00:50:33 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:50:33] S0: Okay. And just for context Yes. If people haven't seen this yet, Tucker is basically positioning the takedown of Nikola as a woke witch hunt. Is that is that is that an accurate summary? [00:50:45] S1: It's it's kind of unclear. I think he's I think he's more just really, really open and digging into, hey, Trevor Milton. Like, tell your side of the story. And, it seemed like it seemed like Tucker didn't come with really strong opinions. At least for the part that I saw, it didn't seem like he was taking a super strong stance on, like, whether hydrogen is a good strategy or what happened. I haven't dug in in dug in but a lot of it a lot of those claims, think, don't come from Tucker. I think they come from, from Trevor Milton. And so the the real debate it seems like is between Nate Anderson and Trevor Milton's side of the story. I wouldn't say that in this podcast interview, Tucker has a particular like thesis that he's advancing. He's more just asking Trevor Milton to tell his side of the story. [00:51:36] S0: And people are not People [00:51:38] S1: are not happy with this for sure. [00:51:39] S0: People saying pitiful. Someone else is saying Trevor Milton is a convicted fraudster and pathological liar. Other guy is saying terrible take, scam artist platformed. Anyways, another person just says, seriously? Question mark? And even TikTok investors is [00:51:57] S1: TikTok investors? Memeing [00:51:58] S0: it just being like, wow. This is I mean, is [00:52:00] S1: a lot of people got burned. Right?
00:52:00 · John Coogan, Jordi Hays
[00:52:00] S1: a lot of people got burned. Right? [00:52:01] S0: The funny thing too is is he was Wasn't he initially prosecuted during the Trump admin?
00:52:08 · John Coogan
[00:52:08] S1: Yes. So, Nate goes into this. He says, I'm the founder of Hindenburg Research referenced repeatedly in this bizarre fantastical interview. During my career, I helped expose numerous financial scams including over a dozen Ponzi schemes and numerous instances of public companies lying to and stealing from investors. Of course, he's talking about Hindenburg Research, his firm. I am immensely proud of the career of that career including our work on Nikola Motors referenced in this interview. Trevor Milton is a convicted fraudster held criminally responsible for the incineration of hundreds of millions of dollars in retail investors' hard earned money and should and as should be unsurprising, Milton in this interview seems just to fabricate key events and information out of thin air. Unfortunately, with zero critical questioning or pushback from Tucker. For starters, contrary to Trevor Milton's implications that his prosecution was some sort of Biden administration conspiracy, conveniently neither Milton nor Tucker share that the investigation into Milton was started and disclosed in September 2020 under the first Trump admin as well as before the twenty twenty election. There were numerous inaccuracies throughout this interview. The claim that Hindenburg paid employees for inside information is patently absurd. The key whistleblower discussed in the interview was only briefly a contractor for Milton. He was so horrified by what he viewed as Milton's repeated false claims that he did a tremendous amount of research on his own unraveling numerous additional suspected lies that Milton peddled to the investing public. Further, Hindenburg didn't coordinate anything with media or the DOJ. Such entities ran their own investigations for the for their own purposes unconnected to us. There was ample evidence that Milton misstated numerous aspects of his business and as as the company later itself acknowledged. What's interesting is like, I feel like when we talked about the Marques Brownlee Escobar phone, like MKBHD kind of broke that story and did some investigative journalism, wound up getting his hands on the phone. And then the DOJ or the FBI came and said, hey, we want that phone as evidence. We'll give it back to you maybe in five years.
00:54:15 · John Coogan
And so, it's interesting that that it seems like the DOJ according to Nate Anderson did not coordinate with Hindenburg. Maybe that's just because Hindenburg was doing public research or just doing like informational research and didn't have any like hard physical evidence. But I certainly wouldn't be surprised if the DOJ reached out to Hindenburg, it seems like they didn't coordinate according to Nate Anderson. It would take hours to write out all the other absurdities, have truth, innuendos and false statements in this interview. But in the interest of correcting some of the record, here's a handful. Milton waxes on about his pardon, but no one mentions that Milton's lawyer was Brad Bondi, the brother of AG Pam Bondi, nor did anyone mention that Milton donated $900,000 to Trump in October 2024, less than a month before the recent election, strategically timed well after his criminal conviction and immediately prior to the presidential election. What's interesting is like like, you know, you you you take a company to bankruptcy, you wind up in prison for life, you would think that you get zeroed pretty hard to the degree that you don't have $900,000 sitting around to make a political donation. So I'm very curious about how the money flowed around post bankruptcy, post post post indictment and and conviction because I think that will change the calculus of people that are thinking about doing crazy stuff in the public markets. Yeah. Because if you're like, okay. Yes. I might get thrown in jail but then I can squirrel away some money, donate it, get pardoned and then have half left over to hang out like that's a pretty good deal. So
00:55:48 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan
[00:55:48] S0: Yeah. [00:55:48] S1: Certainly not the functioning of the system that we want. Very very odd. [00:55:53] S0: Yeah. The the other thing that Nate calls out Yep. He says, waxing poetic about hydrogen in the interview echoes Nikola lies to retail investors that it successfully produced hydrogen at a cost 81% lower than anyone on earth, a feat that it would have upended the entire energy industry had it been remotely true. Nikola's head of hydrogen production, presumably in charge of this world, world changing scientific breakthrough turned out to be Milton's own brother who had no scientific background and previously did odd construction jobs in Hawaii. [00:56:30] S1: See, I wanna push back on that because last night, I was like 7,000 deep and I feel like I cracked the code to Too bad. The the energy markets. [00:56:40] S0: ChatGPT had you pretty convinced that It was too. Yeah. You could produce hydrogen. [00:56:44] S1: It was like, John, you're you're onto something. [00:56:45] S0: You're onto something here. It doesn't matter that you're a podcaster. Go public. Yeah. It does not matter that you're just a mere podcaster. [00:56:52] S1: You cracked it. You cracked the [00:56:53] S0: the the you know, one thing you can kind of Tucker could have pushed on was Yeah. You rolled a truck downhill and you and you marketed it as though it was a functioning vehicle. [00:57:07] S1: Yep. That was a big one. [00:57:09] S0: And doesn't seem to be something that he pushed back on.
00:57:09 · Jordi Hays, John Coogan, Zak Kukoff
[00:57:09] S0: And doesn't seem to be something that he pushed back on. [00:57:14] S1: Yeah. Big questions about short selling. And he makes the case that short selling is good because it creates a financial incentive to expose companies that lie and engage in fraud. I think I agree with that. I think I'm pro short sellers. Although, of course, they can be very frustrating if you're on the other side and you're being shorted. Fortunately, TBPN is a privately held company, so we don't have to deal with short attacks. At least not now, but [00:57:43] S0: who knows? With that, let's bring in our Washington correspondent, Zak Kukoff. Zach. [00:57:49] S1: How you doing? What was [00:57:50] S0: your reaction what was your reaction to Trevor Milton going on on Tuck? Tuck Radio. [00:57:57] S5: I just think terrible choice of, network to go on first. The clear answer was TBPN. [00:58:02] S1: I I don't know if I'm ready. I I don't know. It's a tough [00:58:06] S0: We just come we'd come with a fact sheet of just fact by fact and say, did you roll the truck down the hill? [00:58:12] S5: You tell him you wouldn't have coddled him the way that soccer did? [00:58:16] S1: I don't know. [00:58:17] S0: I don't know. When we had Soham Parekh on people [00:58:19] S1: People were saying we went [00:58:20] S0: we went too easy. But clearly, we got him to just admit to having multiple jobs immediately. The question