Steve Ballmer’s attorney argues Pablo Torre’s reporting is ‘vitriolic public campaign… based on anonymized gossip’

Last year, Pablo Torre found out about a potential salary cap circumvention tactic orchestrated by the Los Angeles Clippers, in which star player Kawhi Leonard received compensation through Aspiration, a now-defunct green banking company.

Joseph Sanberg, the co-founder of Aspiration, is scheduled to be sentenced on April 27 in a Los Angeles federal court after pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud in a scheme that prosecutors said defrauded investors out of $248 million. Each count carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

ESPN and The Athletic reported Wednesday that attorneys representing both the NBA and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer submitted separate letters to a federal judge ahead of the sentencing.

Ballmer, who has ducked direct responses to Torre, shared the letter on his X account, the first post on that platform since July 2025.

The NBA letter, written by David Anders, the attorney leading the NBA’s investigation into whether the Clippers circumvented the league’s salary cap, said that Sanberg sat for two interviews, provided documents, and shared “information that was relevant to our investigation.”

“In all our dealings with Mr. Sanberg, both directly and through his counsel, he provided information that was consistent with our review of contemporaneous documents and other evidence,” Anders wrote. “Mr. Sanberg’s cooperation substantially assisted our investigation, including our ability to develop a more complete understanding of key events. At no time during our dealings with Mr. Sanberg and his counsel did they seek, nor did we make, any promises in exchange for his cooperation.”

Meanwhile, Ballmer’s letter explains that he lost his entire $60 million investment in Aspiration and faced “immeasurable” harm to his reputation. It says the Clippers lost “virtually all of the $300 million sponsorship payments, and more than $20 million held in escrow for additional carbon offset purchases, which were never made, and the money not returned.”

Ballmer’s attorney also argued he was “flagrantly defrauded” by Sanberg.

“This is particularly insidious given that, other than greeting Sanberg at a Clippers game they had barely spoken,” Ballmer’s attorney wrote. “Mr. Ballmer recalls speaking to Sanberg only once and that was only briefly while they both attended a public event.”

As part of the court filing, Ballmer’s attorney also wrote that Torre’s reporting, which brought the story to the public, was a “vitriolic public campaign against Mr. Ballmer” and “principally based on anonymized gossip.”

Torre, the Awful Announcing 2025 Sports Person of the Year, responded in a statement to ESPN, saying that calling his reporting gossip is a dismissal of the whistleblowers who came forward.

“Last month, Pablo Torre Finds Out published the federal whistleblower complaint, signed by two former Aspiration employees, which described how the Clippers allegedly used carbon credits ‘to pay Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard an incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA’s salary cap, disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement.’

“This complaint, submitted under penalty of perjury, was made in 2023, long before I acquired more than 3,000 pages of internal documents and financials. To dismiss our last year of careful reporting as ‘gossip’ is to also dismiss the same whistleblowers who provided the roadmap for the federal government to successfully convict Joseph Sanberg.”

While Sanberg will be sentenced on April 27, Ballmer has been named in a lawsuit filed by 11 former Aspiration investors, who claim they were defrauded of millions by Sanberg and others. The investors allege Ballmer participated in the fraud by funneling money to Leonard. Ballmer has denied the claims, and his attorneys have argued for the case to be dismissed.