transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 2:
[00:07] Right after this ad. Let's go, thank you, day drinker day.

Speaker 3:
[00:11] No, just doing our little hey, hey, hey.

Speaker 1:
[00:14] Right after this ad. I'm going to call this a sporting class today. Just you and me.

Speaker 4:
[00:26] Really?

Speaker 1:
[00:26] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[00:27] Are we going to tell John?

Speaker 1:
[00:28] Well.

Speaker 4:
[00:28] It feels like we're cheating.

Speaker 1:
[00:29] I know.

Speaker 4:
[00:30] But that's okay.

Speaker 1:
[00:31] I think you've just given us the most organic segue to how I want to start this. Because I have been inundated as the guy who does investigative journalism with calls to investigate Dianna Russini. And this is a story that, as I put on Twitter at some point, I have been making calls about. And you've addressed this on your show at length. Dan Le Batard, our friend and our boss on some level, he is deeply uncomfortable with talking about this because he has disclosed a friendship with Dianna. But I also, in this attempt to be transparent, I want to disclose my conflicts. You're talking, David, to me on a show that is a part of the Athletic Podcast Network. Dianna, until she resigned recently, was, of course, an employee of the Athletic, their NFL insider. I am represented at CAA, where Dianna is represented. I worked with Dianna at ESPN. I don't really know her that well. I've run into her a couple of times. We are not friends.

Speaker 4:
[01:31] Are you acquaintances?

Speaker 1:
[01:33] Absolutely.

Speaker 4:
[01:33] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[01:34] If we saw each other at an event, and if I still saw her at an event today or any other day in the future, I would say hello and I would not have any sort of hesitance about that. But she might, depending on how she takes what I'm about to say, because it's uncomfortable to be a public person in this regard as an alleged cheating scandal with the most famous photos in recent sports media history.

Speaker 4:
[01:58] Wow. Give me a minute on that.

Speaker 1:
[02:00] Yep.

Speaker 4:
[02:01] We're going to call them the most famous photos in recent sports history?

Speaker 1:
[02:07] Sports media history.

Speaker 4:
[02:08] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[02:10] Okay. A separate take. It's been astonishing how much traction this has gotten since it broke in the New York Post. And to you, David, as I have talked to you off air about this, it became pretty clear that we should talk about the alleged affair as a concept in the ways that it informs, I think, a larger exploration of the dynamic underneath the surface, behind the curtain. But also you're kind of bored by the premise of like, oh, great, an affair.

Speaker 4:
[02:54] That's boring. When you've been in the sports world for as long as I've been in, and when you come from Wall Street, where I was before, affairs are not really something that anyone cares about, but everyone loves to gossip about. It is one of the great glass house syndromes that exists in the business world, where people talk about it while they live in a glass house or have lived in a glass house at one point or another. And when you travel with the baseball team, you have to become numb to it because if you're too moral, truthfully, you can't function. And that makes me feel badly sometimes, but not often.

Speaker 1:
[03:31] We already have arrived at the difference between working in sports and journalistically covering sports. Because there is a code of ethics in the world of journalism. There is not a code of ethics around this subject, so to speak, in the world of allegedly sleeping with journalists.

Speaker 4:
[03:47] There is. We had a set of rules.

Speaker 1:
[03:49] You came up with them.

Speaker 4:
[03:50] No, I actually inherited these. These are longstanding rules.

Speaker 1:
[03:54] What about the commissioner's office? This is the Marlins.

Speaker 4:
[03:56] This is wherever I've been. So, with the Expos and then the Marlins.

Speaker 1:
[03:59] You're the president of the team.

Speaker 4:
[04:00] It was just a very simple rule. My view, and I've spoken to players about this a lot, there's ample opportunity. Just be very careful. And this was the same rule on Wall Street. Ample opportunity. Try not to sh-t where you eat. Because when you do that, it causes a mess that I would have to clean up. And what I would say to players is, I don't want to clean up that mess. I want you to live your life. And I'm not going to judge. But don't make it so that I have to get involved. Where Sidelined Reporters get involved, where cheerleaders get involved, player wives. I've had that.

Speaker 1:
[04:35] What do you mean?

Speaker 4:
[04:36] I've had a player wife cheat with a teammate. Oh. So I've had that. And that creates... I just don't want mess. I don't want... And you know me well.

Speaker 1:
[04:45] You're the Marie Kondo of player infidelity.

Speaker 4:
[04:50] So listen. And I tell them that. I am not ever going to tell you what to do. I'm just going to ask you not to involve my time. Because I don't have a lot of it.

Speaker 1:
[05:00] Right. The variable you're trying to restrain is time. Which is not to say this is a judgment on an ethical basis.

Speaker 4:
[05:07] It is not.

