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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Friday, October 24th. I’m Jane Coaston and this is What a Day, the show listening to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and having a brilliant idea. 

[clip of unnamed news reporter] In addition to the ballroom and the Rose Garden patio, is the president looking at any other renovations or significant kind of projects here at the White House? 

[clip of Karoline Leavitt] Uh. Not to my knowledge, no. But he’s a builder at at heart, clearly. And so his his heart and his mind is always churning about how to improve things here on the White House grounds. But at this moment in time, of course, the ballroom is really the president’s main priority. 

Jane Coaston: What if the ballroom was President Donald Trump’s only priority? No time for anything else. Anything. Just paint swatches and wallpaper consultations for the next three years. [music break] On today’s show, Trump pardons a billionaire who created the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. And the U.S. breaks another record with the gross national debt surpassing $38 trillion. Gross indeed. But let’s start with FBI director Kash Patel. Kash Patel had a very big day on Thursday, and no, it did not involve mixed martial arts, violating the constitutional rights of everyday Americans or getting yelled at on the hill. Rather, it involved announcing indictments as part of a massive investigation into a criminal gambling ring. One that involved prominent NBA players and coaches and also the mafia. Yes, the mafia. Here’s Patel speaking on Thursday morning, seemingly taking credit for an investigation that started before he got the FBI job. 

[clip of Kash Patel] But as you now know, individuals such as Chauncey Billups, Damon Jones, and Terry Rozier were taken into custody today, former current NBA players and coaches. What you don’t know is that this is an illegal gambling operation and sports rigging operation that spanned the course of years. The FBI led a coordinated takedown across 11 states to arrest over 30 individuals today responsible for this case, which is very much ongoing. 

Jane Coaston: Patel is referring to former Detroit Pistons great and Portland Trailblazers head coach Chauncey Billups, as well as Miami Heat Guard Terry Rozier and retired Cleveland Cavaliers guard and assistant coach Damon Jones. There are two cases being investigated, one involving rigged poker games and the other involving using non public information on NBA players to help betters. Here’s US Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. on Thursday taking the opportunity to make some puns before explaining the details of the case. 

[clip of Joseph Nocella Jr.] But my message to the defendants who’ve been rounded up today is this, your winning streak has ended. Your luck has run out. Violating the law is a losing proposition, and you can bet on that. 

Jane Coaston: You know he was like driving to work thinking about that line, right? Like, all the way to work. This investigation comes as the NBA season is just getting started, and as sports betting has never been more prominent in America. If you’ve watched a sporting event in the last few years, particularly since the Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that sports gambling could be legalized by individual states, you’ve seen countless ads for fan duel, prize picks, and DraftKings. In 2024, the US sports betting industry brought in a record $13.7 billion. Though Americans are growing increasingly concerned about gambling. And after reading these indictments, I can see why. So to explain the federal government’s investigation and what makes the NBA so vulnerable to sports betting scandals, I spoke to Mike Vorkunov. He’s the national NBA business reporter for The Athletic. Mike Vorkunov, welcome to What a Day. 

Mike Vorkunov: What a day. [laugh]

Jane Coaston: I I mean, let’s start with the big picture. What happened on Thursday? Why were more than thirty people, including an active NBA head coach and member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, arrested by federal authorities? 

Mike Vorkunov: Yeah. So the Department of Justice unveiled two separate but kind of related indictments, charging more than 30 people. One was a sports gambling ring that included taking insider information from NBA players and other people who work for NBA teams to place large amounts of money on sports wagers, whether teams would win or lose. And then also just on prop bets on individual NBA players. And that involved a charge for Heat guard Terry Rozier, who is in the middle of, I believe, a roughly $90 million contract. And the other indictment unveiled kind of this rigged poker ring around the country with the involvement and the cooperation of different Italian crime families in New York City who threatened people who would not pay and help stage the games. And in that one, Chauncey Billups, currently the Blazers head coach, but also a Hall of Fame basketball player who won–

Jane Coaston: –Yeah, I remember him with the 2004 NBA champion Detroit Pistons. 

