however much they spent on getting Robert Downey Jr. to voice over and be in the commercial was a waste of money. Because David Samson’s like, ‘who’s that?’”
• Spectacular collapse: By March 2025, co-founder Joe Sandberg is arrested for wire fraud, and Aspiration has filed for bankruptcy amid federal investigations by the DOJ, SEC, CFTC, and more.

3. Kawhi Leonard: NBA’s Most Reserved Superstar

[16:01 - 21:51]

• The show pivots to Kawhi Leonard: a superstar so private he’s called “the silent guy”—famed for his reclusiveness, frugality (“Wingstop coupons” saga), and being the least likely candidate for a massive endorsement payout.
• Amin: “He’s the worst personality ever [for marketing]. You want someone outgoing… that’s not who he is. He’s a very quiet, reserved guy.”
• Notably, legendary stories about Kawhi (e.g., “apple time” at team dinners) are revealed to be unsubstantiated but highly plausible because of his odd mystique.

4. The Clippers, Steve Ballmer & the NBA’s Salary Cap

[22:48 - 29:13]

• The Clippers’ unprecedented success in landing Kawhi Leonard in 2019 stunned NBA circles, with rumors flying about illicit efforts to "sweeten" the pot—especially centered on his uncle/manager, Dennis Robertson ("Uncle Dennis").
• NBA rules forbid “off-contract” sweeteners to avoid salary cap circumvention (ex: no free cars, tickets, family perks).
• Ballmer, worth $175B, is the richest owner in sports, eager to spend on every part of the Clippers’ operation except where the NBA limits make it tricky.

5. The Smoking Gun: The $28 Million No-Show Deal

[32:21 - 46:27]

• Bombshell evidence: Buried in Aspiration bankruptcy documents is a $7 million/year, four-year, $28 million payment to a shell entity “KL2 Aspire LLC”—revealed to be wholly owned by Kawhi Leonard (and his uncle).
• Notable moment, [33:36, Amin]:
  “KL2 Aspire LLC, care of Dennis Robertson.”
  • Uncle Dennis’s centrality recurs.
• Contractual analysis:
  • Kawhi is not required to perform any actual marketing unless he wants to (23:13, Aspiration Employee: “He didn’t have to do anything...there was an out clause for every single KPI…He could just decline, or just not do it.”)
  • Deliverables (autographs, social posts, appearances) are optional, left to Kawhi’s "beliefs," which are undefined and subjective.
  • The critical clause: if Kawhi leaves the Clippers, the agreement can be terminated—making continued payment contingent on him playing for the team.
  • All other major celebrity investments pale compared to Kawhi’s; he receives the single largest payout by a factor of more than 4x.
• Quote [39:21, Aspiration Employee]:
  “He’s got the dream. Like it’s within my beliefs to be paid $28 million and do absolutely f--- all as well.”

6. Steve Ballmer, Aspiration, and the Money Trail

[54:21 - 61:55]

• Ballmer’s personal influence is revealed: he both invests $50 million into Aspiration and secures Aspiration as a founding sponsor for the Clippers’ new Intuit Dome arena ($300M+ deal).
• Ballmer’s direct communications with Aspiration co-founders show his active engagement, coordination, and advocacy.
• Aspiration, flush with Ballmer cash, immediately dispenses the $28M to Kawhi’s LLC, as prioritized in their weekly finance meetings—even as the rest of the business unravels.
• Quote [65:47, Aspiration Employee]: “Uncle Dennis was calling and Uncle Dennis demanded payment. It was priority one... crucial to our relationships with Ballmer and the Clippers.”

7. The Fallout: Scandal, Fraud, and an Open Question for the NBA

[66:20 - 73:48]

• The federal government brings fraud charges against Aspiration leaders (Sandberg pleads guilty) for running a $248–$300 million fake-revenue “scheme.”
• Despite mountains of evidence, Steve Ballmer and the Clippers deny any wrongdoing or knowledge of improper acts (full statement at [66:20]).
• The NBA has repeatedly stated that any new evidence of cap circumvention would trigger renewed investigation, with potential sanctions including loss of player contracts and draft picks.
• Amin: "If I’m the league and I’m watching this episode…this feels like a paper trail that would lead you to believe that the Clippers, through Aspiration, managed to give extra compensation above and beyond what the collective bargaining agreement would allow.” [67:42]

8. The Rotten Apple Tree: Symbolism and Irony

[83:18 - 84:40]

• To "offset" the carbon cost of the investigation, Pablo’s team hires a person in an Iron Man suit to plant an apple tree across from the Intuit Dome:
  • Direct tie-in to the episode's running “apple time” gag and the overarching theme of greenwashing and performative environmentalism.
  • The sabmolic act is a tongue-in-cheek, self-aware call-out of both the investigation’s carbon cost and Aspiration’s lack of transparency and oversight.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the emptiness of big-name endorsements:
  • “However much they spent on getting Robert Downey Jr. to voice over and be in the commercial was a waste of money. Because David Samson’s like, 'who’s that?'” — Amin, [04:35)
• On Aspiration’s business model:
  • “They brokered these sales of carbon credits…typically it costs about 10 to 20 cents to plant a tree. Aspiration was charging…a dollar.” — Pablo, [10:09–10:50]
• On Kawhi Leonard's endorser profile:
  • “He’s the worst personality ever [for marketing]…He doesn’t really tend to go to the spotlight. Most of his commercials, he doesn’t have a speaking role in.” — Amin, [17:21]
• On the contract’s loopholes:
  • “He didn’t have to do anything. There was a clause for an out in every single KPI…They weren't actually key performance indicators…He could just decline, or just not do it.” — Anonymous Aspiration Employee, [37:43]
• On the shell company setup:
  • “KL2 Aspire LLC, care of Dennis Robertson.” — Amin, [33:36]
• On Ballmer's justifications (and NBA risk):
  • “The thing we have to think about is the power that Ballmer has within the NBA…He’s the richest owner in all the sports.” — David Samson, [68:41]
• Cynical summary:
  • "The absence of evidence becomes the evidence.” — Pablo, [70:37]
• On environmental hypocrisy:
  • “Either they’re not concerned with whether or not the trees are being planted or it’s not real, or both.” — Anonymous Aspiration Employee, [81:55]
• Closing symbolism:
  • “That tree is an apple tree. No, because when it comes to fighting climate change, there is no time after all. Like, apple time.” — Pablo, [84:23–84:38]

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Important Segments by Timestamp

• Aspiration Overview & Celebrity Avengers: [02:53–07:59]
• The NBA Salary Cap & Sweeteners Explained: [23:54–26:19]
• Contract Receipts: The KL2 Aspire LLC Endorsement: [32:21–39:21]
• Legal and Contractual Analysis: [39:44–46:27]
• Arena Money Trail/Ballmer Emails: [54:21–60:16]
• Sandberg’s “Sweetener” Email & Federal Charges: [62:54–66:20]
• Kawhi’s Non-Performance in Endorsement Deal: [36:13, 41:05, 41:29]
• Planting the Apple Tree—Satirical Closure: [83:18–84:40]

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Conclusion

Pablo Torre Finds Out masterfully uncovers:

• An elaborate network where startup hype, greenwashing, sports ownership, and player power converge.
• The possibility that Ballmer funneled millions to Kawhi Leonard via Aspiration as an off-books sweetener—engineered meticulously within (or subverting) the letter of the law and NDA salary cap rules.
• Despite overwhelming paper trails, plausible deniability, missing deliverables, and zero direct promotional work by Kawhi, no formal regulatory action has been taken—yet.
• Pablo leaves listeners with big, unresolved questions for the NBA and broader sports world about the ability of mega-wealthy owners to game supposed egalitarian rules, and larger ones about performative corporate environmentalism.
• All of this, tied together by a “rotten apple tree”—an ironic coda for a tale where, ultimately, almost nothing was what it appeared.

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Essential for fans of sports, business, and investigative storytelling—equal parts hilarious, maddening, and thought-provoking.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

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

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

I mean, he's got the dream. Like it's within my beliefs to be paid $28 million and do absolutely f all as well.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad. Limu Emu and Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

[David Samson]

But now we want you to feel it. Cue the Emu music.

[Pablo Torre]

Limu Save yourself money.

[David Samson]

Increase your wealth.

[Pablo Torre]

Customize and save.

[David Samson]

We save. That may have been too much feeling.

[Pablo Torre]

Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.

[David Samson]

Excludes Massachusetts.

[Pablo Torre]

ACAST powers the World's Best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hey everyone, I'm Robert Mays, host of the Athletic Football show and I'm excited.

[David Samson]

To welcome you to the 2025 season.

[Pablo Torre]

And everything new we've got going at Tafs. First and foremost, get ready for a whole new look.

[David Samson]

We're coming to you from the Athletic.

[Pablo Torre]

Football show studio in Chicago. Get the full experience by checking us.

[David Samson]

Out on our YouTube channel.

[Pablo Torre]

Second, whether you watch on YouTube or listen to us on your podcast platform.

[David Samson]

Of choice, you'll hear a new voice.

[Pablo Torre]

Dave Hellman joins Derek Classen and myself as the third host on the show, bringing a different perspective to the conversation.

[David Samson]

Finally, Dane Brugler is back with year round NFL draft coverage with Building the Beast.

[Pablo Torre]

No matter what type of NFL fan.

[David Samson]

You are, there's something for you on.

[Pablo Torre]

The Athletic Football Show. Join us Monday Through Friday on YouTube.

[David Samson]

Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.