Speaker 1:
[05:08] It is a business practice.

Speaker 4:
[05:13] So simply put and so perfectly put. It is exactly that. So the issue comes when something in your orbit expands to other people's orbit. That's what you try to avoid.

Speaker 1:
[05:26] Well, the thing that everybody wishes they could have avoided was the New York Post. And I want to explain how this broke because again, I'm a journalist, you're the former team president. Different sides of this aisle, but both of us trying to discern, decode what's actually happening here. And the way this broke was in the New York Post. And I want to get to private investigation as an industry because you are familiar personally with that industry. And I am fascinated by that. We've been reporting in other episodes, one connected to the New York Knicks, the premise of private investigation as a tool in sports and beyond in politics certainly. But the whole thing of there are high quality photographs of Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel on a roof at an adult only retreat hotel in Sedona, which is a beautiful location that was captured in high definition. You know, the photographs are good, but immediately I'm like, does the fact that they were taken with a professional seeming camera indicate something or is it also entirely plausible that people bring nice cameras to a place like Sedona? And so not dispositive is my point. I don't think the quality of the photographs tells us.

Speaker 4:
[06:37] I agree. Not relevant.

Speaker 1:
[06:39] Is this a professional because we live in the era of cell phones in which all these things are high def. However, here's what's interesting. So TMZ was offered these photographs first. Or at the very least, they were offered these photographs and learned that the New York Post had published them first. I want to explain the backstory why because I've confirmed this part. And some of this has been reported elsewhere and I want to just make sure that people who have not been deep in the lore on this understand that I am told a woman provided these photographs to TMZ and they did not name Dianna Russini.

Speaker 4:
[07:17] They did name Mike Vrabel though.

Speaker 1:
[07:19] They did identify the NFL head coach with a woman who's not his wife, I am told. And the price requested was indeed four figures. And TMZ to their shame, I think in retrospect, they weren't super interested. But by the time they figured out that the other woman, interlocking fingers on this roof with this sunset in the backdrop, was in fact Dianna Russini, a day or so later, the tipster in question, I am told, had seemingly already made a deal with the New York Post.

Speaker 4:
[07:53] So I love that there was a moral part to this. That the person said, I already have a deal with the Post, so I can't go back to TMZ and get a higher offer. I love that.

Speaker 1:
[08:01] But here are the details. And here's the question. If you were a private investigator hired on behalf of one of their spouses, which is a common rumor in this story, and I have no proof by the way that that is the case, would that be how you weaponized these photos?

Speaker 4:
[08:19] For me, when you find something and you want to monetize it, the biggest thing you have to do is understand the value of what you found. And so the person who took the photos is moronic, because how do you not find out who both parties are? And you don't stop at just the NFL head coach. You have to find out, because if that woman is monetizable, you have lost that ability if you sell it before you have done the work. And that seems to be, if what you're saying is true, which is what you're saying and what I've read, that is just a poor job of monetizing the photos, because once you have both parties who are recognizable, it makes the scandal larger, more interesting to a more diverse group of people, which is a higher price.

Speaker 1:
[09:06] What does that say to you about the possibility, then, that this was taken by a private investigator?

Speaker 4:
[09:11] The private investigator would have had information already, because when you hire a private investigator...

Speaker 1:
[09:17] And have you hired a private investigator?

Speaker 4:
[09:19] I have hired a private investigator, yes. And in order to hire a private investigator, there's a question. The first question, after you do price, the first question is...

Speaker 1:
[09:28] What does it cost?

Speaker 4:
[09:29] Well, it depends what you're asking them to do, because there's travel. If you're asking them to fly somewhere, you have to pay like their lawyers for transportation to the airport.

Speaker 1:
[09:38] Is it hourly?

Speaker 4:
[09:39] It's hourly. It is hourly, yes.

Speaker 1:
[09:41] So there's a legal billable hours?

Speaker 4:
[09:43] You can negotiate a flat rate, but my experience has been hourly.

Speaker 1:
[09:47] So I want to introduce the other possibility, which is another guest who's like, oh, there's that giant guy I know from watching America's most famous television show, the NFL. I'm going to Google his wife. I'm going to find that she has blonde hair. I'm going to look at the woman who turned out to be Dianna Russini and say, that's not his wife. They're interlocking fingers. I think I got something. What does this run for on the open market? Who can I give this to? You get to how they get to TMZ, to the Post, and being like guessing $5,000, question mark.

Speaker 4:
[10:14] That's tough for me because it's a pretty exclusive hotel in the middle of Iqvalt. It's not as though it's walking down the street of New York City where you could just happen upon something that, oh, could I monetize that? This to me had more purpose.

