Inside Rick Pitino's Private World of Scandal-Fixers, from Strippergate to Trump

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

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

Hold on to your testimony.

Don't get cute with me because I promise you telling you the truth.

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This is going to be one of those episodes, Cortez.

What does that mean?

One of those, like, you dive into my brain and it's really

long-winded.

Well,

I was going to say fascinating and surprising and entertaining while also being deeply substantive.

But yeah.

I have a lot to say about the fact that it is March.

It is college basketball season.

The most fascinating character in all of this, most fascinating storyline actually, in all of America right now in terms of this sport, it's not a player on any team.

To me, it is this guy.

The return of Rick Petino to the Big East won the big storylines heading into the college basketball season.

Patino has taken five different programs for the NCAA tournament.

Could St.

John's be next?

The 71-year-old is the only coach to ever win national titles with multiple programs.

It is Rick Petino's season, Cortez.

Of course.

That is why I'm bringing you to this table because the Big East tournament is starting next week.

St.

John's, where Rick Petino is now coaching.

They've won three in a row.

They might make it to the tournament, the NCAA tournament now in his first year.

They look good.

They do.

But the thing I have never questioned is whether Rick Petino is like good at winning college basketball games.

The thing I have been mystified by, truly, this entire time is simply how Rick Petino is still being branded as not just an all-time coach, but an all-time role model.

As his now university president, Reverend Brian Shanley at St.

John's, a very Catholic school, introduced him one year ago.

And I believe that Rick not only will bring a winning culture to St.

John's, but he will be a transformative figure in the lives of our student athletes.

And that's the most valuable quality that I think Rick Petino brings to St.

John's.

He's going to change their lives.

They're going to be shaped indelibly by this man, which is a loaded statement when you do realize that in 2017, this happened.

Rick Petino, college basketball's highest paid coach for perennial powerhouse, the University of Louisville.

Coach, did they fire you?

Today, placed on unpaid administrative leave.

After a federal criminal investigation Tuesday alleged two unnamed Louisville coaches worked with an Adidas executive to pay high school recruits six figures to go to Louisville, a school sponsored by Adidas.

And by the way, I'm like pretty numb to college athletes being paid and all that stuff.

The thing about Rick Betino, though, is that two years before that, in 2015, he got in trouble because his players were getting something else.

Head coach Rick Betino of the college basketball powerhouse, Louisville Cardinals, taking to his blog amidst allegations that the team hired female escorts to woo recruits, writing, I'm sorry, we all have to endure the pain of these allegations, but despite the public outcry for him to step down, he says, I will not resign and let you down.

Side deals were sex, and if they wanted to make extra money, that's what the side deal was.

Sex.

But that also is not even the first sex scandal that Rick Petino has had to deal with at Louisville.

We're just scratching the surface.

And this is where I first scratched the surface because it was 2009 when this news came out.

And Rick Petino had to publicly admit to cheating on his wife with a former model slash windshield saleswoman.

That's right.

Named Karen Cipher.

You might remember this.

Karen Cipher, by the way, would eventually go to prison for trying to extort millions of dollars from Petino.

Last month, Karen Cipher told police that Petino raped her in 2003 at this Louisville restaurant.

One month later,

she reportedly told Petino she was pregnant and wanted an abortion.

Patino gave her $3,000, he says, to pay for health insurance.

Cypher says it was to pay for her abortion.

And just for the record here, Rick Petino was never charged with rape, never charged with any crime at all.

And in fact, Karen, the woman in question, who I interviewed, was in fact a deeply unreliable narrator about a lot of the things she claimed.

But the reason why this scandal remains the single most batch scandal in college sports history to me, and maybe even just all of sports in terms of anything that I've covered before.

Wow.

The reason why I believe that is because when I flew down to Louisville in 2009 to report on this thing, I did in fact confirm a bunch of important events.

One of them is that in fact, Rick Petino in 2003, that one night did meet Karen at a friend's restaurant in Louisville.

It's sort of like an upscale Italian place.

Its name is Porcini.

He has a half dozen photos of himself like hanging on the wall.

His friend is the owner.

That same night, that friend let Rick Petino hang out after hours and in the restaurant there were just three people remaining it was rick petino it was rick petino's executive assistant this man named vinnie tatum and it was karen the woman he had just met when he got up to leave petino says she whispered something opened his pants and the two had sex very briefly oh yeah that's the 15 second thing yes yeah i remember this it was 15 seconds that's how long it took rick petino uh to finish according to his own uh obviously instantaneously viral court testimony about this i mean in basketball, 15 seconds or less is a turn.

No, it's seven seconds or less.

