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Pablo Torre Finds Out

Exclusive: Phil Mickelson, the Pipeline and Trump's (Alleged) 14-Inch Pipe

07 Nov 2025

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 5.885 Pablo Torre

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

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7.067 - 16.088 Sam Koppelman

Big Daddy Trump, ready to swing his 14-inch c**k in front of Newsom's face, will drive up any stock.

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17.171 - 18.073 Pablo Torre

Right after this ad.

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24.28 - 26.122 Sam Koppelman

What's your caffeine intake?

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26.142 - 27.784 Pablo Torre

Is it very bad? I just do coffee.

28.786 - 29.026 Sam Koppelman

All day?

29.046 - 30.187 Pablo Torre

Which I didn't do until two years ago.

30.928 - 33.011 Sam Koppelman

I do like two— You didn't do it at all until two years ago.

33.912 - 52.195 Pablo Torre

This show— This show— Did it? Has ruined my nervous system. Yeah. That's what I need to meet you at this desk again, Sam Koppelman. Yeah, here we are. The last time you were at this desk, by the way, the two of us investigated whether the Chinese government had been stealing athlete brainwaves—

Chapter 2: How does Phil Mickelson's gambling history relate to insider trading?

194.605 - 202.461 Sam Koppelman

And if the reason that last name is familiar to you, it is because his sister is Pam Bondi, the United States Attorney General.

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202.762 - 203.143 Pablo Torre

Oh, yeah.

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203.163 - 224.115 Sam Koppelman

And Milton gets pardoned and ends up on Tucker Carlson as a conservative icon guy. Another one that I love is CZ, the guy who ran Binance, you know, the bête noire of Sam Bankman-Fried. Yes, FTX's rival. Exactly. Went to prison and his indictment was one of my favorite ones ever.

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224.155 - 244.007 Sam Koppelman

One of the great smoking guns because his CCO said in writing, we are operating a unlicensed security exchange in the USA, bro. He was sentenced and put in prison. And then CZ backed the crypto company of Trump's kids. And he had his sentence commuted, just like Milton.

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244.448 - 249.919 Pablo Torre

Right. And then in the media circuit, we hear Donald Trump on 60 Minutes.

250.27 - 263.749 Unknown

The government at the time said that CZ had caused significant harm to U.S. national security, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him? Okay, are you ready? I don't know who he is.

264.49 - 271.4 Pablo Torre

And the thing that bothers me is that we're numb as a country to the fact that this is just a practice.

271.62 - 273.122 Sam Koppelman

It's an everyday kind of a thing.

273.423 - 287.458 Pablo Torre

I mean, I remember playing like Thumb War growing up and then you'd get the kid who just like goes, helicopters! And like comes over the top. And it's like, that's what the justice system is like. You can just call for help from up above and the rules don't matter anymore.

Chapter 3: What is Sable Offshore and why is it controversial?

515.154 - 528.689 Sam Koppelman

And for Exxon, cleaning up this pipeline, closing it down, would cost billions of dollars. And so instead, they did something else with it.

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529.45 - 533.194 Pablo Torre

And so as a matter of corporate strategy, that something else is?

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533.254 - 549.562 Sam Koppelman

They basically gave this oil project, the Santa Ynez unit, to this kind of cowboy oilman. named Jim Flores, better known as Big Jim Flores on account of his large stature.

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550.183 - 553.989 Pablo Torre

And so it's hard not to paraphrase, there will be blood here, but Big Jim is an oil man.

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554.45 - 574.899 Sam Koppelman

He is indeed an oil man. And his career has been one befitting a Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Big ups, big downs, big swings, sold a company for over a billion dollars, had another company go into bankruptcy. And this is kind of the last big swing for Big Jim.

575.82 - 581.546 Pablo Torre

And the way it works, so like Exxon gives Big Jim the pipeline?