Speaker 1:
[10:28] But it's interesting. Another thing I've confirmed is that Dianna Russini did not provide any other photographs that had been requested by pretty much everybody, not just the Internet, but certainly the New York Post, the Athletic, her employer, to indicate that her initial story, the story that she has stuck by, which is that others were there. It was a friend's trip, and Vrabel is of course someone she's quite friendly with. And this is not what it looks like. This is not an affair. This is a bunch of buddies hanging out at the pool on the roof. And this is where I should say a couple of things. Number one, we are independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. And the views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists. And by the way, to The Athletic's credit, they have not told me personally a single thing about what not to cover or to cover with the story. So just to be very transparent about that.

Speaker 4:
[11:23] Well, that would make it way worse if they called you and said, by the way, hands off this.

Speaker 1:
[11:26] But listen, this is the thing that became clear to me from afar as soon as those photographs did not emerge, which is that it became impossible for Dianna Russini to credibly do her job as an NFL insider, that doing the job of I'm going to report on the NFL would be, as a credibility issue, impossible.

Speaker 4:
[11:48] Can a person at Morgan Stanley date someone who works at Goldman Sachs?

Speaker 1:
[11:52] The idea, to be fair to Dianna, of what it means to credibly do your job, to do your job as a journalist and insider with credibility, is a worthy discussion because there are lots of other ways to compromise your integrity that an insider in sports, a sports journalist, is uncompromised by their sources, so long as they don't have an affair with them, is farcical. It runs the gamut. You're just friends with them. You've been to their weddings. You've been on family trips with the general manager of the team who's breaking news to you. You even advise front office executives on trades sometimes. And by the way, all of that, that's all stuff I've heard over decades.

Speaker 4:
[12:38] I've experienced it because when I give an insider a piece of information, I want something back. It's a trade.

Speaker 1:
[12:46] Of course you do.

Speaker 4:
[12:47] So that is very normal. Have you ever seen when a manager gets fired and then all of a sudden there's a list of candidates for that position? Do you think that list comes out of like the ether? It's the media insider says, Oh, I've got the perfect fit for the manager for this team or the general manager. No, it comes from, hey, I get information from this person and in return, I add this person to a list of candidates. And the reason I know this is that as a president of a team and having fired a gazillion managers, there was always a list of people who were candidates and we never interviewed them. We never even considered them. And I laughed thinking, oh, I understand why that person is a candidate because that person is giving information to the person in the media and I'm not impugning any member of the media. That's how the business is done. Tell me about a trade or a signing. Give it to me first. And by the way, when it comes time to advance your career, I'll make sure that you are in the conversation.

Speaker 1:
[13:51] But here's the thing about the monastic rules of journalism. It's how do you define consistently by a letter of some law, what it is to betray the trust of your public in order to service a source and therefore yourself, right? The public interest is, and again, I don't think there is, spoiler alert, a constitution that everyone agrees on here. And there are codes of ethics that vary from outlet to outlet, publication to publication. All of that makes this very, very messy. And journalism has done a terrible job across the board of communicating why and how. But, I want to give one example of what a very established, and in this case, very notably, male NFL insider, a direct competitor to Dianna Russini, might be doing out in public, that could cause, in a journalism ethics conversation, a real question. And it takes us to the very same week when Dianna Russini's photos were taken. We're going to now, three days after that, actually. This is March 31st, 2026, at the hotel, the Biltmore, where the NFL owners' meetings were happening. And this is what Jay Glazer put on Twitter for millions upon millions of people to see.

Speaker 2:
[15:08] Hi, we have our annual NFL O2 Day Trick of Day. Oh, just doing our little, hey, hey, hey. Whispering right here, it's just good. Bro, Michael Phelps over there, is that? Who else we have over here? Hey.

Speaker 3:
[15:23] No, he's the third best coach.

Speaker 2:
[15:24] Showing it all, showing it all. Here we go.

Speaker 3:
[15:26] Hey, who is that?

Speaker 2:
[15:28] Oh, it's Ivan DeVay.

Speaker 3:
[15:29] Yeah, he's a good coach, man.

Speaker 2:
[15:31] He's a good football player. Now, special machine Markur right over here.

Speaker 3:
[15:35] Say it again?

Speaker 1:
[15:56] So, that's Jay Glazer, NFL Insider, saying this is the Tweet Caption for people who aren't watching the video. One of my favorite days of the year are 18th annual NFL Head Coaches Day Drinking Day at the NFL Owners Meeting. I started this with Mike Tomlin 18 years ago. Yes, we raised a glass to him, parentheses, to get the head coach fraternity to bond together, bounce things off each other, ask each other for advice, and to celebrate how cool life is together. Leaders take care of everybody else, but who takes care of the leaders? This is a cool way to bond so these leaders can all take care of each other, trying to make it less lonely at the top. Oh, and the stories that are shared are classic. We had 28 of 32 coaches show, and then it goes on, and McVeigh apparently picked up the bill. Because it's a side note, everyone always asks who picks up the bill. McVeigh did it this year. It's all immediately like not allowed by any sort of journalism school code of ethics. But I should point out, 2.6 million views on that, 10,000 likes. As far as I can tell, no immediate eruption of, how dare you compromising your integrity, favoring your friends, all of that.