Oh, I mean, close enough.

So in that way, I mean, I guess not as bad.

But the point being, this took place at a table by the restaurant bar.

But the craziest part about all of this, I've not even gotten to yet.

Because what happens next, Cortez.

So Karen tells Rick Petino that she is pregnant, that the baby is his.

But the reason I've been thinking about all of this for 15 years is because what he proceeds to do is send one of his most trusted assistants, one of his closest friends, this inner circle guy named Tim Cipher.

And Tim ends up driving Karen to Cincinnati across state lines to get an abortion, an abortion paid for with money from Rick Petino.

Wow.

And then,

less than a year later, thereabouts, Tim Cipher proposes.

to Karen

and they get married.

This is insane, dude.

So the right-hand guy, Tim Cipher, marries Karen.

This is why her last name is Cypher.

This is why she's Karen Cipher.

And this is also why Karen would go on road trips to games with Tim and with Rick.

And they'd be at parties together and at team functions together after all the shit that the restaurant happened.

That's like straight out of Vanderpump Rules.

It is wild.

Okay, objectively wild.

And Karen would, by the way, later allege that Rick Petino paid Tim Cipher to marry her.

And they deny that for the record.

But the point here is that Karen and Tim did go on to have a daughter.

Okay.

And as Tim revealed while testifying at his now ex-wife's federal extortion trial, this is 2010, Rick Petino quietly provided them with financial support.

His testimony began talking about a college fund that was set up for his and Karen Cipher's young daughter that was set up back in 2007.

Tim Cipher says

Rick Petino initiated that fun.

So all of this, Cortez, is to say, and I've been talking at you a lot today, but all of this is to say that this is the transformative figure, the role model that St.

John's, this Catholic school, wanted.

And so what I wanted to do was find out more about these people around Rick Petino.

The people around him who most people don't know about, the people who are seemingly there to help keep his image pristine and very clean.

Of course, what we discover is that

this whole story is somehow even weirder.

This is already a weird story.

It seems hard to believe that it's going to get weirder.

You have seen nothing yet.

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Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Veeen Champain, a 14 alcoholic volume, 400 by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

I have a million tabs up on my computer, Tim.

I walk around this office, sort of like muttering to myself about Rick Petino scandals.

So thank you for joining me in the rabbit hole.

Yo, thanks for having me.

I have been obsessed with Petino and this story.

I mean, I guess the Karen Cipher story in specific, but I want to be clear that you are not like this or you weren't like this.

You were an outsider.

I was living my life peacefully, normally, and then you called me and said you had a story you wanted me to look into.

Yes, because you are a really good reporter.

You're an investigative reporter who's also done just human stories about people.

And I just wanted someone else to take a look at this thing because I've been looking at it for way too long.

And I feel like you got potentially more than you bargained for.

Yeah, yeah, that's that'd be safe to say.

The Patino Cipher thing, I want people to understand the degree to which this has been,

it's a lot.

It's even more incestuous than I just laid out in that first segment.

Like, I remember just reviewing paperwork with Karen Cipher at her, at her home when I was in Louisville in 2009,

so long ago now.

And I was reviewing baptismal certificates tim and it said the priest who baptized uh tim cipher and karen cipher's daughter was rick petino's priest that's just one side of the story though and so i sort of threw it to you like hey tim um there are these three big scandals that this guy's been involved with that's one of them go report out what this sort of network of people in the shadows is really like.

And so what was your approach?

You and I start talking and it's like, what is this world that Rick Petino operates in, right?

Like, who are these people that work for him that carry out these tasks that are almost like fixers?

There's this guy, Vinnie Tatum, for instance.

Yes.

And Vinny Tatum.

The guy in the restaurant.

The guy in the restaurant.

He's Petino's designated driver, essentially.

Yes.

So which explains why he's there at the restaurant, Porcini, after hours as Rick Petino, Karen Cipher are doing it at a table.

He does whatever Petino needs in whatever aspect of his life, apparently.

But he goes by the moniker Vinny Good Times, and that's his Instagram handle.

That's his Twitter handle.

He's posing with his former boss.

He's posing with Rick.

Then also there was this guy, Tim Cipher, another central character to this Karen Cipher scandal, was at one point in time a private investigator in Massachusetts.

And at Louisville, Tim Cipher is the equipment manager.

You know, like typical private investigator resumes suggest.

You go from that to equipment managing.

Exactly.

But then also, I kind of expanded it to think, you know, through all these scandals, Rick Petino, he's still coaching.

He's back coaching.

He went to Greece, went to Iona.

Now he's at St.

John's.

But there's other people that were caught up in these scandals that are not in basketball anymore.