581.686 - 603.088 Sam Koppelman

They basically gave him a huge loan and was like, you can use our money to go take over this pipeline. And maybe it doesn't work. Maybe you have the same fate as us. And then Exxon will take the pipeline back. But if you can get it approved, if you can get it online, you will make billions and billions of dollars. It's, in a way, the ultimate gamble.

603.95 - 608.682 Sam Koppelman

And so, of course, it appeals to the ultimate gambler, Phil Mickelson.

609.845 - 632.539 Pablo Torre

And that superlative is not one that we can claim ourselves. This is a reputation that is actually... It seems empirically validated by no less a source than his now estranged gambling partner, Billy Walters, who provides in his book and audio book a dossier that is also overflowing with some pretty crude material.

Chapter 4: How did Phil Mickelson communicate with investors about Sable Offshore?

757.352 - 775.356 Billy Walters

During a 20-year period beginning in the mid-90s, Phil's losses approached $100 million. That amount is two and a half times higher than the $40 million reported by Alan Shipnuck in his best-selling unauthorized biography of Phil. He's a big-time gambler, and big-time gamblers make big bets.

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775.859 - 781.05 Pablo Torre

All of which is to say that this big-time gambler making big-time bets meets Big Jim.

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781.491 - 806.68 Sam Koppelman

Yes, they were allegedly on the board of a company together. And by allegedly, I mean that Phil Mickelson tweeted that before deleting that tweet. And at some point during their conversations... Big Jim tells Phil about this company he's starting with his son and a bunch of other guys called Sable Offshore to go get this old oil project from Exxon back online.

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807.461 - 828.654 Sam Koppelman

And over the last few months, if any of you follow Phil Mickelson on Twitter or Exxon, you will see that Phil has tweeted hundreds of times. It's basically his identity now. Yes, he just tweets about like Gavin Newsom and California and Sable Offshore because he's a big investor in this company.

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829.275 - 856.086 Sam Koppelman

And Pablo, I know it might sound kind of outlandish, but what you should understand is that for a minute, That seemed like an incredible bet. The kind of bet that could allow you to retire from the Live Tour or at least switch from the Live Tour to the PGA Tour. Because Sable started getting some momentum. The stock went from $10 to $18, which is

856.42 - 875.374 Sam Koppelman

We'll come back to this later around where I think Phil got invested in it all the way up to $35. And there was one final thing they needed, which was approval from the state of California, from the fire marshal and a couple other agencies to get this project back online.

875.877 - 893.382 Pablo Torre

But as someone who has been following Phil Mickelson and his friends with golf writers, lots of golf reporters who have been following him for even longer, the texture of his, I would say, hundreds of tweets about Sable Offshore, that texture mostly feels like desperation.

893.402 - 920.279 Sam Koppelman

Yes, there is a patina of gambler's anxiety in there. Because Pablo, after Sable stock hit $35... Things started going a little bit worse for Big Jim and the gang. Despite telling Phil and other investors that approval from California was just weeks away, days away, and I have lots of sources who have told me that Jim and Sable kept making those kinds of assurances.

921.741 - 942.93 Sam Koppelman

As the stock price started going down... And as those approvals didn't come day after day, week after week, and as Sable started getting charged with felonies by California for some of the work that it was doing in the state. Phil and other investors started to become very, very, very worried.

Chapter 5: What insider information did Phil Mickelson allegedly share?

1065.132 - 1084.822 Sam Koppelman

And just to give you an example of this, because some of these aren't particularly close calls, on September 29th, Phil writes the group, I spoke with Jim this morning. An announcement is coming today after market closes. It could be an 8K or press release. Not sure exactly what the details will be. I couldn't say anything until after the close.

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1085.603 - 1097.078 Sam Koppelman

Lo and behold, about an hour later, Sable in fact releases a market-moving SEC filing and press release, as Jim told Phil that morning he would.