Speaker 4:
[17:04] What is Glazer's job? His job is to go on TV every single weekend and give the betting audience information they can have in order to bet or to help them with fantasy or to just give them information that they can pretend they know as firsthand so they can be cool when they're talking to other people on a Monday morning. That's his job. His job doesn't change because of his relationships with these coaches. As a matter of fact, his audience would say, I need you to have these relationships with these coaches.

Speaker 1:
[17:35] So something that I want to do vocabulary wise is point out that I don't believe Jay Glazer would call himself a journalist. I believe Jay Glazer has the title of insider and part of his currency, his actual upfront credibility is, look at everybody that I know. I mean, he's an MMA trainer. He trains players like his network of sources are his friends and clients.

Speaker 4:
[17:58] Is Dianna a journalist or an insider or can you be both?

Speaker 1:
[18:02] I think the entire premise of her job was that she was both. And that in fact insider has been until perhaps recent days, synonymous often with journalists.

Speaker 4:
[18:13] Not to us, not in the industry.

Speaker 1:
[18:15] But I think there are some insiders who would object to the fact that how dare you say I'm not a journalist. And also, for most fans, they don't know the difference.

Speaker 4:
[18:24] They don't need to know.

Speaker 1:
[18:25] But I want to sort of make this more specific because the gender part of this, right? So let's just do the thought experiment, which I was doing as I was watching this. And I was looking for a good example. I was like, is it Schefter? Is it Woj? And I came upon the Glazer video. And so there are many other potential examples to be clear. But this video, imagine if Poolside, it was not Jay Glazer, but Dianna Russini, with 28 of 32 NFL head coaches day drinking. Immediately, right? Part of the frustration both by, I can imagine, a Dianna Russini and by other female self-identified journalists who in real life have really resented, the ones that I've talked to have resented the implication that this is standard practice, what Dianna is accused of among female journalists. It's just different to be a woman doing this job in sports, and it can be unfair to the point of all of this being an aggravating factor.

Speaker 4:
[19:27] What if Jay had been with 28 women?

Speaker 1:
[19:29] So immediately I was like, good luck finding a sport with that many female coaches.

Speaker 4:
[19:34] I made up the number, but we're talking gender.

Speaker 1:
[19:38] So I presented to you the hypothetical of what if Jay Glaser was in fact a woman? What if it was Dianna Russini? Here is a thing that I was told while making calls, and two sources with direct knowledge of this have confirmed it to me. So that pool where Jay Glaser was hosting all of those NFL head coaches and others, across the way of that same pool was Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel. And what she was doing, I am told, was effectively trying to host a rival office Christmas party.

Speaker 4:
[20:19] Were the other four coaches there? Is that why it was 28 and four?

Speaker 1:
[20:23] It was Dianna Russini, it was Mike Vrabel, among the Cabanas and a few other head coaches.

Speaker 4:
[20:28] Well, there could only be four total.

Speaker 1:
[20:30] So I don't have the James Dolan surveillance camera data on who was going when and where. But I can tell you that part of what the game is that Dianna Russini was trying to play was, what if I do the thing that Jay Glazer does quite successfully? How can I build my own party and build a network of sources? Because what no one has ever denied or objected to is the ambition of Dianna Russini in trying to compete at this insane crazy making job of insider.

Speaker 4:
[21:06] It's soul crushing to have to compete both as a woman but also as a man. Anyone who's new trying to become an insider, it's crushing. You know this as a journalist trying to get sources that are not giving to anyone but you an exclusive source.

Speaker 1:
[21:20] Oh man, it can drive you insane. It can make you lose grip on whatever you think your principles once were.

Speaker 4:
[21:28] I love the ingenuity of trying to build your business because that's what insiders need to do is cultivate relationships in order to get information first.

Speaker 1:
[21:38] Now the thing that happened that day at the pool, March 31st, 2026 at the Biltmore is that all of these head coaches across the pool and their wives, I am told, started talking about Vrabel and Russini. And this is before, days before the photos broke in the New York Post, which is to say also a thing I found out is that their friendship was not breaking news to the people at the NFL owners' meetings. They all knew that in fact, they were out front together at this other competing aspirational party. And so this is where I do just need to point out that New England Patriots head coach Mike Vrabel, that guy who took the Patriots to the Super Bowl this past February, decided to speak for the first time this past week after the photos that blew up his life were released. And he did not confess or admit to anything in specific, but his lack of specificity, I would say, conveyed something pretty clearly.