It derailed careers, if nothing else.

It derailed careers.

So the natural question is, you know, who are these people?

What are they doing now?

What role did they play in Rick Petino's life back then?

What role do they play now?

When Patino started getting in trouble at Louisville, starting with the Karen Cipher scandal, Patino's lawyers hired a guy named Carl Christensen.

He's a former FBI agent, turned private investigator, to come work on the case.

What was the purpose of your investigation there?

Well, the purpose was to get to the facts, to see exactly what did occur.

And Carl walked me through his whole process of what he was doing.

And he would go out, interview sources, track down witnesses, and build a report about what happened

it's not totally dissimilar from what i asked you to do except he was being paid by rick patino to do it exactly and he made that point several times he's like you and i were not so different

really when you think about it you know i'm simply collecting what other people have to say pretty much like you do

He investigated all three of those scandals.

He investigated the Karen Cipher scandal.

He investigated the escort scandal and he investigated investigated the Adidas scandal.

So then Patino's legal team had a report and they knew what they were dealing with when they would have to defend him.

But the number one question that I had from the outside about a guy like Carl doing this job is, how do you possibly prove that this guy, Rick Petino, does not know what his own employees are up to?

Yeah, I mean, that was my question as well.

The escort scandal, for instance.

From 2010 to 2014, Andre McGee, who was a member of Rick Petino's coaching staff, he was a graduate assistant at first, he was allegedly arranging for women, strippers and escorts, to come party with Louisville basketball players and recruits.

Yes, on campus.

And during those four years, Rick Betino promoted him, made him the director of basketball operations.

The idea that this was happening in that place without Petino knowing, allegedly.

The question people have is, if all of these other people knew, how did Rick Petino not know?

He's a micromanager.

He's a college basketball coach, right?

They like to know bedtimes, curfew.

And so I asked Carl Christensen, and Carl had conducted this investigation, and he was, you know, sure of the results.

You know, many people were in disbelief that how could a coach

not know that this was occurring and it had occurred on several occasions.

And so

he continued to insist he didn't know.

And to this day, I don't think he did know.

As he's doing those two investigations, the S-Court investigation and the Adidas investigation, at a certain point in the process, Rick Betino and his team, his lawyers, they say, hey, let's put Rick through a lie detector test.

Carl Christensen, former FBI guy, he's trained to give lie detector tests.

Betino passed the test both times.

The only thing I could say is I've already taken a lie detector test given by an FBI agent, ex-FBI agent, and I passed it saying I knew nothing about any money given to anybody.

I knew nothing about Adidas doing anything.

And so, for all these questions we have about did Rick Petino know, did he not know, Carl Christensen, former FBI, did these two investigations and he believes, you know, Rick Betino didn't know, and he's steadfast in that belief.

He believes Rick Petino.

Based on all the evidence I've collected over the years,

I don't have any, there's been no one, not a single individual.

Usually, you know, in many instances, you have somebody that is just going to,

you know, maybe hate Patino for some reason and make up some kind of story.

The only person that did that was Karen Cipher.

So the Karen Cipher thing, we're back to her now.

If Carl is the guy who believes fully in Patino's innocence on all these levels and his honesty on all these levels.

What about the actual people, though?

What did they say when you tried to reach out to them personally?

I tried tried reaching out to Vinny Tatum.

He said, I'm not interested and hung up.

Yeah, Vinny Good Times, not seeing you as a good time.

I reached out to Tim Cipher.

He responded a week later saying, quote, not interested.

Time moves on.

Tried calling Tim Curry, the owner of Porcini, the restaurant.

Never heard back from him.

Andre McGee, the director of basketball operations involved in the escort scandal.

I sent him a letter in the mail.

Never heard back.

Jordan Fair, the assistant coach who was involved with the Adidas scandal, same thing.

And then Brian Bowen, after the whole Adidas scandal, he did not play college basketball and now he's in the G-League.

And so his career

was completely changed by this and never heard back.

And so the brick wall in front of you,

how do you get past that?

Yeah, I had nothing.

I was dreading.

I think I remember I was like, I don't know what I'm going to tell Pablo.

You know, I didn't get anyone to talk.

I don't know what we're going to do.

And then

I got a letter.

A letter from Rick Betino's attorneys.

Dear Mr.

Rowan, we represent Mr.

Rick Betino, Coach Bettino.

This letter is prompted by concerns recently expressed to our client by persons you contacted regarding Coach Betino's personal life, including matters that may have occurred more than 20 years ago.

Normally, interactions with the press do do not warrant apprehension, and particularly in these instances, which includes the incident where the felon who perpetrated crimes against Coach Petino and others was found guilty and served significant prison time.