[Pablo Torre]

Acast.com.

[Amin Alhassan]

How many trees died for this episode to happen?

[Pablo Torre]

So this is an extremely relevant question that Amin has just raised. These are two stacks of paper sitting in front of us. The grand total is 3,487 pages.

[Amin Alhassan]

Oh, I thought you gonna say trees.

[Pablo Torre]

But with your help, David Sampson, former president of the Miami Marlins, and the help of Amin Alhassan, former basketball operations executive with the Phoenix Suns, we will both increase our collective expertise about the subject matter we're about to dive into as well as, yes, the carbon footprint of this episode. So you both feel nervous, you both have packets of paper in front of you as well. Do not turn those over yet. This is a very carefully orchestrated thing we're trying to do and it involves, by the way, one of the six richest people in the World. A cardinal sin of sports. An unsolved mystery as well that I've been investigating for seven months.

[David Samson]

Sixth highest in the US or in the world?

[Pablo Torre]

In the world. What this episode needs is to begin with a couple of libs. What neither of you is though, are the libs in question. Because these two libs I'm talking about are two actual very prominent members of the Democratic Party named Andre Czerny and Joe Sandberg. These are two Harvard graduates.

[David Samson]

Harvard crappy school.

[Pablo Torre]

Who successfully raised hundreds of millions of dollars with the help of some of the most famous people in the entire world. Because Andre and Joe co founded a company that they named Aspiration. What should we aspire to?

[Amin Alhassan]

What will happen to all we've built?

[Pablo Torre]

First things first, go see what you're fighting for.

[Amin Alhassan]

Make a commitment to do your part.

[David Samson]

Give business to companies that have a plan for the planet our children will inherit. And back to that original question.

[Pablo Torre]

What should we aspire to?

[David Samson]

Ultimately.

[Pablo Torre]

Zero. You familiar with that man's work?

[David Samson]

Now I am.

[Pablo Torre]

You recognize him? Yeah, it's.

[Amin Alhassan]

You know, that's Robert Downey Jr. Man.

[David Samson]

Was that the voice.

[Amin Alhassan]

The voice and the guy. And the guy.

[Pablo Torre]

So actual Robert Downey Jr.

[Amin Alhassan]

So what we've just established, five minutes of the episode is however much they spent on Getting Robert Downey Jr. To voice over and be in the commercial was a waste of money. Because David Samson's like, who's that?

[Pablo Torre]

David Sampson who watches movies every day.

[David Samson]

Every day.

[Amin Alhassan]

Every day.

[Pablo Torre]

Did not realize that yes, in 2021, Robert Downey Jr. Was urging everybody to aspire to a carbon footprint of zero. But it wasn't just Iron Man. David, Andre and Joe. Andre Charney and Joe Sandberg basically assembled the celebrity Avengers of climate change to endorse aspiration. Leonardo DiCaprio became an investor and advisory board member. May have heard of his work.

[David Samson]

I have.

[Pablo Torre]

Drake invested and gave a statement to the likes of Rolling Stone saying, quote, aspirations approach to climate change is really inspiring. Orlando Bloom. Cindy Crawford.

[David Samson]

It's a good one.

[Amin Alhassan]

They found her.

[Pablo Torre]

Cindy Crawford's even more famous daughter.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yeah, that's Wild Gerber.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, in there. I mean, even the former coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, Doc Rivers. Well, you know, invested.

[David Samson]

I feel like it's one of those episodes. Which of these don't belong? Like Sesame Street, Doc Rivers.

[Amin Alhassan]

Let me tell you something about Doc Rivers. That guy's a schmoozer. He knows how to schmooze with the best of them.

[Pablo Torre]

What would it sound like a mean. If Doc Rivers was doing an AD for aspiration.

[Amin Alhassan]

Hey, I mean, look, we, we all want like a zero carbon footprint. I tell all the guys all the time, we gotta reduce Blake. It's not Blake's fault. The carbon footprint is not Blake's fault. And scene.

[Pablo Torre]

Aspiration wound up raising a total of $865 million. No way. It was valuated as, quote, a Green bank at 2.3 billion in 2021 with the goal of going public.

[Amin Alhassan]

Okay, I'm going to raise my hand. I know you're building very meticulously, but I'm going to jump the line and ask the question, what the hell do they actually do? Like that's, that's cool. I want to save the world. What do they actually do? What are we, these people, investing in?

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, print stuff. It's such a good question. A question that they started to answer on various billboards America, because their slogan, if you ever saw one of these was this Clean rich is the new filthy rich.

[David Samson]

I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh at our environment, but this, I can't tell if this is a joke or not.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, the concept of investing with a conscience, David. This was super popular in 2020, 2021, as you may recall, the climate change movement, Donald Trump's first administration, it ending. These companies started embracing the environment and companies wanted to be known as the good guys. This is a company of good guys. And Amin asked the relevant question. So what do the good guys here purport to do? Well, their business was kind of simple. For example, let's say purely hypothetically that you had 3,487 pages of documents, give or take, and that added up to a single tree aspiration. What they did was offer to balance that out by arranging the planting of one tree in your name, replacing the tree that you killed. And here, I mean, so old. Here, I mean, is what aspirations. Co founders noted Harvard graduates Andre Charney and Joe Sandberg understood that trees, it turns out, are made of what element?

[Amin Alhassan]

Carbon.

[Pablo Torre]

Carbon. What that means that you could plant trees to zero out not just 3,487 pages of documents, but pretty much any kind of carbon emission you wanted to offset. And it turns out lots of emits carbon. Drake's private Jet Activity, Plant some trees. Major League Baseball stadium operations. Guess what? The Boston Red Sox and Fenway park have partnered with financial firm Aspiration to.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Become the first carbon neutral team in the mlb. A portion of every Red Sox ticket will be contributed to the Aspiration Planet Protection Fund, which will use carbon credits.

[Pablo Torre]

To offset Fenway emissions aspiration is really.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

In the business of helping both people.

[Pablo Torre]

And businesses fight the climate crisis. And it's Andre himself on Bloomberg TV in 2022. David and I want to give a quote to you specifically from MLB.com which you'll appreciate since you're literally the guy who built Marlins park and sold the sponsorships for the team. Quote. For the first time in its history, the Red Sox have affixed a sponsor name on the grass at Fenway Park. Through a partnership with Aspiration, their name will now be featured near the fungo circles on the grass between the warning track and the infield. And end quote.

[David Samson]

I have a tear in my eye because it's such horse hockey. We were a LEED certified ballpark and all it means is you have to do things way more expensively.

[Amin Alhassan]

Gold Silver.

[David Samson]

We were the first ever retractable roof gold facility.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Wow.

[David Samson]

It was really impressive. We got to do a press conference.

[Amin Alhassan]

That's pretty good.

[David Samson]

We got to do everything for a.

[Amin Alhassan]

Stadium to be lead Gold is. Is that's.

[David Samson]

It was just a budget item. We just had to pay instruction. Basically you have to do it in a way that gets you the certification or with them at all times while you're killing trees and while you're emitt just paying.

[Amin Alhassan]

That's all it takes.

[David Samson]

That's all it is.

[Amin Alhassan]

I thought it was you going to tell me? Oh yeah. Like the. The. The roof is made out of a special material that actually ridiculous.

[Pablo Torre]

I should clarify that things have gotten a lot more elaborate since then because what aspiration kind of figured out was they don't even need to do the planting of the trees themselves.

[Amin Alhassan]

They outsource it.

[Pablo Torre]

What they did amin to use a proper term, they brokered these sales of carbon credits. They were a brokerage for trees which they also did by the way for Mark Zuckerberg and Meta which also bought millions of carbon credits meaning paid for the brokering of the planting of all of these trees. And brokering. You may ask yourself what kind of a margin is this?

[Amin Alhassan]

Yeah, that's what was headed with this.

[Pablo Torre]

On the brokering business. Typically it costs about 10 to 20 cents to plant a tree. Aspiration was charging the Red Sox and Meta and Drake a dollar.

[Amin Alhassan]

That's nice. That's nice work of you little 5x5.

[Pablo Torre]

To 10x depending you had made.

[David Samson]

Hello.

[Pablo Torre]

But as for how Andre and Joe got the Red Sox and Meta and Iron man and Drake and Leonardo DiCaprio and also this is not a joke. Bill and Hillary and the Clinton foundation to care about meeting not some gold lead certified, blah blah blah, but what they trademarked as the aspiration standard. Tm. This is where I should note that Andre Czerny and Joe Sandberg were more than just members of the Democratic Party. Andre and Joe aspired to be major leaders of the Democratic Party. Amin you live in Phoenix.

[Amin Alhassan]

I do.

[Pablo Torre]

You may vaguely recall Andre Cherny as the former chair of the Arizona Democratic Party. Also, what a time. The youngest White House speechwriter in United States history whose former boss personally endorsed him in a run for United States Congress.

[Amin Alhassan]

Hello, this is President Bill Clinton.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm calling to ask you to join.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Me in supporting Andre, attorney for Congress.

[Amin Alhassan]

I've known Andre since he worked for.

[Pablo Torre]

Me in the White House to improve education and create new jobs.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

He's innovative, he's creative.