Speaker 3:
[22:48] You know, I've had some difficult conversations with people that I care about, with my family, the organization, the coaches, the players. Those have been positive and productive. You know, we believe in order to be successful on and off the field, you have to make good decisions. That includes me, that starts with me. We never want our actions to negatively affect the team. We never want to be the cause of a distraction. You know, and what I, those are comments and questions that I've answered for the team and with the team. We'll keep those private and, you know, to ourselves. I care deeply about this football team and I'm excited to coach them.

Speaker 1:
[23:31] Late Wednesday night after that presser, Vrabel then told ESPN that he would not be with New England for day three of tomorrow's NFL draft, which was confusing to, I think, everybody else because he wasn't missing day one or day two of the draft, but specifically day three because he was seeking counseling. This was Vrabel's quote to ESPN. I believe this is what I have to do to be the best husband, father and coach that I possibly can be. End quote. And all of this immediately made this an even bigger story, raising so many more questions among Boston sports fans because this story now was directly impacting the team, making the mess that David Samson had advised that you not make. But on Thursday, the other shoe dropped, helping explain perhaps what happened on Wednesday. And we return now again to The New York Post, which published a story with his headline, Dianna Russini and Married Mike Vrabel Caught Kissing at NYC Bar in Bombshell New Photos Taken Six Years Before Scandal. And in this story, you can see a series of photos of Russini and Vrabel doing what I think can be fairly described as canoodling, their faces really close together, her legs sort of positioned in between his legs while they were sitting on bar stools. And this was reported to be a relatively empty bar in Manhattan. And so for at least the time being, that's where we are. That's how the Patriots are trying to navigate this scandal. More to come on that. But as for the journalism side of the equation, where I come from, there is another fair question, I think, when it comes to how all of this looks.

Speaker 4:
[25:27] Is that up to the standards of the Athletic?

Speaker 1:
[25:29] So according to the Athletic's Official Editorial Guidelines, no, not as far as I can tell, and I'll just quote them here, quote, to maintain the highest form of authority, we should avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest and reveal those sources or affiliations that may put into question our ability to be credible. End quote.

Speaker 4:
[25:46] But you know what, as a consumer of information, I don't draw the line where the New York Times draws the line. So, I get information from plenty of people who operate outside the line of the New York Times, and I don't care. I base it on the veracity of the outside-the-line work that's done, and can I rely on it to help me do what I want to do?

Speaker 1:
[26:07] And I would say that a journalist, as this profession, with a code of some kind, the decision that journalism has made as a premise is the best way to provide information reliably and to win the trust of the public and to be the closest thing you can be to an honest and partial broker is to subject yourself to these rules.

Speaker 4:
[26:28] I don't agree, Pablo. I hear you and you sound so high and mighty, and that's fine.

Speaker 1:
[26:31] Well, it's not even meant to be.

Speaker 4:
[26:32] But it's not true. Do you think the New York Times, by the way, is so impartial? I'm just curious, like, is that their reputation?

Speaker 1:
[26:39] There are so many examples of the fallibility and the failure and the betrayal of the standards that I'm talking about, and I hope that when I say these words about the code, it's not with a tut-tutting, high-and-mighty, I am at the elevation level of the Mount Everest of journalism. It is actually with the almost sad recognition that I don't think you're alone. I think most people don't give a f**k, and it's a competitive disadvantage. It is a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace. And so the only way to make it into something advantageous is to explain why this code on balance is worth respecting. So, this brings us back to the idea of a private investigator, because they're also in the ecosystem. There are the investigators with the journalistic code. There are the PIs, who often are who, David? What's their background typically?

Speaker 4:
[27:51] Some of them are former detectives. Some of them have no training whatsoever, except the ability to follow someone or to do internet research on someone. You can get a high-profile PI, and it's like going to a white-shoe law firm. Or you can get sort of a guy from the Yellow Pages that sort of dates me, but someone who's very cheap, and you generally in PI work get what you pay for.

Speaker 1:
[28:17] I like the idea of you tearing off a tab on a lamppost, being like, I'm gonna ask this guy to investigate my wife. But this now takes us to Madison Square Garden. And so, something that I left out of the episode that we did about the garden and its surveillance state is a story that involves a practice that, as you can attest, is more common in sports among sports owners than people realize, which is the hiring of private eyes. And so, this story, I gotta recap it here, it happened because in early 2003, the New York State Liquor Authority was threatening to take away beer at Madison Square Garden. And you know this story personally, because you've covered it on Nothing Personal, but to explain-

Speaker 4:
[28:55] I lived it while I was running the Marlins.