That would be Karen Cipher, the reference there.

The official records have been public for many years, and given their lack of current newsworthiness, one may be forgiven for believing your interest is purely salacious.

The tenor of your conversations, however, led them to suspect an agenda to manufacture a purported expose that threatened to place Coach Patino in a false light, if not defame him.

It is our sincere hope that those impressions were mistaken and that you would not act negligently or with malice, because our client cannot allow serious or damaging misstatements to go uncorrected.

The purpose of this letter, therefore, is to ensure that any publication is factually accurate, fair to its subjects, and does not unduly invade privacy rights or interfere with personal and business relations.

We would be remiss not to address these concerns now if, together, we can prevent dissemination of inaccurate, invasive, or unfair content.

So I should point out here that I have never received a letter like this before in my years being a journalist.

Yeah.

Have you?

What is the, what is the, no, yeah, no, not that I can recall.

No, I mean, I've done, you know, I do investigative reporting and have reported on sensitive subjects, on powerful people.

But here is this letter in my email inbox and physically at my address.

This feels extreme.

And this feels like somebody who is

very

conspicuously on guard against you finding out something.

Yeah, that was my reaction too.

I hadn't hadn't really done anything.

I had made a phone, you know, a couple phone calls.

And this feels, I mean, just to put a blunt point on this, like, it seems like the point of this letter is to intimidate you and me into not

continuing with this episode.

Yeah, I think the point was to scare us.

But it's getting weird, Tim.

Like, I set you off on this thing with like a blank slate approach, and it started getting a little weird.

This is when it gets weird, and it's going to get weirder.

It was actually the day before I got the letter from Patino's attorneys.

I got a phone call from a number in Massachusetts.

And so I pick up the phone and the voice on the other line, you know, greets me with a, you know, warm, hey, you know, how's it going?

I say, hey, this is Tim.

Who is this?

They don't really answer.

They don't really, they don't tell me their name and they just kind of talking in circles.

This is bizarre.

It was very bizarre.

The call lasted between 20 and 30 seconds.

And I finally am just like, okay, have a nice day.

And I hang up.

And then the next day, the same day I received the letter from Rick Battino's attorneys, that same number

called me back twice after 10 p.m.

I did not pick up the phone, but it occurred to me when I saw the missed calls, like,

why is that person calling me back?

So the next day, I called the number back and the guy picked up and he's like, I'm busy right now.

I'll call you back in two minutes.

Like, what do you mean you'll call me back?

I don't even know who you are.

What does the voice sound like at this point?

It's a distinct Massachusetts accent.

He did not call me back in two minutes.

He called me back a couple days later, and it was a Sunday morning.

I did not pick up that call either.

I was sleeping.

And later that day, I tried calling him back, and I get his voicemail.

This is the first time I get his voicemail, and it's for a guy named John Moynihan.

I had just received this letter from Rick Betino's attorneys a couple days earlier.

And I'm like, could this be someone associated with Rick Betino?

And so I Googled it.

John Moynihan came up as someone who works for Clark Hill, the same law firm that sent me the letter, the same law firm that represents Rick Betino.

Why the f would this guy be doing this?

And so he calls me back.

You know, he's like, hey, how's it going?

Again, like, we're friends, like, we know each other.

I'm like, hey, it's going good.

And I ask, who is this?

And he hangs up the phone immediately.

Hi, hi.

Is this John?

Hello?

Like, what is the, is he, is he messing?

Is he fing with me?

Is he trying to intimidate me?

Is he, like, why is this happening?

So as all of this is happening in January, Tim, I want to establish that we were sitting at this desk.

You came into the office and we sort of like put our heads together as you, I don't want to speak for you here, but it felt like you felt like maybe now you were being watched.

Yeah, it felt like,

yes, it felt like they're coming after me.

And so this is where I should say like,

sorry for the assignment I gave you.

But you come into the office and I'm now, I'm just like super invested, right?

I'm like, oh, this is

now there's a mystery I did not anticipate that we have to solve, which is this John Moynihan guy.

Is he who we suspect he is?

The same John Moynihan from the law firm that had also sent you the letter at home at your address that you did not give them and is now like calling you at weird hours of the night.

And it leads us to another rabbit hole.

And what we find

is a video from December 2018.

It's C-SPAN,

and it is the House Oversight Committee holding a hearing that is investigating, because of course this story goes here, the Clinton Foundation.

Mr.

Moynihan, you are recognized for up to 10 minutes.

Thank you, Chairman.

I'd like to thank you, Chairman Meadows, and other members of the committee for having us here today.