[Pablo Torre]

So I trust him to get our economy going. And you should too. I should note that Andre lost that congressional race in 2012. He then co founded Aspiration the year after in 2013 with his friend Joe Sandberg. The two of them had met at a Harvard networking event in D.C. of course, way back in 97. And I know this unfortunately because I read a whole story about this on the Harvard alumni website. But as of 2019, Joe Sandberg had gotten rich. He'd done private equity at Blackstone, was a founding investor in Blue Apron, the meal delivery company. He was even the subject of a splashy headline in the LA Times. Quote, he made millions as an LA investor. Now he may run for president to fight poverty. Please welcome the co founder of Aspiration.com and one of the nation's most effective champions of low income families multiplying good board member Joseph Sandberg.

[David Samson]

Good evening.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

51 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

[Pablo Torre]

Gave a speech of his. That's my personal favorite.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

It's a less well heralded speech, but.

[David Samson]

I think it's arguably one of the most incisive.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

It's called the unfulfilled dream speech.

[Amin Alhassan]

It's not that one that you guys are thinking. It was another one.

[Pablo Torre]

It was a different dream.

[Amin Alhassan]

I find myself to be like listening to the B side of most of the Martin Luther King albums that I have. That's where the real stuff was, you know, if you're a casual.

[Pablo Torre]

But as of March 2025, okay, now at this year to six months ago, there was another headline. This one happened to be from the Department of Justice and it was written by the U.S. attorney's Office for the Central District of California, quote, joseph Sandberg, co founder of Aspiration Partners, arrested for conspiring to defraud an investment fund of at least 145 million.

[David Samson]

Oh God.

[Pablo Torre]

That isn't even what Pablo Torre finds out. Is here to investigate. Because what really happened that brought us to this table is that weeks after Joe Sandberg got arrested, Aspiration filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy stalker. What I wanted to do was find aspirations bankruptcy filing. And I gotta now reach over to this file over here to get this. Is this it? Yes, this is it. In this packet there is a clue. And this clue was initially quite strange to me as just a sports journalist. But I believe that this clue may be of new interest to the DOJ and the FBI as well, by the way, as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the securities and Exchange Commission, all of whom have been investigating Aspiration in parallel to to me. Because for all of the very famous celebrity avengers who got paid by these politically ambitious bros to sell their genius billion dollar company to the world, the guy who got aspirations, most important and most revealing endorsement deal by far has never been identified by anyone in public until now.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

And what would you like people to know about you? I'm a fun guy, obviously. I love the game of basketball. I mean, it's just more questions you have to ask me in order for me to tell you about myself. I just can't give you a whole spiel. I don't even know where you sitting at.

[Amin Alhassan]

Wait, you're telling me of all the rich and famous people, they paid to be part of this, to legitimize this, Right? Iron man, the guy from the Revenant, Right? All these people. The guy from Degrassi High. Kwai is the. That's the apex. That is the highest paid celebrity endorser of this.

[David Samson]

He was an investor or he was actually a receiver of money.

[Pablo Torre]

Kawhi Leonard received money. And in these piles of documents right on this table are the receipts foreign. So I need your help here, guys, because for anybody who is somehow not familiar with the unique laughter of Kawhi Leonard, the NBA superstar and franchise player for the Los Angeles Clippers, it does feel important to establish what makes him him. Right? Like what distinguishes him, I mean, from Drake and Iron man and all of those celebrity Avengers that you referenced.

[Amin Alhassan]

Oh, he's the worst personality ever. Like it's in terms of you want someone outgoing and can something and be very vivacious and inspire a good positive energy. That's not who he is. He's a very quiet, reserved guy. He doesn't really tend to go to the spotlight. Most of his commercials, he doesn't Have a speaking role in.

[Pablo Torre]

The more that I hear Amin say the word quiet and talking about Kawhi, I'm like, he's. His name is basically the adjective. Yeah, he's super private. He is not an in demand pitch man for the reasons Amin said. But he is also, in fairness, like maybe the best player in the league if he's healthy. He's a two time champion, two time finals MVP with the spurs and the Raptors. All that is true, but his privacy. I just want to drive this point home because he is so intensely reclusive that it was kind of a big deal when Kawhi agreed to be a guest on Jimmy Kimmel's show. This was a couple years back. I'm so glad to get a chance to talk to you because you are a mysterious man. Do you feel like you are a mysterious man?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

No, not at all.

[Pablo Torre]

I don't.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

You know, the people around me know who I am.

[David Samson]

You don't look at yourself in the mirror and go, who is this person whose teeth I am brushing right now?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Not at all.

[Pablo Torre]

Not at all.

[David Samson]

I know who I am.

[Pablo Torre]

We get so little access to him that one of the most famous stories about Kawhi Leonard, this is a story about one of his catchphrases, went very viral, even though it was completely fake.

[Amin Alhassan]

It's one of my favorite stories of all time. Apple time. Apple time.

[Pablo Torre]

Apple time. Apple time. You were at a team dinner with the Spurs.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

When you played for the spurs, everyone was eating.

[David Samson]

You didn't order anything. Instead, you brought 12 apples to the table. Red apples. You sat there with a knife and fork and ate each apple and said, it's apple time.

[Pablo Torre]

Apple time.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Who came up with that story right now?

[David Samson]

That is not true.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

It must have seen. No, okay. No, not at all. I do have an apple tree, but I didn't pick my apples and bring them to dinner.

[Amin Alhassan]

All right, all right. You know what was great about that fake story?

[David Samson]

Yes.

[Amin Alhassan]

Is that I love it. It wasn't like Kawhi Leonard went out on a bender. Like, no. That no one would believe that. But the fact that the story's so ridiculous and yet everyone was like, yeah, I could actually see Kawhi Leonard being the type of guy who. Who brings 12 apples to dinner, carves them up and eats them, and just mumbles to himself. Apple time. Apple time.

[Pablo Torre]

Apple time. Apple time. Was also plausible in this way because I. I think for people around the league, there was just another thing. David, stop turning over those papers.

[David Samson]

It's the longest I've Gone with self control. Like, let's go.

[Amin Alhassan]

I've been trying to read backwards.

[Pablo Torre]

We're. We're walking you up to it. Because the other thing about Kawhi Leonard is not merely his privacy, which I demand on behalf of those papers, but also that ever since he was a kid in Moreno Valley, California, I mean, he's been famously frugal.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

So Sports Illustrated once reported this story about how Wingstop, as part of an endorsement deal, had given Kawhi these coupons for free wings. But one day in 2015, Kawhi, quote, panicked when he lost his coupons, and his camp informed Wingstop, which, quote, generously replenished his supply. This dude was making what, 90 million plus.

[Amin Alhassan]

He was driving the same car, I think, from college for quite a while. I'm sure it's changed now, but there was.

[Pablo Torre]

It was called Gas Guzzler. He nicknamed.

[David Samson]

Is this a Warren Buffett situation? Because I. Maybe I like when players are. Because I've seen so many bankrupt players in my time. So I view this as a positive for Kawhi.

[Pablo Torre]

Sure.

[David Samson]

So that's that. I'm not going to criticize reality.

[Amin Alhassan]

It's not. It's not to be critical, but this is just to illustrate this is the kind of guy we're dealing with.

[Pablo Torre]

So we're not here to critique the 1997 Chevy Tahoe mean was alluding to or the Wingstop coupons that he demands. Because on the Wingstop thing, this is what he told Serge Ibaka, who was his teammate at the time with the raptors back in 2019.

[Amin Alhassan]

You like Wingstop?

[Pablo Torre]

I heard that. What kind of Wingstop you like?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

I used to. I don't like Wingstop no more. You used to.

[Pablo Torre]

Since when?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

About two years ago. Why not endorse no more?

[Amin Alhassan]

So you're a businessman, huh?

[David Samson]

Yeah. Business again. So far, very positive.

[Pablo Torre]

So the biggest power move, of course, that Kawhi Leonard pulled was later that summer. That was the summer of 2019. He and Serge Ibaka, they win the NBA title with the Raptors. And the courtship of prime Kawhi Leonard, the most sought after free agent in professional basketball, begins. Literally, the entire NBA is watching and waiting, trying to figure out what Kawhi is going to do next. Kawhi Leonard has made his decision, and it is the LA Clippers. A big reason why this happened was when Leonard pushed Paul George to find a way to get to the Clippers. They go out and get Paul George, and now you have these two elite bookend forwards to play together. But they paid A steep price. The Thunder we'll get Shai Gilgias Alexander and Danilo Gallinari. OKC also gets four unprotected first round picks, a protected first rounder and two pick swaps.

[Amin Alhassan]

Whatever happened to shy Gilgias Alexander?

[David Samson]

I think he became an MVP and changed his name.

[Pablo Torre]

So it is the first thing we should acknowledge which is that back in 2019, nobody predicted that Shy Gilgius Alexander would win MVP and Finals MVP and a title for the Thunder this year in 2025. And also by the way, the Clippers losing SGA, all those picks, getting Kawhi and Paul George, that basically reshaped the modern NBA. But the second thing which is related to that is that according to multiple NBA executives that I interviewed, lots of not just fans but executives were shocked, even suspicious, eyebrows fully raised at how the once lowly Clippers had convinced Kawhi to choose them, especially over the Lakers. Right? They were the most furious about all of this, all of the rumors, the conspiracies. I mean you may recall that they centered around a mysterious relative who served as Kawhi Leonard's power broker.

[Amin Alhassan]

Uncle Dennis.