Speaker 1:
[28:57] Okay, okay, I wanna get to that because in this case, there was facial recognition technology that was kicking out attorneys from law firms that were engaged in litigation with Madison Square Garden and James Dolan and its assorted properties. And what the New York State Liquor Authority posed was a legal challenge. If you are discriminating against customers, you cannot serve liquor, according to New York State law. And so this led to one of the great clips, I would say in sports media history as well, because it's James Dolan on Fox Five, the morning show with the local legend, Rosanna Scotto. And he does this.

Speaker 2:
[29:34] Instead, what we're going to do is, where we serve liquor, we're going to put one of these up, which says, if you would like to drink at a game, please call, right, Sharif Kabir, Chief Executive Officer, or write him an email at this number, right, and tell him, right, to stick to his knitting and, you know, and to what he's supposed to be doing to stop grandstanding and trying to get press. The, uh, so. Wow, okay.

Speaker 4:
[30:04] She gave him the platform. She gave him the platform.

Speaker 1:
[30:07] That is him doxing, basically, the CEO of the SLA to say, Liquor Authority, and also using a phrase that I had never heard until that clip. Stick to your knitting.

Speaker 4:
[30:16] I had not heard that either. I'm not a knitter, nor am I a needle pointer. Well, listen, what's Dolan doing there? He is using the power, and I think that the power that he has is the power that is actually exhibited by all owners. He just does it in a less pleasant, more public way.

Speaker 1:
[30:35] So I should say that Sharif Kabir, who is now the former CEO of the SLA, he received, as you can imagine, racist messages and beyond. At one point, I am told he had to call the state police on a fan who threatened him. So that's part of the consequences of when that happens in that way. But the more interesting, germane part to the conversation we've been having about private investigation and who's watching who is that The Garden, James Dolan, reportedly hired a private investigator to follow the state investigator who was looking into Dolan and The Garden. And so James Dolan hired a private investigator to follow the former police captain who was investigating him.

Speaker 4:
[31:17] The reason you hire a PI is to gain leverage in a negotiation. That's it. You are negotiating a divorce. You're negotiating a buyout. You're negotiating an insurance payment. You're negotiating something. And so what Dolan was negotiating was I need my liquor license. And by the way, I am not going to give up on the fact that I use facial recognition.

Speaker 1:
[31:42] And is therefore, is it possible that this state investigator, a former police captain, is himself exhibiting bias in ways that I can use in some sort of response? And so I should point out that according to Wyatt, whose reporting we featured on our episode a week ago, a source with knowledge of this says that MSG's own security guys, they refuse to do the job of investigating the state investigator. And to quote the source in Wyatt's article here, quote, trail a law enforcement officer in his duties. Absolutely not, like that's a step too far, end quote. And so they wound up with somebody else. And to somebody else, I am told, followed the police captain. And apparently, this according to the New York Times reporting, eventually, the former police captain called the cops on Dolan's private investigator, who was eventually cited for possession of what the New York Times had called, quote, a knife in excess of the permissible length, end quote. Which I also, much like stick to your knitting, I did not know was even a thing. But the Garden's lawyers, meanwhile, have said that state officials were, quote, harassing the private investigator, that hiring PIs was, quote, common and lawful practice. Which brings us to other examples, David, that you may be familiar with in terms of sports owners having this power.

Speaker 4:
[33:04] Well, one of the big ones is in politics with the current ambassador to France and the mishpucha of Donald Trump. Charlie Kushner hired a private investigator.

Speaker 1:
[33:15] Oh my God.

Speaker 4:
[33:16] Mishpucha, that's Yiddish for their children are married to each other. Charlie Kushner's son is Jared. Donald Trump's daughter is Ivanka. And they are married. And so Charlie Kushner actually hired a private investigator.

Speaker 1:
[33:29] He's an all-timer.

Speaker 4:
[33:30] In order to bribe, basically, his own brother. He set up a woman to seduce his brother and got pictures of them doing it. And it caused Charlie gave him leverage in a negotiation because there was a business transaction that Charlie needed some help with from a family partnership. To make a long story short, a private investigator can't make someone do something if you're a PI, but you sure as hell can set it up so people are tempted.

Speaker 1:
[34:02] So all of this, of course, according to the Department of Justice. And I just need to clarify that that's how you weaponize something. He did not go to the New York Post and offer four figures with those with that information. He went directly to the place that he needed to have leverage on.