My name is John Moynihan, and I'm one of three partners that engaged in this investigative effort involving a 501c3, and in particular, the Clinton Foundation, the subject of today's hearing.

And what we learned pretty early on here is that John Moynihan is, in fact, a former federal agent.

He used to work for the Drug Enforcement Administration, and he is sitting in this video, Tim, on C-SPAN in front of a microphone on Capitol Hill.

He's been invited there by Mark Meadows, whose voice you heard there,

who is at that point the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee.

He would then later become the last man to hold the title of Donald Trump's chief of staff, incidentally.

But we realize that John Moynihan is an expert in investigation.

At this point, I'd like to answer two questions.

Who are we?

We are apolitical.

We follow facts.

That's all.

None of this is our opinion.

I emphasize, none of this is our opinion.

These are not our facts.

They are not your facts.

They are the facts of the Clinton Foundation.

Why did we do this?

This is our profession.

People will ask us, are you doing this for money?

The answer is yes.

This is how we make a living.

We do cases.

It's that simple.

I hesitate to profile this gentleman, Tim, but that sounds like a Massachusetts accent.

Very, yeah.

That's the guy who's calling me.

It's an incredible video, this hearing, by the way, as he wears his suited tie and he's sitting in front of Mark Meadows because he goes out for another hour plus.

So we were able to actually like check out, okay, this does seem like him.

And when he says

we, John Moynihan, he's referring to the guy sitting right next to him, which is this guy, Lawrence Doyle.

When you look him up, you find out that he worked for a company that was called DM Income Advisors.

And when you Google DM Income Advisors, you find a listing at, of course, this story goes here next, the Worcester Chamber of Commerce, their website.

And at the bottom of that listing for DM Income Advisors, you find a phone number next to the name John Moynihan that is, spoiler alert, the number that I've been calling you over and over again.

Exactly.

So, I mean, what did you think?

I mean, we were sitting here at this desk.

I had goosebumps all over my body because when I set out to do this story and assign you this, I did not anticipate we'd get to the House Oversight Committee so quickly.

Yeah.

But we've just connected him to his Clark Hill law firm bio page in which we find what?

yeah if you go to the clark hill website john moyhan has a listing and he's called a special advisor for clark hill clark hill the law firm that sent you the letter to your house yes that the one and the same but also on the clark hill website they have a whole press release page kind of touting this victory that they had in representing rick petino and in the press release they mention none other than John Moynihan for having worked on the case and for having provided, quote, investigative assistance.

And so it appears that John Moynihan is now the new Carl Christensen.

Clark Hill enters the picture around 2022 when Rick Petino is defending himself in front of this NCAA investigation with the IARP, the Independent Accountability Resolution Process.

Another very deeply bureaucratic sounding committee.

Petino basically had this hearing in front of this independent panel regarding the Adidas scandal.

And so he had to defend himself in front of this independent panel.

And so he hires Clark Hill to represent him.

And they go through this process.

And after the panel's review, they decide not to punish Rick Petino at all.

He is apparently found not guilty.

And the lawyer sitting next to Rick Petino at this press conference is Stephen Stapleton, the very same person who sent me this letter regarding my reporting.

Which is all to say that we also were able to find video of Steve Stapleton sitting right next to Rick Betino at a hearing of a different import.

And that sounded like this.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Again, my name is Steve Stapleton from Clark Hill Council for Coach Betino.

This has been a long and tedious five years for Coach Bettino.

It's been very stressful for him and his family.

He lost a job that he loved a lengthy contract and he listened to lies that were told by many about him these past five years

although the iarp panel's decision completely exonerates coach betino there are no winners as we got to know coach and review the voluminous record before the panel it was clear to us that coach petino did not commit a violation

He did nothing wrong.

So just to be very clear here, Tim, when he says full exoneration, he did nothing wrong.

I feel obliged to point out that not everybody has that same interpretation of the ruling.

Yeah, Sports Illustrated in particular wrote a column that, you know, called out the panel and the board.

And one of the questions was the panel ended up

putting down sanctions or punishment against two of Patino's assistants.

Right.

But they also concluded that Patino did not have,

I guess it wasn't his job to oversee his assistants.

And so there's this kind of,

you know,

the question of oversight.

It is, I would say,

very interesting how oftentimes it's these leaders of men, these great head coaches, these all-timers who write books about leadership.

And I'll quote Rick Petino's book.

This one is called Success is a Choice.

And the quote that feels relevant here is this, quote, you create your own luck.

You create what happens to you based on your decisions.

You create your future, both by your actions and your non-actions.

End quote.