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1097.21 - 1114.796 Pablo Torre

And the stock moves. Yeah, which sounds suspicious. Look, again, as a pure, just like, what's happening here? Phil knows some stuff that people don't know, and he's teasing the group chat about what he knows and maybe what, therefore, it suggests about the direction of the company. Correct.

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1115.136 - 1137.227 Sam Koppelman

And a law professor we spoke to told us that this sounds like violations of a couple different SEC rules, including something called Reg FD that I'm not going to bore you with. But what's weird about this particular potential insider trading story, the saddest part of it is that even with some of this seemingly inside info, Pablo, I don't think these guys were making money.

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1137.848 - 1141.012 Pablo Torre

So what was happening to their money?

1141.793 - 1145.138 Sam Koppelman

They were losing it. The stock price was going down.

1146.198 - 1171.054 Pablo Torre

And so in terms of that desperation in the ways that it's expressed on Twitter, I got to say that when I started looking at the messages you were receiving, it put them into even sharper relief because the excerpts from the messages he was sending the chat. I mean, I should just read some of them here. We'll show them because in one of them, he writes, quote, we need an actual prayer.

1171.494 - 1186.53 Pablo Torre

I don't see a clear path forward. In that one, he is basically admitting to planning to sell shares. In another one of them that you published, he writes, quote, I'm very defeated right now. And yet another message, he says, quote, I'd do it again, given the information we had.

1186.57 - 1193.819 Pablo Torre

It sucks that maybe there's a last-ditch effort to save it, and I think there should be, but it's not a path to invest in right now, end quote.

Chapter 6: What role does Donald Trump play in the Sable Offshore situation?

1325.087 - 1354.531 Unknown

What was he telling you? He put some gold leech on the platform. Well, we've all also... Also, we're happy to plant. We need to know whether we need to paint the letters 50 feet tall or 70 feet tall for the Trump one inside so we make sure Oprah can see the tanker for her on a seat on a mansion with the uppers on. He came back and said he'd like it in gold.

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1356.154 - 1357.456 Pablo Torre

There's a lot going on in that gold.

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1357.736 - 1364.932 Sam Koppelman

I should note that at first, When we asked Sable Offshore about this call, they said that the phone call was AI.

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1365.493 - 1368.617 Pablo Torre

So the DJT reference, Donald J. Trump, that's AI.

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1368.697 - 1375.206 Sam Koppelman

The Oprah- Yeah, the Oprah Montecito mansion sound, they claimed that that was AI.

1375.246 - 1384.037 Pablo Torre

The giant gold lettering on Ocean America, which is just obviously transparently designed in the retelling of this to appeal to Big Daddy Trump.

1384.017 - 1391.267 Sam Koppelman

This, they all say, is AI, which if true, my God, we should all just quit our jobs because that is some good, good AI.

1391.327 - 1392.488 Pablo Torre

I want to invest in that company.

1392.669 - 1410.092 Sam Koppelman

A hundred percent. In fact, in the group chat, which obviously Sable doesn't know we have access to, we see in messages that Big Jim went as far as to call investors and tell them, go tell everyone this is AI. Which, by the way, itself might have been securities fraud if they knew that the call was real.

Chapter 7: How did the stock price of Sable Offshore change after the investigation?

1524.896 - 1546.105 Pablo Torre

Got here about 350 pounds of Perenia dog chow. If somebody just wants to drop by and get it out of the carport, I'm on disability and cannot lift nothing too heavy. There are typos throughout the entire thing, just for the record. My nephew, Till, will help you load it. Give him a call at your phone number.

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1546.338 - 1551.164 Sam Koppelman

Correct. And I'm obviously watching this the whole time.

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1551.324 - 1555.55 Pablo Torre

Yeah, they're loving what's happening to you at this point in the story.

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1555.95 - 1565.663 Sam Koppelman

They are. Until I put all of this in our investigation, which we published last Friday. And then we finally got a response from Phil.