Speaker 4:
[34:18] I mean, that's what's laughable is that that's why a PI offering it for four figures to New York Post. It wasn't something or TMZ. It didn't interest me. A real PI, when you've got a real situation where there's real money involved, not just who's getting inside information from who on who's gonna be a head coach, there's millions of dollars at stake. Sometimes tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars. And what PIs are doing is they are hired and that's why Wired and I'm not impugning them and their sources, but I've known security people and I've hired security people, not just at Marlins Park, but I also know the people at MSG from all my decades there. And for me, if there's something that they don't wanna do, it's something that's not gonna be asked of them to do. And that's a subtle difference. When you are trying to follow a police captain who's running the state liquor authority, I'm not going to my underlings in the security department. I'm either going to my number one head of security, loyal guy who's gonna hire someone and take care of it, or more likely I'm going outside of that sphere, pun intended, and I am going to hire someone who's not at all related to MSG because I'm not gonna ask them a question I don't want to hear the answer to. I've done that many times where you figure out how you're gonna staff something. It's a staffing question. When you get right down to it, who can do the job that I need to be done in the most economic way and in the most important way to get the job done?

Speaker 1:
[35:48] At all points here, I want to point out that what I love about this program is that you are sharing what you would have done in this hypothetical and how and why you would have done it.

Speaker 4:
[35:58] Or I'm sharing with you as president of a team what goes on inside a stadium that I was a part of building. Or I'm telling you the truth about what's been done inside a sport where I worked for 18 years. You can take it however you like to take it without upsetting your producers.

Speaker 1:
[36:15] I think we're just gonna Photoshop you onto the OJ If I Did It book cover.

Speaker 4:
[36:19] No, it's not about gloves and it's not saying if I did it. I'm telling you that there's a mystery around what goes on in this in the business world that I'm trying to uncover to let you know that what you think is so rare or what the audience thinks is so rare is actually super common.

Speaker 1:
[36:35] Well, I want to also point out that another sports owner of note who was reportedly a big fan of PIs was Dan Snyder. This was according to Don Van Etta and Southwaker Shammontish at Thompson and ESPN. Allegedly, Snyder in this case hired these PIs to snoop on his fellow owners, which is to say, to bring it all back to politics, comprimat, having information that you can leverage for some return is always a consideration.

Speaker 4:
[37:04] That is the consideration. Remember in the Snyder case, that was he felt he was being forced out. He didn't want to leave. He didn't want to have a forced sale. And in a negotiation, when you're told about a forced sale, because in sports ownership, if you get two-thirds of owners to say the sky is red, there's nothing you can do. 23 owners tell you the sky is red, the sky is red. And that's it. So you got to get to them before they say the sky is red. And the way you do it, this, he's come, oh my god, I've had these conversations with presidents, with owners.

Speaker 1:
[37:32] How do you get the votes?

Speaker 4:
[37:34] You're getting votes.

Speaker 1:
[37:35] No, it's Congress.

Speaker 4:
[37:35] That's what you're out doing.

Speaker 1:
[37:37] It's politics, yeah.

Speaker 4:
[37:38] So I understand that you want it to be very mysterious.

Speaker 1:
[37:42] No, I actually love the demystification of it. And your point of view, and I want to make this even more literal than your point of view, your actual physical ability to see what was happening at Marlins Park, the view you had through the security system because you built the building and you're the president of the team. I mean, can you explain what you had access to as that guy?

Speaker 4:
[38:06] I had access where I could see where everyone was at all times. And why is that important? Because I need proof if I am ever compromised. And I don't mean myself personally, though I have a funny story about that, but I'm talking about if there's ever a situation where a fan is claiming something, I need to be able to know whether that's true. So we had cameras on fans, if they get hit by a foul ball, we are making sure that they were not looking at their phone.

Speaker 1:
[38:33] You have an arc, hold on, you have a vault, you maintained a vault of most innocently America's Funniest Home Videos. Of course. Of like Pratt Falls and...

Speaker 4:
[38:44] Until the Statute of Limitations runs out on what a lawsuit could be for a slip and fall, we'll keep, it's not like a 24-hour loop. We're keeping the tape until we can no longer be sued on the tape.

Speaker 1:
[38:55] How long does it take?

Speaker 4:
[38:56] So it depends on what it is, but three to five years.

Speaker 1:
[38:58] Very good.

Speaker 4:
[38:59] And so the reason why we have to keep it is, I don't want, he said, she said, it costs me more money in the settlements. I want actual proof. So we have cameras everywhere, everywhere. We have cameras everywhere. Why? Not because we care if someone's having sex in the restroom. We don't care if someone's-

Speaker 1:
[39:19] You don't have cameras in the restroom.

Speaker 4:
[39:21] Not in the toilets. We don't care if someone's doing lines. Like that wasn't what I was ever after, nor anyone on my security team. It wasn't about someone breaking the law. We didn't care about affairs.

Speaker 1:
[39:32] Did you care about fans who would criticize Jeffrey Luria, the owner of the team?