[Pablo Torre]

Uncle Dennis Rento Brown, the G League MVP last season averaging 19. He was so important that spurs fans, bitter spurs fans, had been chanting his name at Kawhi Leonard in this league. And so in comes Uncle Dennis Robertson, who, and this is now 2019 according to the Athletic, was the center of these complaints by NBA teams about how the Clippers landed Kawhi Leonard. And they were so numerous, let's recall, that Adam Silver, the commissioner of the league, finally agreed to investigate them. And the main focus was in fact whether Uncle Dennis had requested improper benefits from NBA teams in exchange for Kawhi Leonard. These secret Swedeners and the most notable sweetener, as sources told Sam Amick of the Athletic, it was quote, a guaranteed amount of off court endorsement money that they could expect if Kawhi Leonard played for their team. End quote. And this, David, is a serious violation of NBA rules.

[David Samson]

Why? Because there's a salary cap for a reason that's been collectively bargained. And what you have to do for level playing field is you cannot have any circumvention of that cap. So you're not allowed to give players anything. It all counts. So you can't give them plane tickets, you can't pay the college education of their brothers, sisters, friends, you can't give them cars you, you can offer in the contract that's available for public use like a suite on the road, but they have to Pay or you can.

[Amin Alhassan]

That's what I was going to say. Tickets. The tickets is probably the easiest example for people to understand. If you've seen NBA players with family members who sit courtside, for instance, let's say John Morant and his and his father, the team is not offering that for free to John Morant. He is paying face value on those tickets for his father every game.

[Pablo Torre]

And just sort of like the philosophy behind the salary cap, for people who just aren't familiar with it, this is important because it does what?

[David Samson]

It stops the richest owner in the world from being able to do things that the poorest of the rich owners can't do. So there are certain owners if. Think about this. If you're an owner who makes private planes for a living and you just give a private plane to your player just for S's and G's, that's something that a guy who buys a team, who runs a corner, you know, family drugstore wouldn't be able to do.

[Pablo Torre]

This is now where we can connect some of the dots officially. So Kawhi was only allowed to sign a three year, $103 million max contract, which he did, of course. But the big alleged conspiracy, the one that got everybody's eyebrows raised if you're an executive across the NBA, was that cost conscious, frugal Kawhi Leonard and his uncle Dennis had apparently found the perf franchise with an ideal owner who would be happy to give them the illicit sweeteners they demanded, and an owner who, as Amin described, just happened to be the richest sports owner in the world with a current net worth of $175 billion, making him, yes, the sixth richest person in the world who also happened to be the hyper competitive former CEO of Microsoft. Which also meant that he was still kind of just getting used to the socialist cap that David described that limited his NBA spending power. And Steve Ballmer himself happened to explain all of this to the acquired podcast in June of this year. We do have a union that's very different. What that means in terms of the complexity through the collective bargaining agreement. It also covers things like what's max salary, what trades can you make all that very different. You really are business partners with your. With your competitors. That's different. I mean, you actually get together and talk to him. I never did that when I was at Microsoft. And I want to clarify in fairness to Steve Ballmer, that no evidence of illicit payment to Kawhi Leonard was ever found, apparently. Right. Kawhi re upped with the Clippers In August of 2021 before the season, then again last year, another extension and the Athletic ultimately reported about the NBA's investigation. Quote. While sources with knowledge of the investigation said no evidence was found indicating that the Clippers had granted any of the lavish requests, the underlying message coming from Commissioner Adam Silver remains He sees salary cap circumvention as a cardinal sin in the NBA and will always keep a watchful eye on that front. If any relevant evidence of improper benefits surfaces in the future, the league will reopen the investigation and pursue the charges yet again. The threat of suspension for executives was openly discussed, as was the potential for a loss of draft picks or even the voiding of player contracts as the most extreme of measures. End quote. This is where I should also say that Pablo Torre Finds out is independently produced by Metalark Media and distributed by the Athletic. Which means that the views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those a Pablo Torre finds out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of the Athletic or its journalists. So this is where I just got to set the stage here, because so far we've been telling two parallel stories, much like two parallel towers of of papers. And what we know is that NBA executives were suspicious of how Steve Ballmer's Clippers landed the most valuable free agent on the market. Kawhi Leonard at the NBA did not find that Bomber got Kawhi by sweetening their offer, but also that in March 2025, this celebrity endorsed, multi billion dollar, allegedly fraudulent tree brokerage named Aspiration, which promises to clear your conscience and your emissions. They file for bankruptcy. And this is where the clue is. So David, if you will now finally flip over he was groping it.

[Amin Alhassan]

He was groping that paper.

[Pablo Torre]

As you're talking, what David's looking at with his glasses on is a bankruptcy filing and there's a list of creditors, the entities to which Aspiration in all of their alleged fraudulence still owes the most money. And what I noticed is what David is noticing right now, which is that on that list of creditors up near the top above the Boston Red Sox is an LLC, a tiny little company that aspiration owes $7 million. And that LLC's name, David, is what KL2Aspire LLC. What I did next was pull the publicly accessible paperwork that KL2 Aspire LLC filed with California's Secretary of State, which happens to be the first document in front of you. Amin okay, and what does it list there under manager or member name Kwai Leonard, whose NBA jersey number, just to connect all of the Dots here happens to be what number two. So then the question is the Aspire part of KL2 Aspire, LLC, right? Because, okay, he's getting all this money, millions of dollars. What I started doing was scour the Internet for any mentions of Aspiration, any appearances, tweets, quotes, Instagram posts, anything by Kawhi Leonard endorsing Aspiration. And this was hard to find, which also might seem weird, right? Because every other celebrity Aspiration gave money to was well known. There was Drake offering a statement to Rolling Stone. There was Doc Rivers. Kawhi's own head coach Robert Downey Jr. Was cutting his commercial. That was the whole point of paying the A list Avengers. But the grand total number of times that I found Kawhi Leonard ever publicly referencing aspiration was this ultimately 000 times, right? Kawhi Leonard mentioned aspiration. And so what I started doing was reaching out to dozens of former Aspiration employees. And I was looking for any information about KL2 Aspire LLC. And what happened was a grand total of seven of them ultimately agreed to interviews, which is also how I have exclusively obtained the next sheaf of papers in front of you both to turn over. David, please go first. Can you please read what this signed and executed document says?

[David Samson]

This endorsement agreement is effective as of April 1, 2022, the effective date between KL2 Aspire, LLC and Aspiration Partners with a principal place of business in Marina Del Rey, California.

[Amin Alhassan]

Whereas Kawhi Leonard. Leonard is a professional basketball player in the National Basketball association NBA currently on the roster of the Los Angeles Clippers team. Whereas company desires that KL2 cause Leonard to provide the services of to promote and market Company as more particularly set.

[David Samson]

Forth herein in consideration of the rights and benefits granted to company hereunder, the Company will pay KL2, which is Kawhi, $28 million in cash during the term of this agreement. Company will pay KL2 $7 million each year of the term.

[Pablo Torre]

That is Kawhi Leonard's autograph right next to Andre Charney, the CEO's autograph. Youngest speechwriter in White House history next to the Clippers franchise player. But as for the listed address, Amin for where any and all legal notices for Kawhi Leonard will be sent. What does that say there?

[Amin Alhassan]

KL2 Aspire LLC, care of Dennis Robertson.

[Pablo Torre]

And Uncle Dennis, is also listed elsewhere in this contract, by the way, as his nephew's designated representative. And so this is where I just need to mention that on account of the multiple ongoing federal investigations into Aspiration, all the Former employees I talked to were very afraid, understandably, to go on tape. But eventually, toward the end of my investigation, I convinced one very important person who worked in the finance department of Aspiration to go on tape, provided we could modulate their voice, which. Which felt fair.

[Amin Alhassan]

I love that. I've always wanted to do that.

[Pablo Torre]

Do you remember the first time that you discovered Kawhi Leonard's endorsement agreement with Aspiration?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Oh, it was within the first 30 days of my employment with the company. And I didn't so much as discover it as I was told about it.

[Pablo Torre]

What was your reaction? What were you told?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

My reaction was what the f. And I was told like, oh, these are the major contracts and the major players you really need to be aware of. And we went through a litany of, you know, really, really top tier name contracts. And then, oh, by the way, we also have a marketing deal with Kawhi Leonard, a $28 million organic marketing sponsorship deal with Kawhi. And that if I had any questions about it, essentially don't. Because it was to circumvent the salary cap. Lol. There was lots of lol when things.

[Pablo Torre]

Were shared among the endorsement agreements that these famous people, these celebrities were signing with Aspiration. Where did the the size of Kawhi Leonard's agreement, the $28 million over four years, where did that rank?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

The single largest sponsorship deal that Aspiration ever made. It completely eclipsed every other agreement. Completely eclipsed it. So every other celebrity endorsement combined would not have met even a quarter of Kawhi Leonard's endorsement.

[Pablo Torre]

So that's including Leonard DiCaprio and Drake and Robert Downey Jr. And Cindy Crawford.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

And everybody else, Kaia Gerber, Patty Gonia, who's a famous environmentally friendly drag queen, God bless her.

[Pablo Torre]

Did you ever see proof of Kawhi Leonard marketing or endorsing Aspiration in any way?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Never. Not once. The single largest payment to an individual for marketing that Aspiration ever made has completely evaded all press. It's honestly incredible and it was a very strong pain point for our marketing team. And honestly, like altruistically like, their job is to get aspirations name out there. They don't understand why the largest part of their budget that they've actually blown is not delivering.