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1578.822 - 1597.286 Pablo Torre

So to catch people up, the way I enter this story in the public record is me quote tweeting your article at Hunter Brook that you referenced before, in which you publish your revelations about these messages in this group chat. And what I said in the quote tweet on X, the everything app, was quote, why do I get the feeling that this is not the end of this story?

1597.326 - 1604.475 Pablo Torre

And then later in the day, as I'm just like walking through Manhattan, it's Halloween afternoon, I get a reply from Phil Mickelson.

1604.557 - 1620.81 Pablo Torre

And the message that was screenshotted in that quote tweet, just for the record here, was the thing we described before about that 8K or press release coming after market closing, not exactly sure what the details will be, couldn't say anything until after close, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so Phil replies to me, quote,

1620.79 - 1639.459 Pablo Torre

So a company says, I can't say anything to you, but we will announce something at the close. I don't know if it's a dilution and the stock goes down or a deal for the stock to go up. I have to wait to see what the info is. I make no trades whatsoever and am ultra, ultra careful given past history. I don't even share that information is coming till after the close and you insinuate wrongdoing?

1639.719 - 1660.641 Pablo Torre

This looks like stock manipulation on their part and slanderous. Did they make any trades today? And my response to that, Naturally is, hi, Phil Mickelson. I'd love to continue discussing this on Pablo Finds Out and provide a real opportunity for you to answer questions. Could you please set up a time for us to talk? Thank you, exclamation point.

Chapter 8: What were the final developments regarding Phil Mickelson and Sable Offshore?

1895.431 - 1923.204 Billy Walters

or wager $100,000 or $200,000 a game on football, basketball, and baseball. Based upon my detailed betting records and additional records provided by the sources, here's a snapshot of Phil's gambling habit between 2010 and 2014. He bet $110,000 to win $100,000 a total of 1,115 times. On 858 occasions, he bet $220,000 to win $200,000.

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1924.346 - 1955.222 Billy Walters

The sum of those 1973 gross wagers came to more than $311 million. In 2011 alone, he made 3,154 bets, an average of nearly nine per day. On one day in 2011, June the 22nd, he made 43 bets on Major League Baseball games, resulting in $143,500 in losses. He made a staggering $7,065 wagers on football, basketball, and baseball.

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1955.692 - 1970.399 Pablo Torre

And if you're wondering, how is it possible that one man could be both one of the greatest golfers of all time, one of the greatest lefties we've ever seen in sports history, as well as this prolific when it comes to sports betting? Billy Walters also has a bit of surrounding context.

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1971.421 - 1999.519 Billy Walters

Phil didn't let his playing in PGA tournaments get in the way of betting. Indeed. According to the 2010-2014 betting records, he made 1,734 wagers on games during 29 events. This included 70 separate bets on baseball and preseason pro football during the Barclays tournament in August 2011 where he shot 800 and tied for 43rd. He won $415,000 in bets that weekend.

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2000.495 - 2025.979 Billy Walters

On February 11, 2012, a busy college basketball Saturday, Phil blew himself up by running his betting losses to nearly $4 million, according to the gambling sources familiar with Phil's other bets. Even so, he displayed an incredible ability to compartmentalize. He shot 64 the following day to win the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach while playing with and demolishing Tiger Woods by 11 shots.

2026.904 - 2032.331 Pablo Torre

All of which is to say that the guy is not afraid to put money down on a thing he thinks there's a shot at winning.

2032.772 - 2035.075 Sam Koppelman

Say what you will about Phil Mickelson.

2035.095 - 2048.052 Pablo Torre

The man has conviction. And so if you're going to mathematically just take an informed guess at what Phil was rooting for here, what he lost, how do you report that out?

2048.251 - 2065.58 Sam Koppelman

We don't have the exact financial information here. You know, I spoke to some of the Sable investors who seemed to think at some point he and his partner owned like 2% of the company, which could have been tens and tens and tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars, meaning he could have lost like... tens of millions of dollars on this.

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