Which is to say, when it comes to just telling people how they could be better at leading others, it's very easy for these guys to say, you're responsible for what happens to you because you're a leader.

And then when it comes to a committee judging whether you are actually responsible, you say, actually, it's not my fault.

It's whose fault.

He's consistently placed the blame on his assistants.

The only thing he's guilty of is hiring the wrong people.

And so the question of who is Rick Pacino hiring brings us back to John Moynihan.

And it brings us back, Tim, to the fact that now we know who the f this guy is.

We have heard his voice.

We have seen his face.

We have a sense of his biography in full clarity.

Now we've linked the number to the man.

And at this point, the next move here is obvious, which is to say it's time for the investigative journalist to actually investigate the investigator.

I guess it's time for me to try to call call him to get him on the phone because at this point, you know, the story, we're so far away from Vinnie Tatum and Tim Cypher at this point.

So far away.

At this point, it's like, who is John Moynihan?

Right.

Why is he calling me?

How is he now a main character in this whole thing?

And then also, what is Rick Petino's role?

Did Rick Petino tell John Moynihan to call me?

We return to the fundamental question we started with, actually.

And in this way, it's the same story.

Who are the people protecting Rick Petino?

and how do they operate?

And so, when you try to get John Moynihan now on the phone, as you are the guy out going,

making calls,

what happens?

So, I called him up

and

he answered very warmly as he had done in our previous calls.

And right off the bat, I asked him, and maybe this was a mistake in hindsight, but I asked him, is this John?

Hi, hi, is this John?

Hello?

And immediately hangs up the phone.

I tried calling him with Google Voice and didn't answer.

He knows that you know who he is.

And so that's kind of where I left things for a little bit.

This is where I get almost unhealthily obsessed with John Moynihan myself, because when you continue to watch him on C-SPAN, Tim, what you realize is that, oh, the reason he's in front of the House Oversight Committee and Mark Meadows is because he has promised that he has the dirt on the Clintons.

And Mark Meadows is asking repeatedly, can you share with us the dirt you have?

And he becomes as frustrated as I imagine you were with John Moynihan when he wasn't answering your basic questions.

Based on your facts, do you believe there's probable cause of wrongdoing?

Yes or no?

Yes.

Mr.

Doyle.

Hugely.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

So

let me get to this.

I think you guys have been well advised in terms of trying to protect your interests.

So let me just be blunt.

I checked with the IRS Commissioner.

Nothing that you say in this forum, according to him, will actually affect any potential claim that you have already submitted.

That's what he told me.

So if that is indeed the case, do you have a problem giving the 6,000 pages that you have submitted, if it will not affect your financial claims, to the minority and the majority of this committee, do you have a problem with that?

We'll take that under advisory counsel.

Well, then you need to go ahead with your counsel right now because, listen, my patience is running thin.

You're here to provide expert testimony on what you found.

And what I'm saying is, is that if you have a legitimate claim, we will protect that.

But if you're not going to share the information with this committee and cut to the chase, my patience is running out.

And this kept going, by the way.

And Lawrence Doyle, the guy sitting right next to John Moynihan, his partner,

decides to shy benefit.

We shared our materials not only with the attorney office in Salt Lake, also

in Little Rock, but other U.S.

Attorneys' offices as well that had been indicated as providing support or working on Clinton-related matters.

You've shared all of those documents with those entities, and yet you somehow do not believe that you should share it with Congress and the American people?

Well,

this is the...

Answer that one for me, Mr.

Monahan.

I'll answer it.

I want to hear this because, quite frankly, are you going to prosecute the Clintons?

Are you going to bring an action against the Clintons that would yield us economic consortium?

I don't think you are.

Those entities.

But I thought, hold on to your testimony.

Don't get cute with me because I promise you.

I'm telling you the truth.

I promise you.

I thought you said you were all about the rule of law.

That was in your opening statement.

We were all about justice and truth.

And that's where it kind of became just Keystone cops, Tim, in a way that might be familiar to you talking to this guy on the phone.

And John Moynihan was a thing in DC for reasons that get even weirder because you further tumble down the rabbit hole on him and you realize that, okay, one of his longtime partners and associates is another former federal agent, a former CIA analyst, turned conspiracy blogger named Larry Johnson.

Mr.

Johnson, please turn on your microphone.

Here's how I'm loud enough to talk over it.

Sorry.

Pleased to be here today with my partner and friend, John Moynihan.

And Larry Johnson became notable in the world of American politics because of an appearance he made on the esteemed news network known as OAN in 2019.

Larry Johnson was an analyst for both the CIA and the State Department.