[Pablo Torre]

I should say that we here at Pablo Torre finds out, attempted to reach out to Kawhi Leonard through the Clippers, through his agent, and through his Uncle Dennis, of course, with interview requests followed by detailed questions. But Kawhi's personal team did not respond before our deadline. The Clippers however, provided a statement on behalf of the organization and owner Steve Ballmer, which reads in part, quote, neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false. End quote. What's even crazier is that as you comb through it, as you were just attempting to do, what becomes clear is that this is how this $28 million deal, this thing that he never did anything for was designed. I'm no expert, but the language seems to indicate that he actually contractually didn't have to do anything.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Nothing. He didn't have to do anything. There was a clause for an out in every single KPI. So they weren't actually key performance indicators KPIs. They were. If you feel as though this is something you that doesn't align with you or it's too big of an ask, or maybe you don't want to post on social media, maybe you don't want to wear gear, just let us know. Or you don't have to let us know. You just don't have to do it.

[Pablo Torre]

There is section 3.2, obligations of KL2, that is the heading, section 3.2, part 4. KL2 may decline to proceed with any action desired by the company under section 3.2, which is the whole section where everything is all the stuff that he would have to do if Leonard believes that such proposed actions are not consistent with his beliefs.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Yeah.

[Pablo Torre]

And then part five, right after that, KL2 shall have the exclusive right to control and approve all content and distribution for commercial, non commercial or lawful purpose bearing the athlete endorsements or approved Leonard ip.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

And no one in aspiration had this veto power outside of Kawhi Leonard.

[Pablo Torre]

Which is to say that when you look at this, your examination of this indicates that the power dynamic is actually reversed here. That's the client. Kawhi Leonard seems to be dictating the terms to the company aspiration.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Correct.

[Pablo Torre]

In other words, Kawhi Leonard got from aspiration a $28 million no show job.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Yeah. It's amazing. I'm honestly so jealous. So jealous. I mean, he's got the dream like it's within my beliefs to be paid $28 million and do absolutely all as well.

[Amin Alhassan]

It's incredible. It's literally written so he can never.

[Pablo Torre]

Be in breach if it's not consistent with his beliefs. David, he doesn't have to do it.

[David Samson]

I'm sweating a little bit because I want to understand exactly what the deliverables were and to see whether or not there's opportunity for him to actually get the 28 million without ever, ever allowing them to do anything with his name associated.

[Pablo Torre]

Allow me to hand you some paper.

[David Samson]

It's so many trees.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yeah, well, one tree.

[David Samson]

He said it was one tree.

[Amin Alhassan]

I don't believe it.

[Pablo Torre]

There. There's the full endorsement agreement. You may look. You're right there.

[David Samson]

Thank you.

[Pablo Torre]

So I've page 13.

[David Samson]

I've done a lot of these.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, that's why you're here.

[David Samson]

Oh.

[Pablo Torre]

David Samson, architect of many sponsorship endorsement agreements, is now looking through with his little glasses.

[David Samson]

So here's something he has to do. If requested by the company, KL2 shall cause Leonard to be available to sign 50 items.

[Amin Alhassan]

Jesus Christ.

[David Samson]

The signing deals we do, it's like 1500 items and it's not 7 million 50. If requested, it shall cause KL2, meaning Kawhi, shall cause Kawhi to be available and to work with team or lenders, content creators to provide a minimum of one photo per month to aspiration for their usage during the NBA season.

[Amin Alhassan]

What's one photo per month?

[Pablo Torre]

Well, the point is, he did zero photos.

[David Samson]

Wait, there's more.

[Amin Alhassan]

If requested.

[David Samson]

Okay, this is better. He has to be available, Kawhi does, for $28 million to participate in five organic comments, which could be a like or a retweet.

[Pablo Torre]

You may wonder how many likes and retweets did he give?

[David Samson]

Is it zero?

[Pablo Torre]

Of course it's zero.

[David Samson]

Oh my God.

[Pablo Torre]

You didn't. Nothing. He literally did nothing, as far as we could tell. And my source has confirmed, as well as the other six sources I spoke to have confirmed, did nothing.

[Amin Alhassan]

And yet not in breach of contract. That's. That's the amazing part, right? That's like that did nothing wrong. Basically, according to this contract, he does.

[David Samson]

Have to do something that's major here.

[Amin Alhassan]

What is that?

[David Samson]

That Leonard has to be available and participate with company to create an annual program in support of the company's reforestation program O1 with a tie to calculating Leonard's carbon footprint, given his annual schedule, events and travel. Boy, I'd love to see that.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, it's hard because it didn't happen.

[Amin Alhassan]

Oh, I thought you were going to say that was the one thing he.

[Pablo Torre]

Did do, as David continues to.

[David Samson]

Well, I'm also looking at the definitions because I want to make sure here.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, I. I knew that he would. He's like a big. And I mean like you give me a contract that I can pick apart.

[David Samson]

What we heard just before about that. Any. Any deliverable. It's that such proposed actions are not consistent with his beliefs. He doesn't have to do it. And I'm looking in the defined terms. Assuming these are belief terms. I'm looking for beliefs.

[Pablo Torre]

It is not defined.

[David Samson]

So therefore there is no actual anything in this contract. Now, I've been reading it only for a couple of minutes. This is in real time. But if you've got a qualifier there which allows you to get out of any of your obligations with something as ephemeral is not consistent with his beliefs without a definition, because beliefs is a small B. I was looking for beliefs with a big B, which would make it a defined term where you have to say, hey, I don't believe in working on Saturdays. Right. I don't believe in supporting pig meat because I'm a vegan.

[Amin Alhassan]

Right.

[David Samson]

So you can have that in contracts that you will not endorse something that goes against your beliefs. But it's a small balance and there's no defined term.

[Pablo Torre]

He might small b believe in not doing anything.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yeah. It's against my beliefs to do. To do this.

[Pablo Torre]

David.

[David Samson]

I'm just. I'm trying to come to grips with 2.10 B here. And I'm sorry, but this is. Explain a major provision in the contract that I'm not used to seeing. It's called termination. It's when would an agreement be terminated? So when can the company. When can they say, you know what, we're not paying you? And normally there would be provisions for termination if you're a felon, if you're convicted of a felony, sometimes if you're just arrested for a felony, if you do anything for disparagement, if you bring bad juju upon the company, it can trigger a termination, this termination. And it's a termination for cause, which.

[Pablo Torre]

Is in the aspiration endorsement deal.

[David Samson]

This is in his $28 million endorsement deal. Termination for cause. If Leonard is no longer an employee of the team for any reason, and the team, capital T is defined as the Clippers.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yes.

[David Samson]

So an endorsement deal that a company does with a player.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yeah.

[David Samson]

Is usually. You don't always get the rights to their marks.

[Amin Alhassan]

Right.

[David Samson]

So it's like blank uniforms. And so it doesn't matter.

[Amin Alhassan]

No.

[David Samson]

Whether the player is playing for the Clippers or not. But in this agreement, it's a termination for cause if he's not an employee of the team. For avoidance of doubt, which is what you say in a contract, we want to make sure nobody screws it up. If Leonard is still being paid by the Capital T team but is a member of another NBA organization or has retired. Either of those instances are a triggering event for termination by the company.

[Amin Alhassan]

So an example of that is if Kwai Leonard got bought out by the Clippers and then ends up signing with the Knicks. Technically, the Clippers are still paying him the remaining amount, but he is an employee of the New York Knicks now. And what that contract is saying very clearly, very bluntly, we're. We're just going to tackle this right now in writing. If that happens, it triggers a termination clause.

[Pablo Torre]

I love that David just found that.

[David Samson]

I can't believe that Kawhi Leonard, that anyone would ask for that or agree to it if it were not.

[Pablo Torre]

It seems to be perhaps one of the things in this otherwise very laissez faire approach to what you gotta do that the Clippers found you might presume quite important.

[David Samson]

Just be on the Clippers.

[Amin Alhassan]

Let's put this as bluntly as possible. So to be clear, Kawhi can not post anything, can never like or retweet anything, can not sign the balls. Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Cannot do the photo op, the reforestation.

[Amin Alhassan]

Program, not show up for any events.

[David Samson]

But.

[Amin Alhassan]

But his ass better be a clipper throughout all of that. That's the thing that would jeopardize the 28 million.

[David Samson]

I had to reread it before bringing it up to you too, because it can't be, but it is 2.10 B.

[Pablo Torre]

And executed under those terms. And so what all this led me to do it mean is get back to sports. Right? Because what I was curious about was, okay, so we have all these documents about the $28 million for the no show job. I want to put that against the timeline of his contract extensions with the Clippers. Because Kawhi Leonard signed his first extension in August 2021. Before that season, the month after that, it turns out Steve Ballmer, this is September, broke ground on the Intuit Dome. Now this is David, the most expensive NBA arena ever constructed. His grand creation. And though Kawhi was still out recovering, you might remember the right knee injury. Yes, he did show up for that.

[Amin Alhassan]

Four, three, two. That was an actual digging for the stadium.

[Pablo Torre]

It's totally ridiculous.

[David Samson]

You bring in a bunch of dirt and you just get shot.

[Amin Alhassan]

It's not the actual ground.

[David Samson]

No, it's not even on the ground. Kawhi looks like he's coming back from the gym.

[Amin Alhassan]

It's the combination that always.

[Pablo Torre]

Everyone else is wearing like slacks and suits and all that stuff in Kawaii, just like Popped in hoodie and shorts. But speaking of digging, I want to go back to the coverage of the extension that Kawhi signed just weeks before that scene. Right? Because before those shovels went into the ground, you may recall that he signs this four year, $1,76.3 million extension. And you may recall also that something didn't quite add up at the time, according to the ringer. I mean, you may turn over the next page and read the highlighted passage.