Mike Vorkunov: Yeah, won finals MVP. Um. You know, he’s alleged to have been one of the people helped setting up these rigged games. He was part of what the indictment calls, I guess the the ring called face cards, which are the former pro players that were used to help lure in potential future victims. 

Jane Coaston: So you mentioned that these are two cases, but there is some overlap. Can you tell me about how these two cases may be connected? 

Mike Vorkunov: Sure. So first of all, there’s three people who have been charged in both. One of them is Damon Jones, who is a former NBA player, former NBA assistant coach. He is alleged to be one of those people who used insider information that he then sold to sports betters so they could place bets on the Lakers and other NBA teams. Like in one example, he had insider information that you know a Lakers star would be missing a game. And so he sold that to a sports better. In another, he sold information on that a player might be injured on the Lakers and he sold that for $2,500, according to the indictment. And then a hundred thousand dollar bet was placed on the Lakers to lose that night. Although ultimately they won, ironically. But he’s also one of the face cards in that rigged poker ring. And those are kind of the three through lines. But, you know, Chauncey Billups might be at the center of this too. Not only was he charged in the rigged poker ring, but there’s a co-conspirator number eight, unnamed in the indictment. But he’s someone who let one of the other co defendants know that the Blazers would be holding out players. And the description of co conspirator number eight is that he’s played in the NBA at one point from 1997 to 2014. He’s a resident of Oregon, and that also he’s coached in the NBA since 2021. So if you go on basketball reference, um. 

Jane Coaston: That’s one person. That is–

Mike Vorkunov: You might be able to piece that together. 

Jane Coaston: That is Chauncey Billups. Now, this is definitely not the first time sports betting has impacted the NBA. Now, other sports leagues have had gambling scandals, but what do you think makes the NBA and the sport of basketball particularly vulnerable? 

Mike Vorkunov: Well, I I think it’s that basketball, unlike every other sport, is so dependent on, you know, one particular player, right? Like, sure, you there’s only five players on a court, and that’s why stars are so valuable in the NBA, because if you have one truly great player that can change things so much. But also, that goes the other way too. One person kind of can manipulate their own performance in a way that can help betters win prop bets on them, right? In the NBA, you can bet on whether one particular player had, you know, this many points, rebounds, assists, three point shots, and that’s all with the control of that one player. And that’s easily bettable. And I think easier to bet on than maybe in the NFL or baseball or any other sport where there is a little bit more of a codependence going on for personal statistics. And also the NBA, they make more money than any other professional sports league. NBA players have roughly an average $12 million salary. That’s way more than any other league. And yet they are the ones for now who seem to be more susceptible to kind of this this kind of scandal. 

Jane Coaston: Now, basic question. What is the legality of NBA players and coaches and betting? What are they allowed to bet on? What aren’t they allowed to bet on? 

Mike Vorkunov: Well, I’ll put it simply, you’re basically allowed to bet on anything but basketball, anything but the NBA and it’s, you know, kind of like associate leagues. So the NBA, the WNBA, the G League. You can go bet on the NFL. You can go bet on baseball. Um. Heck, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, they have, you know, deals with FanDuel and DraftKings, right? Like they’re out there cutting commercials for them. So now this the players and just pro gambling have never been closer. But you can’t bet on the NBA. And you cannot also give away kind of what we call insider information. I think legally the term is non public information that someone might be hurt. Um. Someone might not be playing in a game that betters can then use to place bets ahead of when the public has that information. 

Jane Coaston: Now, you mentioned that LeBron and other players have relationships with FanDuel and DraftKings, but so does the NBA. The NBA has worked with FanDuel and DraftKings as its official betting partner since 2021, and at least four NBA arenas have on site sportsbooks. And this is something it’s basically endemic to professional sports. What do you think this scandal will do to the relationship between sports leagues and sports betting, which has already been pretty controversial, I would think. 