He told One American News that now that the Mueller probe is closed, it is time for the American people to learn the truth about how the British government helped the Obama administration dodge the Fourth Amendment by spying on the 2016 Trump campaign for them.

One of the

strengths and weaknesses or dangers of this five eyes cooperative is that it provides

a channel for sharing intelligence information.

What's going on?

I don't know what's so that is Larry Johnson, a noted conspiracy theorist who is a longtime business partner of your boy John Moynihan.

And that news appearance on OAN, and I use news and scare quotes, was a thing because President Donald Trump tweeted about it.

But I want to bring this back to closer to the present and to John Moynihan himself, Tim.

Okay.

John Moynihan re-emerged to file a whistleblower complaint alleging that the special prosecutor currently pursuing Donald Trump, Jack Smith, over electoral interference and January 6th.

John Moynihan has

re-emerged to allege that Jack Smith was engaged in an extortion scheme while he was at the International Court of Justice.

And Larry Johnson, his boy, who we heard on OAN, is writing about it.

And Michael Flynn, General Michael Flynn, another member of the Trump cabinet,

he's here tweeting about it.

And all of this is just this conspiratorial bullshit.

But it feeds directly into the top of American politics as Donald Trump himself is attacking Jack Smith like this.

The prosecutor in the case,

I will call it our case, is a thug.

I've named him deranged Jack Smith.

I wonder what his name used to be, Jack Smith.

It sounds so innocent, doesn't it?

Jack Smith.

What's his name?

Jack Smith.

He's a very nice man.

He's a behind the scenes guy.

But his record is absolutely atrocious.

In some ways, it was both incredibly shocking to know that we were going to wind up

with Donald Trump.

But in another way, it kind of felt perfect.

It kind of, like, of course, the guy who is now very much a character in Donald Trump's latest convenient conspiracy theory is the guy calling you seemingly on behalf of Rick Petino.

Yeah, like, but what?

Like,

how did we get here?

I'm just, it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's weird.

It's surreal.

Where's this going?

We need to go back to Clark Hill.

The law firm that warned us against reporting on this, it's time for you to go back and say, we've been doing a little bit more reporting on this.

Exactly.

You and I put together a list of questions here, and we sent them over nine questions.

There are just some basic ones in there.

Did Clark Hill direct John Moynihan to contact me via phone?

Did Rick Betino direct John Moynihan to contact me via phone?

Or did he have any knowledge of Moynihan's efforts to contact me?

What was the purpose of these calls?

Did Clark Hill's lawyers consult Rick Betino about the letter?

What involvement did he have?

And then we also asked, does St.

John's University contribute financially to any of Rick Betino's legal fees?

Right.

It is worth remembering here that, oh, yeah, right.

St.

John's hired this guy to be the leader of

the face of their school, basically, the leader of men that they had touted him to be at their opening press conference.

I believe that Rick not only will bring a winning culture to St.

John's, but he will be a transformative figure in the lives of our student athletes.

We asked them those questions and a few others, and

we got a response from Stephen Stapleton.

Yes, and the excerpt in this case was shorter.

Yeah, and he, Stephen, responded to me and said, we received your emails.

We again attached our letter dated January 16th, 2024.

The first sentence of the letter disclosed that we represent Rick Betino.

The letter is very clear, and you should read it carefully.

And so...

They're not mad at you, Tim.

They're just disappointed.

Steve Sableton's response went on to add, he said, if you have specific unprivileged questions related to Coach Betino, please send those in writing to us and we will pass them on to Coach Petino for his review.

And that was promising.

Yeah.

We asked versions of the same questions, but now rewritten.

So they're directed towards Rick.

And so we sent that letter to Steve Stapleton on the morning of Sunday, February 18th.

And, you know, we told them, hey, it'd be great if you can get back to us in a couple of days.

And it just so happened

that Sunday, St.

John's had a basketball game, and they played Seton Hall.

Didn't go well.

They blew a 19-point lead, Pablo.

And in the post-game press conference, Rick Petino goes off and he calls out his players by name.

He's naming names.

Shockingly, Rick Petino is blaming others.

This has been the most unenjoyable experience I've had since I've been coaching.

His day started with a letter from you.

It resulted in this presser that was miserable.

But all of this reminds me that John Moynihan is not going to be answered for by Rick Petino or Clark Hill, his employer, or any of the people that we're going through here by knocking on their door.

And so

what happened to John Moynihan?

So, you know, throughout all of my interactions with John Moynihan, never got a chance to ask him these questions we wanted to ask him.

The whole point of trying to contact him toward the end was we wanted to get an interview.

The same opportunity to speak for himself that we've given every single person that we've sent letters and phone calls and texts and emails to.