[Amin Alhassan]

That Kawhi Leonard officially returned to the Clippers on Thursday came as no surprise. What has provoked some head scratching though, is the structure of the contract he decided to ink how perfectly Kawhi. Even when there's no mystery, there's a little bit of mystery.

[Pablo Torre]

And this was because Kawhi Leonard, as you continue to read through this, essentially did the Clippers what appears to be a favor. So here we have this notably frugal superstar who is complain about the wingstop coupons level frugal. And he did not do what everyone expected him to do, given that, which was sign the shortest or the longest possible deal in order to maximize his earnings. Instead, to the surprise of many NBA insiders, Kawhi Leonard very helpfully opted for a middle ground. And I just want to acknowledge here that the timing of Kawhi's extension from 2021 does not align super neatly with the paperwork on his $28 million aspiration endorsement deal. David, because that took effect when? Again, when did it say that on that?

[David Samson]

Right in the start, April 1st of 2022.

[Pablo Torre]

But now, Amin, what I would like you to do is turn over the page after that. So that's the first type of document you may recall that you ever looked at. Huh? This is the original registration for KL2 Aspire LLC that got filed with the state of California establishing an LLC whose name indicates that it was entirely created to take money from aspiration. It says Aspire in the title. Look at the top of that piece.

[Amin Alhassan]

Of paper under file date November 22, 2021.

[Pablo Torre]

We're now right there at the end of the summer, beginning of the fall, the beginning of that season when he signs the extension, when the ground is broken. And this LLC, KL2 Aspire LLC, gets registered with the state of California. And now we're getting. Guys, now we're getting to the thing we have not yet established about the fall of 2021 when it comes to the once unsolvable question of salary cap circumvention in the NBA, which is the direct financial relationship between aspiration on the one hand and Steve Ballmer and his Clippers on the other. And that is after the break.

[David Samson]

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[Pablo Torre]

Host of the Athletic Football show and I'm excited to welcome you to the 2025 season and everything new we've got going at Tafs. First and foremost, get ready for a whole new look. We're coming to you from the Athletic Football show studio in Chicago. Get the full experience by checking us.

[David Samson]

Out on our YouTube channel.

[Pablo Torre]

Second, whether you watch on YouTube or listen to us on your podcast platform.

[David Samson]

Of choice, you'll hear a new voice.

[Pablo Torre]

Dave Hellman joins Derek Kwassen and myself as the 3 3rd host on the.

[David Samson]

Show, bringing a different perspective to the conversation. Finally, Dane Brugler is back with year round NFL draft coverage with Building the Beast.

[Pablo Torre]

No matter what type of NFL fan.

[David Samson]

You are, there's something for you on.

[Pablo Torre]

The Athletic Football Show. Join us Monday Through Friday on YouTube.

[David Samson]

Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Pablo Torre]

So I need to start this section by acknowledging that I have interviewed Steve Ballmer before. So Steve Ballmer, like Andre Czerny, like Joe Sandberg, and like me, went to Harvard. Harvard at Sports Illustrated. This was in 2010. I wrote a magazine feature about then Harvard senior Jeremy Lin and our alma mater's revitalized basketball program. And I called Microsoft then CEO Steve Ballmer up and he was happy to talk. He was very generous with his time. He talked about how he loved basketball and he loved it so much that he kept stats for the team when it was horrible and he was an undergrad back in the 70s, he was like charting rebounds and assists. And since then, as you may know, Steve Ballmer has Been hailed as arguably, quote, the very best investor of the last 20 years, end quote. But the people who know Steve Ballmer, what they say is that there is no product Steve Ballmer cares about more down to the tiniest little detail than the NBA team he purchased from noted racist Donald sterling back in 2014. This is evidenced, I mean, by the arena that Ballmer admirably spent billions of his own money designing in his own image. I love Intuit, Dom. Since we talked a lot about products and I've been involved in, you know.

[Amin Alhassan]

I'll say the visioning and I call.

[Pablo Torre]

Myself a visionary, but what should this product look like? And particularly those, you know, a number of them, both windows, but also certainly on the back end products, back end meaning they're not customer visible.

[Amin Alhassan]

But I would say Intuit Dome's probably.

[Pablo Torre]

The product for which I had the clearest vision I've ever had.

[Amin Alhassan]

I knew what I wanted.

[Pablo Torre]

It evolved some because we went and looked at, you know, a bunch of other arenas. But I, I, I had a point of view. I know what user I wanted to make, make happy.

[Amin Alhassan]

I wanted to make Intuit Dome the.

[Pablo Torre]

Best place for the hardcore basketball fan. And David, as a guy who designed a, building an arena before, you know what that means. Toilets. 1160 toilets. Urinals. 3 times the NDA average number of toilets in Urals. We do not want people waiting in line. We want them to get back to their damn seats.

[Amin Alhassan]

They have sensors in the seats that measure how loud each section is. And so routinely they'll come up and say this was the loudest section in that last segment of play. Everyone gets free T shirts or free stuff.

[Pablo Torre]

The level of microscopic detail that Steve Ballmer cared about, the sensors, the toilets, everything. It all is to say that when it came to picking the company whose patch would get stitched onto every Clipper's jersey and whose signage would adorn the back of every courtside seat, Steve Ballmer hand picked aspiration to become the first founding partner of the intuit dome. The first arena to become 100% carbon neutral from day one, the, quote, most sustainable arena in the world, end quote. And the Clippers announced this at media Day in September 2021, with Steve Ballmer sitting right next to noted Clippers and Martin Luther King fan Joe Sandberg.

[David Samson]

There are few people in the business.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

World and in the sports world that.

[Pablo Torre]

I admire as much as Steve Ballmer. This is a true visionary and an.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Original thinker and those are rare and.

[David Samson]

Few and far between in this day and age.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

But it's visionaries and original thinkers who change the course of history. And we're partnered with Steve and the.

[David Samson]

Clippers to change the course of Los.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Angeles sports history and all global sports history, which is turning sports into a tool to fight the climate crisis. So Aspiration, in partnership with the Clippers.

[David Samson]

Will be delivering tools to all Clippers.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Fans to make their experience watching the Clippers carbon neutral and even carbon negative.

[David Samson]

So that your choice of being a.

[Pablo Torre]

Clippers fan isn't just a choice of.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Who you root for, but it's an expression of what you believe.

[Pablo Torre]

Once again, beliefs are quite instrumental here. As proclaimed in a headline on NBA.com.

[Amin Alhassan]

LA Clippers and aspirations set a new standard for social responsibility in sports.

[Pablo Torre]

Or as CNBC put it, David LA.

[David Samson]

Clippers signed 300 million plus arena sponsorship deal with Green bank aspirations.

[Pablo Torre]

Just listen to Steve Ballmer himself while sitting next to Joe Sandberg at Media Day. The piece de resistance as we went through this is when we had a chance to really sit down and meet the folks from Aspiration. To have our first founding partner be.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

A company that focuses in on providing.

[Pablo Torre]

Services to consumers and businesses to reduce or even go negative on their own.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Carbon footprints was a great thing.

[Pablo Torre]

Particularly, Aspiration agreed to pay the Clippers that staggering amount more than $300 million over 23 years.

[David Samson]

Now, I assume you don't have that agreement, although you've got 4,000 pages and.

[Pablo Torre]

25 that might be in there, honestly.

[David Samson]

And I keep turning things over. But again, David, let's put this in Naming rights deal.

[Amin Alhassan]

That's a naming rights deal. But usually what do you get in a naming rights deal?

[David Samson]

The name.

[Amin Alhassan]

The name.

[David Samson]

If they have founding partners, you get special places in your ballpark, in your arena, where they're called pillar sponsors.

[Pablo Torre]

They got the patch. They were going to get the patch. Look at the back of the courtside seat behind another Marvel Superheroes Simu Liu aspirations right there. And this is where I just got to point out that the tower of documents we have been sort of like gazing at over here, it's actually different from the documents we have already examined. These 3,445 unpublished documents that I've obtained from inside of Aspiration. They range from bank statements to signed contracts to fancy pitch decks to internal emails. And what they do is they speak to Steve Ballmer's personal influence and awareness of the inner workings of this Green bank that is now under federal investigation for an allegedly massive fraud. So, David, the next sheet of paper you can turn over is an internal email about partnership opportunities in Sports and entertainment sent by Joe Sandberg to his fellow co founder Andre Cherny and another aspiration executive on October 29, 2021.

[David Samson]

Ballmer himself is enthusiastic to help and will personally be a reference and advocate where we ask him. So please keep that front of mind.

[Pablo Torre]

And then, I mean, if you will. There is an email on November 1, 2021 from Steve Ballmer, personally connecting the CEO of Intuit with Andre and Joe.

[Amin Alhassan]

Since Intuit and Aspiration already have a business relationship and all of us share a passion for the clips and our Intuit Dome project, I thought it might be fun for the four of us to take in a game together sometimes soon.

[Pablo Torre]

To which Joe Sandberg replies, that same day.

[David Samson]

David, this is Steve Ballmer from Joe Sandberg. Steve, thank you. And you're right. Looking forward to our spending time together. Andre and I admire Intuit's commitment to sustainability and your smart partnership with the Clippers. Exclamation point. Go Clippers. Exclamation point.

[Pablo Torre]

Less than a month after that exchange.

[Amin Alhassan]

To three months after the signing of.