Mike Vorkunov: It’s controversial for a lot of reasons, not to mention that one of the biggest ones is that the NBA players, they don’t seem to like it, right? 

Jane Coaston: No. 

Mike Vorkunov: It brings a lot of venom on them from fans and betters who lose bets, they get hit with taunts and expeditive lace tirades on social media and in person. Um.

Jane Coaston: And Venmo requests because they’re like you–

Mike Vorkunov: –Venmo requests! 

Jane Coaston: I didn’t hit a parlay because you won a game but I had bet the under, which if you are sending Venmo requests to an NBA player, you need to just back off. Like put your phone down and go outside. 

Mike Vorkunov: Yes, yes, absolutely. I I agree with you. But and here’s the big but you know, this drives revenue for the NBA. It drives revenue for the teams, right? And I think that over the years, the NBA was the first. Adam Silver, when he took over commissioner, I think, was the first pro sports league commissioner in North America who came out for legalized gambling. The NBA has a strong relationship with all these gambling companies. They have tried over the last few years to kind of reel in sports books from what people can bet on. But that’s kind of all they have done so far. They’ve talked a lot about it, but they are still at the whim of the sports books to some degree, who are their partners. So it’s not as if it’s isolated from the NBA itself. 

Jane Coaston: So obviously the NBA has suspended Phillips, um and now there’s an interim head coach for the Portland Trailblazers. What happens next in this case? 

Mike Vorkunov: Well, that’s a great question. Yeah. So Chauncey Billups is placed on leave. Terry Rozier has been placed on leave. Obviously, the federal government is gonna continue on proceeding with its case. They said their investigation is also still ongoing. So we’ll see if they find anything else. There are some unnamed co-conspirators in their indictment who have clear ties to the NBA. So we’ll see if they get unmasked or if there are future charges. Terry Rozier, they investigated him when this happened, when this this allegation happened and cleared him and allowed him to keep playing for the last year and a half, right? And so now he’s on leave. And I I wonder if all they can really do is just wait for the DOJ to finish prosecuting its case and and go from there. It’s clear that their own investigation into these types of things was not sufficient. So you might have to just let the federal government do its thing. 

Jane Coaston: Mike Vorkunov, thank you so much for joining me. 

Mike Vorkunov: Anytime. Happy to do it. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Mike Vorkunov, National NBA Business Reporter for the Athletic. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of House Speaker Mike Johnson] If I brought everybody back right now and we voted on a measure to to to do this to pay essential workers, it would be spiked in the Senate. They’re going to show you this afternoon that they would spike that bill. So it would be a waste of our time and it would it would take the pressure off Chuck Schumer to get his job done and open the government again. That’s just what’s so infuriating to us. 

Jane Coaston: That’s House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday, making yet another excuse for why he won’t call the House back to session in the middle of the second longest government shutdown in history. And that’s what’s so infuriating to us. Johnson made these comments not long before the Senate rejected two bills, one Democratic, one Republican, to pay federal workers as the shutdown continues. The Democratic bill would have paid all federal workers and prevented the Trump administration from carrying out mass firings. The Republican bill would have just paid active duty military and employees who are not furloughed. But neither bill was successful. And both parties are continuing to parrot their beloved talking points while President Trump has pretty much checked out before his big trip to Asia today. But Democrats aren’t backing down. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called out the president and the speaker in a video on Twitter Thursday for refusing to negotiate. 

[clip of Chuck Schumer] America is in the greatest health care crisis we’ve faced in decades. People are suffering. And what is Donald Trump’s response? He jets off to a whole bunch of foreign countries for a week and refuses to sit down with Leader Jeffries and I to address this horrible crisis. Donald Trump jetting off to foreign countries and not discussing health care is his version of Speaker Johnson’s shutting down the House for a month. 