Speaker 4:
[39:35] 100%. We would have eyes on anyone, if they had any sort of sign, that would say, blame Jeffrey Luria or sell the team Jeffrey Luria. We have eyes on that person. That person is getting their sign removed, and they're likely going to get ejected. That's number one. You think that Jimmy Dolan is the only one who has eyes on sell the team people? It's a joke. Every owner has eyes on that.

Speaker 1:
[40:00] I mean, this is me as a fan now, right? The idea of like criticism being baked in to the business. Like, come on.

Speaker 4:
[40:10] Owners have a thinnest skin, and you can't even imagine how thin their skin is.

Speaker 1:
[40:14] I love to chronicle the ongoing translucence, and how, in fact, it is at times surprising even to someone cynical like me.

Speaker 4:
[40:22] Pablo, we had security. It's funny, we had, this is before facial recognition. We did facial recognition the old-fashioned way with actual photos, and we had people at every door.

Speaker 1:
[40:34] We had like a wanted poster.

Speaker 4:
[40:35] We, we, it was...

Speaker 1:
[40:36] Do not serve this man.

Speaker 4:
[40:37] It was actually that. At every entrance to the ballpark, there were pictures of people that we did not allow in for any reason I wanted.

Speaker 1:
[40:45] And you had a full, full choice.

Speaker 4:
[40:47] We're in charge of it. We are in charge of it. We don't need to get FBI most wanted. I could care less about the FBI most wanted. It's not about stopping a terrorist attack. I've got people who are helping me secure the building to stop it from attack. Different. What I'm using facial recognition for and what I would use it for and what everyone will use it for is to make sure that we are not subjecting our owner or our players or our president to anything they don't want to be subjected to. And I'm completely in favor of that. It's our house.

Speaker 1:
[41:20] I know you are.

Speaker 4:
[41:21] You don't have the right to come into my house and violate my rules. By the way, if I tell you you can come to dinner, but you have to take your shoes off, if you want to keep your shoes on, no problem. You just can't come to dinner.

Speaker 1:
[41:33] Well, what if I have also paid via taxes into the construction and the maintenance of your house?

Speaker 4:
[41:40] That is one of the great arguments of all time. I own part of this. It's like walking into McDonald's and saying I'm a season ticket holder. I want my Quarter Pounder made the way I want it made.

Speaker 1:
[41:50] Okay, so we are...

Speaker 4:
[41:52] It's not relevant.

Speaker 1:
[41:54] Okay, of course we disagree on this. And of course there is another episode which we will do about what is permissible because public money is involved or not. What is permissible when the premise of a sports arena or a team involves some notion of like civic relations and civic duty.

Speaker 4:
[42:12] Pablo, we have agreements online. Go look online Pablo. We have a thousand pages of agreements for our public money. We have everything. Not one paragraph talks about, hey, we got to make sure that you're not taking any looks at any of our citizens because of public money. They had the opportunity, the public did, if they wanted to negotiate some sort of protection to their citizens. It never came up in one negotiation.

Speaker 1:
[42:37] And part of I think what our reporting is indicating is that perhaps there should be conversation on the front end of such legislation, of such political decision making. That is another episode which we will get to, I promise, on this show that is trying to investigate everything.

Speaker 4:
[42:52] Good luck.

Speaker 1:
[42:53] And I appreciate that in the most sincere and sarcastic ways. But I want to take us now to a statement from MSG because of course part of what we do here journalistically is make sure that we get their point of view and what they gave to us in response to why it's reporting was the following statement. This story is built on false, misleading, unverified allegations including claims drawn from lawsuits filed by rapacious litigators. We categorically reject such reckless reporting and are actively evaluating our legal options against Wired. End quote. I say that after you say all the things that you said, because I think it's hilarious to deny the things it really is funny as a larger matter of what's really happening in sports. Before we go, the question that I need to find out about today, as I hold my friends to account, is whether you ever took advantage of the knowledge you had of your own ballpark security system. The surveillance state, you were the watchful eye yourself. Did you ever know how to hide something inside of your own house?

Speaker 4:
[44:06] Floor three of one of the northern garages has a corner in it where it is not actually on camera, and I knew that. And so I would go to that corner in order to do, to get away from anyone I needed to get away from to make a phone call that I didn't want anyone to hear or to do anything. I didn't want anyone to see that I would do. I knew about a corner if you lean down. So I had to squat, but there's a blind spot on the third floor of a garage, which is with the players garage. And if you lean down, that is a place that the cameras don't have.

Speaker 1:
[44:38] I will not rest until I find footage of you squatting out of sight.

Speaker 4:
[44:44] It doesn't exist. That's the point.

Speaker 1:
[44:57] Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Nealey Lohman, Rob McRae, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tuminello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bursic, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern, theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.