[Pablo Torre]

The extension, Kawhi Leonard and Uncle Dennis Register KL2 Aspire LLC. Now, less than a month after that December 2021, it was announced that Steve Ballmer, who is again hailed as the very best investor of the last 20 years, joined Oaktree Capital Management in investing a total of $315 million in into aspiration, which was subsequently valued at $2.3 billion. So this is how my source characterized the mood around the company at the time.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Aspiration was in a great place at that time. Finances like, listen, let's go have a pizza party every day. It was looking great. But if you peel back the layers of the onion a little bit more, you see that that money was spent quite quickly.

[Pablo Torre]

So according to contracts and emails that I obtained, $50 million, 50 million of this money came from Ballmer's personal LLC. And that LLC, by the way, is named Pol Pot. Not Pol Pot. Not Pol Pot, the brutal Cambodian dictator, but Polpat. How dare you make that mistake. And according to all seven former Aspiration employees I spoke to, that enormous infusion of money From Steve Ballmer $50 million is what allowed the allegedly fraudulent Green bank to quite eagerly pay Kawhi Leonard $28 million for an alleged no show job.

[Amin Alhassan]

The source says in there that the money was spent very quickly. Some might say this money was spent before even got there because it was just the clearinghouse.

[David Samson]

Better not say that, some would say, because if you're saying that, then an investigation has to follow. And if there is any thread where money is invested into Aspiration and then is out the door to Kauai by the transitive property of flow of funds, it went right from Ballmer to Leonard.

[Pablo Torre]

The term that my sources called this arrangement, which again, neither Aspiration, nor the Clippers, nor Kawhi Leonard ever announced, despite the tonnage of announcements that they were making all the time, was quote, sweetener. And this is a term that originates from the next email in front of you Amin, sent by Joe Sandberg. I made a much longer argument with one of his business partners because a very defensive Sandberg was trying to preempt the idea that Ballmer, not unlike Kawhi with the Clippers, embraced Aspiration for any other alleged reason.

[Amin Alhassan]

So this is an email to quite a few people. There's a lot of people on the CC line. But the relevant portion, what you're implying is that Ballmer's investment was a sweetener and impure. When the math above pretty blatantly contradicts your implication in conclusion, it really pisses me off.

[Pablo Torre]

So that is Joe Sandberg, who would be arrested by the federal government. And I took all this, all that stuff of that email to my source.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Joe is the one who brings up a sweetener, and Joe is the one who brings up the impurity of the contract.

[Pablo Torre]

The way it reads is that like Joe Sandberg was almost like waiting for someone at some point to accuse him of something.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

He is the first person to bring it to the conversation in writing and not offline either. So in an attempt to cover his tracks, he actually opens up the door to conversation in question.

[Pablo Torre]

It does seem very clear that the people inside of Aspiration loved to email each other.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Yeah, that's stupid idiots, quite frankly. Yeah, let's put it in writing. Great idea.

[Pablo Torre]

I should say that we reached out to Joe Sandberg, who declined to comment through an attorney. But the thing about the bet that Steve Ballmer made on Aspiration, the problem came in 2022. So this is when the wheels of Aspiration began to fall off. So they'd acquired all these celebrity endorsements. Right. But not enough actual business. That's unfortunately the story of this company. And in October 2022, Aspiration began advertising, even in a pitch deck for investors that I obtained that it had a new customer to help compensate for the lack of business. The new customer was Qatar, the country. Qatar.

[David Samson]

It's always a good way to sell out.

[Pablo Torre]

According to this, pitch Deck had hired Aspiration to zero out the carbon footprint of the 2022 World Cup. Yes, of course, of course. According to my seven sources, this was not true. So the point being that they were flailing. The cash was draining out on the road to bankruptcy. An aspiration, despite all of this, had a top priority in October 2022, internally, per my seven sources. And that was incredibly clear.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

There were weekly meetings about who was going to get paid what and when. And during those weekly meetings, Kawhi Leonard's contract was always set to be paid.

[Pablo Torre]

Even in a time of total financial hardship for the company.

[David Samson]

Why?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

There were multiple reasons we were given, one being that Kawhi's uncle was calling.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, wait, this is. This is. This is Uncle Dennis.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Uncle Dennis. Uncle Dennis was calling and Uncle Dennis demanded payment. It was priority one. Like it was something that had to be done, and it was crucial to our relationships with Ballmer and the Clippers.

[Pablo Torre]

He's calling about his coupons. Uncle Dennis was like, where's the wingstop?

[David Samson]

Oh, this. This ain't coupons.

[Amin Alhassan]

Obviously the stakes are much, much higher, but it's the same general principle that this is a guy who wouldn't let coupons go. He damn sure ain't gonna let $7 million go.

[Pablo Torre]

Bingo. I tried to ask Uncle Dennis himself about this via email and phone. We did not hear back before our deadline. Of course. We did request an interview with Steve Ballmer. We sent him and his people detailed questions about all of this. And we received this statement from the Clippers on behalf of Ballmer and the team, which reads in full, quote, neither Mr. Ballmer nor the Clippers circumvented the salary cap or engaged in any misconduct related to Aspiration. Any contrary assertion is provably false. The team ended its relationship with Aspiration years ago during the 2022-23 season when aspiration defaulted on its obligations. Neither the Clippers nor Mr. Ballmer was aware of any improper activity by Aspiration or its co founder until after the instituted its investigation. The team and Mr. Ballmer stand ready to assist law enforcement in any way they can, end quote. Now, for what it's worth, I should also say that Aspiration had given a statement last year that the company, quote, has delivered carbon credits to the Clippers over the past several years and based on ongoing obligations, will continue to source and deliver credits annually through the last delivery in 2043. We take our work in the climate action category seriously, end quote. And so, I mean, by the way, here we have something that the NBA has been searching for.

[Amin Alhassan]

And if I'm the league and I'm watching this episode And I'm saying, wait. And they've got the paperwork to back it up. This feels like a paper trail that would lead you to believe that the Clippers, through aspiration, managed to give extra compensation above and beyond what the collective bargaining agreement would allow.

[David Samson]

It's at least a reopener.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yeah.

[David Samson]

With what Adam Silver said.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, again, let's quote it again, David. According to Athletic, he sees salary capture and convention as a cardinal sin in the NBA and will always keep a watchful eye on that front. If any relevant evidence of improper benefits surfaces in the future, the league will reopen the investigation and pursue the charges yet again. The threat of suspension for executives was openly discussed, as was the potential for a loss of draft picks or even the voiding of player contracts as the most extreme of measures. End quote. The dynamics here. Also, just to spell it out, you know, this is not just any owner, David.

[David Samson]

The thing we have to think about is the power that Ballmer has within the NBA. He's actually been very good for the league. He brings credibility to the league. He brings.

[Pablo Torre]

He replaced Donald Sterling.

[David Samson]

Well, but.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

But.

[David Samson]

Right.

[Pablo Torre]

Anybody could have replaced. But. But he's now sitting courtside with Barack Obama. He's the richest owner in all the sports.

[David Samson]

That's what it is. So it's an. It's not an Adam Silver issue with Steve Ballmer. My biggest interesting point here is what other owners will take from this, because they can call on Adam Silver and say, hey, you know, you got to look into this, because this is not right now. It's not like Ballmer's won a bunch of championships. It's not like, what. Has he even been to an NBA Finals since he bought the team?

[Amin Alhassan]

Not at all. The Clippers have been to the conference finals once in team history, and that was the one that happened in 2021. That was the first time they'd ever made it out of the second round, going back to even Buffalo. So this is a team that is synonymous with abject failure. That's not the part that people, other NBA owners, other NBA teams are envious about. What they're envious about is the massive amounts of money that they're able to throw around doing things like. Because guess what, David? It's great that they built their arena from scratch, all out of pocket.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, it's also like Steve Ballmer is the embodiment of why you would want a salary cap. Yes, his spending is uncapped in all these other ways, but in this way, when it comes to the stars that are the. Again, to pun intend this. The governor. The governor on the governor, which we call NBA owners now, it can he get the stars? And so here we have a clue in the bankruptcy filing that we followed that was hidden in plain sight, that got us to sign and execute a paperwork. Gus, Uncle Dennis, to the Aspiration logos that were supposed to be on the Clippers jerseys and all over the most sustainable arena in the world. And you get these private emails as a result, showing Ballmer's personal connectedness to Aspiration. And when it comes to Kawhi again, it's just funny when the absence of evidence becomes the evidence.

[David Samson]

Oh, that's.

[Pablo Torre]

But that's what an endorsement deal would force us to reckon with is that that feels like clearly something, even though it's definitionally nothing.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Nothing. He didn't have to do anything.

[Pablo Torre]

The question to me, and this is the question that has been phrased by the seven sources inside of Aspiration that I talked to the former employees, was this money going on? What was framed to me as a round trip, was it starting one place going all the way around and surprise, it's doing what the guy who gave the money up wanted it to do to help his own interests. And so this all raises this second related question, which is the more serious and vast question in the real world, right? Because this question is the one that the DOJ and the FBI and the CFTC and sec, which are all again, looking into this deeply broken company, are thinking, as my source put it, characterizing what their co workers at Aspiration have lately been asking.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Why is Steve Ballmer backing a huge historic race for Aspiration? Like, why? Also, what was the main motivation for such a large raise? Because from inside Aspiration we see like the glitz and the glam of the celebrities that are posting. But from the finance side, accounts receivable were wild. Like, the actual amount of money that needed to be coming in in order for our revenue to count towards real revenue was astronomical in comparison to what was actually being received. There's a lot of these one off eyes that existed, letters of intent. There's all these one off deals. But this proof of concept, from a business perspective at least from the finance side, did not make sense to the point where forecasting felt like casting spells.