Jane Coaston: In the midst of the federal government shutdown, the US national debt just blew past $38 trillion, the fastest rise ever outside of the COVID-19 pandemic. The US hit $37 trillion in gross national debt in just August of this year. Instead of Trump’s promise to rein in the debt, he’s putting it on steroids. The Joint Economic Committee estimates that the total national debt has grown by nearly $70,000 per second for the past year. That’s more than $250 million an hour. Or 23.6 White House ballrooms a day. So what was Elon Musk up to? Remember DOGE? The Department of Government Efficiency that was supposed to lower the debt through slashing waste, fraud, and abuse across the federal government? Yikes. Here’s how the rising government debt affects you. It raises borrowing costs for things like mortgages and cars, lowers wages from businesses having less money available to invest, and makes goods and services more expensive. Like most things Trump does, someone else ends up footing the bill. This time, it’s all of us. 

[clip of Vice President J.D. Vance] Yeah, go ahead. We’ll do yeah. 

[clip of unnamed news reporter 2] Can you talk about the West Bank vote yesterday that took place while you were in the country?

[clip of Vice President J.D. Vance] Oh yeah, that was weird. That was weird. I was sorta confused by that. Um.

Jane Coaston: Before leaving Israel on Thursday, Vice President J.D. Vance criticized a symbolic vote in Israel’s parliament to annex land in the occupied West Bank, which was indeed weird. Vance’s comments don’t come as too much of a surprise. The Trump administration has made clear it’s against annexation, which would pretty much bury any hope for a two state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. The Wednesday vote by right wing hardliners looked like an attempt to embarrass Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while Vance was visiting. Netanyahu’s office called the vote a quote, “deliberate political provocation by the opposition to sow discord.” And Vance didn’t hold back his thoughts when speaking to reporters. 

[clip of Vice President J.D. Vance] I mean look, if it was a political stunt, it was a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it. The West Bank is not gonna be annexed by Israel. The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy. And if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that. Uh but but we certainly weren’t happy about it. 

Jane Coaston: In an interview with Time magazine published Thursday, President Trump emphasized the consequences of annexation, saying, quote, “Israel would lose all of its support from the United States if that happened.” In bonker’s Clemency News, President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, the creator of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Zhao was in prison because he didn’t stop criminals from using Binance to move hundreds of millions of dollars connected to child sex abuse, drug trafficking, and terrorism. But yet, and still, our president pardoned him and managed to blame former President Joe Biden. 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I don’t know him. I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. But I’ve been told but a lot of support. He had a lot of support and they said that what he did is not even a crime. It wasn’t a crime, that he was persecuted by the Biden administration. Uh nd so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people. 

Jane Coaston: And are these very good people in the room with us right now, Donald? Trump may not have met Zhao, but they’re definitely acquainted financially. In May, Binance agreed to take a $2 billion investment in USD-1, a digital coin known as a stable coin. That coin is issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto company co-founded by members of the Trump family. Meaning the Trump family funded Binance and stands to make tens of millions from it. Trump’s pardon of Zhao fits into a broad pattern of his taking a hands-off approach to an industry that spent heavily to help him win the election in 2024. Hands-off meaning hands-off doing anything to crack down on it. Actually, it kind of seems like he wants a hand out from the crypto industry. So, to recap, Trump pardoned the crypto guy who peddled cash for Hamas in Al-Qaeda. But what else would we expect from the first president who’s also a convicted felon? And that’s the news. [music break]. 

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, contemplate that former New York governor and current mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo said on a Thursday radio show appearance that frontrunner Zohran Mamdani would cheer another 9/11 attack and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how Cuomo, who is, shall we say, losing bigly to Mamdani in the polls and early voting starts tomorrow, has decided to go full 2000s Republican to garner right wing voters, like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and this comes as a right-wing influencer has launched Hot Girls for Cuomo, but forgot to buy the website HotGirlsforCuomo.com, which you should definitely check out. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Emily Fohr and Chris Allport. Our video editor is Joseph Dutra. Our video producer is Johanna Case. We had production help today from Greg Walters, Matt Berg, Shawn Allee, Gina Pollack, and Caitlin Plummer. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our senior vice president of News and Politics is Adriene Hill. We had help today from the Associated Press. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. 

[AD BREAK]