On Sunday, February 18th, the same day we sent the questions to Rick Petino's lawyers, I sent a text message to John Moynihan asking him, would he do an interview?

Would he sit down and talk?

We had all these questions that we wanted to ask him.

At this point, you know, you and I had gone down the rabbit hole.

We had looked up the phone number.

The voices matched up.

Like there had been all these confirmations that, okay, this is the same John Moynihan.

But in the back of my head, I was like, really?

Like, there's no, it can't be.

Why is the former federal DEA agent calling you from his own number with his voicemail activated?

And then he texts me back and confirms, you know, in responding to this text that it's him.

You've asked him, will you sit for an interview?

Yes, and this is what he writes back.

He says, absolutely not.

Please let Rick Petino alone.

He's been through a lot in his life/slash career.

Please note, somehow your phone number populated into my phone.

Calls made to you from my phone were not intended to you, rather to the contact in my phone your number populated to.

I've contacted my carrier how something like that could even happen.

Which is an incredible, I mean, Tim.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even know what to make of that.

Like, he's I've contacted my carrier, Tim.

It doesn't make any sense.

And then there's another sentence.

There's another line.

He ends the text by saying, the carrier has opened an investigation into that and stated to me they were contacting the FCC to review.

So he's getting the FCC involved.

Thank God.

Finally, finally the FCC has been brought.

It's just phenomenal bullshit.

All of this, though, brings us at the very, very end here to just like wanting to still hear from the guy behind the guy, behind the guy, right?

Like Rick Petino.

I was

really hoping to hear his voice just to speak for his own self, finally.

And instead, I feel like the closest thing we have on the record is that presser that we played before.

It's him sitting next to the guy that wrote the letter to you, sent it to your house, Steve Stapleton, who employs the aforementioned aforementioned John Moynihan.

And Rick Petino gets asked in this mission-accomplished presser in which he's vindicated,

supposedly.

He's asked, like, you know, like, how does it feel to finally be exonerated?

And Rick Petino says this.

My son said to me, Dad, you wrote a book.

Now, knock it off, please.

My son was my assistant coach,

who's a brilliant mind in his own right, and he's now the head coach in New Mexico.

He said, Dad, that's it.

Stop with,

we know you're innocent.

Your players know you're innocent.

They know what you're all about.

Your family knows what you're all about.

Stop trying to convince people.

And I took his advice.

I hate taking advice from my son, Richard, but I took his advice and he was right.

So, Tim, when you hear Rick Petino saying, I've taken my son's advice, I'm done writing books, I'm done defending myself.

This was 2022.

He said all of this.

He's done speaking for himself.

What goes through your mind as we contemplate the question we started with, which is, how is Rick Petino still here, still avoiding a stain that feels like it would have knocked out pretty much any other person who might have been linked to the same things?

Well, my thought is, you know, maybe Rick isn't the one defending himself out there in the public square, and maybe he's not doing that, but he doesn't have to.

This legal apparatus will leap into action to defend Rick Petino.

Yes, a legal apparatus that is otherwise being used, by the way, to defend Donald Trump and election deniers and conspiracies in Washington gets trained upon the journalist who dares to knock on the front door.

So that's what I wonder.

I wonder is how many other people have asked similar questions and have gotten responses like this, right?

Like how many letters have Clark Hill sent out to this effect to, you know, how many people started this process, got pushback from Clark Hill, and then abandoned it, right?

It's a good question.

Yeah.

And so that's, that's the thing, right?

It's not, we're not debating what Rick Petino knew, what he didn't know.

The fact is he's been linked to these three scandals.

And what we've learned through this process is behind the scenes, there's this whole group that is working on behalf of Rick Petino to make sure that his image stays clean, that whatever he's been accused of, whatever he's been linked to, his suit is going to end up looking nice at the end of the day because they are working for him to make sure that people don't ask questions that he doesn't want answered.

Right.

And there's a loyalty that's conspicuous too.

Yeah.

I mean,

look at the text message John Moynihan sent me.

Please leave Rick alone.

And that's what we wanted to know.

What is the relationship between John Moynihan and Rick Petino?

Why does John Moynihan feel such an affinity for Rick Petino that he would say something like that, right?

Why Vinny Tatum?

and Tim Cipher, right?

These two guys we started this story with who were working with Petino at Louisville for all those years.

What loyalty do they have to Patino, right?

I mean, those are the questions we started with.

Yeah.

And I don't know if we got

concrete answers, but we learned a lot, right?

Hopefully.

I think we learned both very little and so much more than I ever dreamed we would.

That's a good way of putting it.

Yeah.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.