[Pablo Torre]

When you look at this list, how many of those, and these are all listed as deals, Letters of intent dated as of early 2021, before Ballmer had made his big investment. How many of those are fake?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

80, 90%.

[David Samson]

They just said that 80 to 90% of the LOIs were fake.

[Pablo Torre]

As of early 2021 listed in the paperwork that Steve Ballmer could examine before he decided to invest or not all of the $50 million that he put in.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yeah, this is a little bit more.

[Pablo Torre]

Than Capsar Convention given this special influence and the way Steve Ballmer was investing millions, but also getting paid millions via the Clipper sponsorship with the promise of an even bigger payout. By the way, if Aspiration were a real company that went public successfully to the tune of that 2.3 billion dollar valuation, what did Steve Ballmer, the very best investor of the last 20 years, know about everything else going on at Aspiration and when did Steve Ballmer know it?

[David Samson]

So Adam Silver on one hand, and then you've got the government on the other. The government doesn't really care about salary cap circumvention. Correct. At all. NBA owners, NBA, they care deeply. The federal government cares deeply if there's any sort of fraud perpetuated on a common investor.

[Pablo Torre]

And that is a question that the NBA and the federal government would both have some curiosity about. What this is is a story that starts with a clue in a bankruptcy filing, gets us to a giant MBA scandal, and gets us back to the real world where some is actually at stake.

[Amin Alhassan]

Foreign.

[Pablo Torre]

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[David Samson]

Instacart we're here.

[Pablo Torre]

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[David Samson]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[David Samson]

We save. That may have been too much feeling.

[Pablo Torre]

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[David Samson]

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[Pablo Torre]

So before I let everybody go here, I just need to take a quick sidebar to update you on a new development in the Department of Justice's investigation into aspiration. A headline from just two weeks ago, August 21, first, 2025, quote, Orange county man and Aspiration Partners co founder agrees to plead guilty to $248 million scheme to defraud investors and lenders and quote, that's two counts of wire fraud. But also, that's not all. That same day, the securities and Exchange Commission published a parallel announcement about Joe Sandberg, the Orange county man in question, charging him for, quote, raising more than $300 million from investors based on a fraudulent scheme to generate and mislead investors about fake revenues for environmental sustainability services. End quote. Now, notably, neither Steve Ballmer, one of aspirations biggest and most influential individual investors, nor Andre Chen, attorney, the other co founder. You know, the one who signed the no show deal for Ballmer's most important player, was named in this round of DOJ or SEC court filings. Although I should also mention that the SEC concludes its press release by noting that its investigation is ongoing, as is ours. Which brings me to the last thing that I needed to tell David and Amin in studio because a bit earlier this summer, on July 4th, something kind of surreal happened. While I continued to report this story, I happened to encounter the very person whose signature was right next to Kawhi Leonard on that $28 million no show endorsement deal in the pages of the New York Times. The splashy headline this time was, quote, democrats lay groundwork for a project 2029. I mean, if you will turn over your next piece of paper.

[Amin Alhassan]

The title is an unsubtle play on Project 2025, the independently produced right wing agenda that Mr. Trump spent much of last year's campaign distancing himself from and much of his first few months back in power executing. They plan to roll out an agenda over the next two years in quarterly installments through Mr. Cheriney's publication, a journal of Ideas. The goal is to turn it into a book, just like Project 2025, and to rally leading Democratic presidential candidates behind those ideas during the 2028 primary season. Mr. Cherny, now the president of the journal he helped create, called the Assemblage, the Avengers of public policy.

[Pablo Torre]

Mr. Journey, as in Andre Cherney, co founder and former CEO of Aspiration, whom I very much wanted to talk to, is back. He's in politics. And so last month I tried to connect with him on LinkedIn and he accepted.

[Amin Alhassan]

Oh, no. Oh my God.

[Pablo Torre]

I tried to start a conversation inviting Andre to come on. Pablo Tori finds out to discuss several things. The future of the Democratic Party, which he wants to lead. His experience working with Steve Ballmer and Kawhi Leonard and the Clippers, the last time he talked to his co founder, Joe Sandberg, his friend from, you know, Harvard. But I also wanted to ask Andre, why did you Resign as the CEO of Aspiration in October 2022? Right. As you know, all that was really hitting the fan. And relatedly, why he ran for US Congress a second time in Arizona in 2024. Because what I wanted to find out was whether the company he had co founded to fight climate change had even been planting. As Andre once proclaimed, quote, we're planting more trees than there are in Central park every day, end quote. But I could not.

[David Samson]

No chance.

[Pablo Torre]

He didn't respond. And when we reached out to Andre Czerny with detailed questions, Andre did not respond. But all this is to say that I did want to pose that question to somebody, this question about the trees. And so I did.

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

You would have to go in order to confirm that the trees were planted. Usually you have a project manager who's providing those real time updates. Like you would have someone physically representing the project for Aspiration in that project, whether it was daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, at a minimum, someone would be there to confirm.

[Pablo Torre]

How often did Aspiration visit the sites of the tree plantings?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

That's a great question. To my knowledge, out of all of the projects that Aspiration undertook for carbon offsets, there was only one site visit during my tenure.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, so just to be clear, I'm looking at a spreadsheet with a zillion approximately projects having to do with forestation and tree plantings. And you're saying there was one. There was one site visit during your tenure there?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Yeah. To one project.

[Pablo Torre]

What does that say to you?

[Aspiration Employee (Anonymous Finance Department)]

Either they're not concerned with whether or not the trees are being planted or it's not real, or both.

[Amin Alhassan]

The opportunity for malfeasance seems endless.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, it now returns us, Amin, to the question that we started this episode with, which was how many trees had to die for me to put these hundreds, thousands of documents on this table in this studio? Because, look, I should say, to be very clear, I believe the greenhouse gas problem is extremely real. I think that the Trump administration, David, is in fact, helping destroy our planet. We should be concerned by all of this. We've, in fact, had multiple guests on the show before, like NASA scientist October, Dr. Kate Marvel, and marine biologist Dr. Ayan Elizabeth Johnson to address this concern. The same concern raised by Robert Downey.

[David Samson]

Jr. And back to that original question.

[Pablo Torre]

What should we aspire to?

[David Samson]

I see him now, Iron man aspiring.

[Pablo Torre]

What I aspired to do in honor of Iron man aspiring man was do what? Aspiration. Didn't do nearly enough. So we here at Pablatore finds out, decided to hire an Avenger of our own, which you can see on YouTube right now, to help us zero out the carbon footprint of this ridiculous episode. Amin, do you want to explain what you're seeing here?

[Amin Alhassan]

I see someone in an Iron man suit, and I use that term very loosely, walking in Inglewood, California, right across the street from the Intuit Dome, and they have forcibly planted a tree in a pile of dirt right across the street from. Into a dome.

[Pablo Torre]

He broke ground, I believe is the proper term.

[Amin Alhassan]

Yeah, there's a. What's that? A little shovel or whatever they call that thing.

[Pablo Torre]

And now watering can.

[Amin Alhassan]

Watering.

[Pablo Torre]

Wow.

[Amin Alhassan]

It's like a cartoon character's watering can.

[Pablo Torre]

With a big thumbs up.

[David Samson]

Yep, that tree is dead on arrival.

[Pablo Torre]

How dare you. What this all means is that our Iron man has now made as many site visits to actually ensure that a tree got planted as they saw aspiration itself make.

[David Samson]

And you printed all these documents for this episode, and you think that one little dead tree, one day, one day maybe not today, to make this carbon neutral.

[Pablo Torre]

That's not just any tree.

[David Samson]

Is it a money tree?

[Amin Alhassan]

Oh, man.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, what kind of tree do you think it is?

[Amin Alhassan]

I hope it's a muddy tree. I'll go. I'll go to Englewood right now. I don't know.

[Pablo Torre]

I mean, that tree is an apple tree. No, because when it comes to fighting climate change, there is no time after all. Like, apple time.

[Amin Alhassan]

Apple time. Oh, my God.

[David Samson]

Ladies and gentlemen, you know what, man?

[Pablo Torre]

Apple time.

[David Samson]

It will not be one apple for that tree. Not.

[Pablo Torre]

This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out a Meadowlark Media production and I'll talk to you next time.

[David Samson]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[David Samson]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[David Samson]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[David Samson]

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[Pablo Torre]

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[David Samson]

Use code giggly for 25 off your first month of opill at O-P-I-L-L.com that's code gigglY-P-I-L-L L.com birth control in your control.

[Pablo Torre]

We love to see it. And Doug Limu and I always tell you to customize your car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.

[David Samson]

But now we want you to feel it. Cue the emu music. Limu. Save yourself money today. Increase your wealth.

[Pablo Torre]

Customize and save. We see.

[David Samson]

That may have been too much feeling.

[Pablo Torre]

Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Affiliates excludes Massachusetts. What do you think makes the perfect snack? Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really.

[David Samson]

Craving it and it's convenient.

[Pablo Torre]

Could you be more specific?

[David Samson]

When it's cravenient. Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the.

[Pablo Torre]

Street at a.m. p.m. Or a savory.

[David Samson]

Breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second. It at ampm.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm seeing a pattern here. Well yeah, we're talking about what I crave, which is anything from ampm.

[Amin Alhassan]

What more could you want?

[Pablo Torre]

Stop by AMPM where the snacks and.

[Amin Alhassan]

Drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience ampm Too much good stuff.