Gov conspiring with Short Sellers (Nikola)

3,348 Views | 25 Replies | Last: 3 days ago by Sq 17
FobTies
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This is pretty interesting. I have no issue with the practice of short selling, or even short reports that expose unethical behavior. However, when the process is totally tainted with feds and media groups all working together against a private business, it crosses the line.

Sure there is bias from Milton's perspective, but it doesnt compare to the bias in the narrative spun by Hindenburg, CNBC, Bloomberg, and Feds. That used to be the only side of the story the public got to see.

Ulysses90
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I listened to that podcast yesterday. I almost didn't because neither Tucker nor Trevor understand short selling as a strategy and think it's some kind of demon worshipping cult.

Trevor Milton does make two great points that federal investigators (FBI, SEC, DoJ) should not be allowed to speak with or question anyone without recording it and that a indictee should get to pick the federal district in which a case is tried.
oh no
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Quote:

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: hindenburgresearch.com/about-us/

I am immensely proud of that career including our work on Nikola Motors referenced in the 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. As should be unsurprising, Milton in this interview seems to just 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 administration and well before the 2020 election.

There were numerous inaccuracies throughout the 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 their own purposes unconnected to us. There was ample evidence that Milton misstated numerous aspects of his business, as the company itself later acknowledged.

It would take hours to write about all the other absurdities, half-truths, 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 mentioned that Milton's lawyer was Brad Bondithe brother of AG Pam Bondi. Nor did anyone mention that Milton donated $900 thousand to Trump in October 2024, less than a month before the recent electionstrategically timed well after his criminal conviction and immediately prior to the presidential election. Trump acknowledged he had never heard of Milton before being asked to pardon him but relied on others for the recommendation.

- Milton failed to mention that immediately prior to his resignation from his company, beyond the extensive allegations of fraud, he was also publicly accused of multiple instances of sexual assault, including by his own cousin, who went on-the-record with her allegations.

- I can only wonder what kind of investigation Tucker undertook of the fraud allegations against Milton before having him on. Milton literally video-taped a truck rolling down a hill implying that it was driving under its own power. He also went up on stage and said a truck that didn't work "fully functions and works."

- Waxing poetic about hydrogen in the interview echoes Nikola's lies to retail investors that it successfully produced hydrogen at a cost ~81% lower than anyone on earth, a feat that would have upended the entire energy industry had it been remotely true. Nikola's head of hydrogen production, presumably in charge of this 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.

- These weren't one-off misstatementsthere were dozens of examples like these. As the DoJ said and proved in court Milton "made false claims regarding nearly all aspects of Nikola's business." The company itself admitted to many of these false statements, agreed to a $125 million fine, and won an arbitration against Milton holding him personally liable for his conduct.

- Milton claimed that Hindenburg made $30m-$100m on our Nikola investmentthis isn't even close (we made a fraction of that). Trevor seems to just be making these numbers up out of thin air.

Hilariously, Tucker opened by suggesting that short selling was illegal until 2007, a claim that is completely false. After confirming that he knows nothing about the subject, he went on to suggest that short selling should be criminalized outright.

Short selling has existed for hundreds of years, and for good reason. Short sellers play a critical role in the functioning of healthy markets, similar to the role of investigative journalists, (which I presume Tucker considers himself akin to).

Most companies are a force for good and economic growth. However, some companies lie and engage in fraud. Short sellers have exposed nearly every major corporate fraud in the past several decades because just as there is an economic incentive for identifying the good companies, there is also an economic model for identifying the scams. This is how free markets and free speech workshelping weed out the bad companies and those stealing from investors so good companies have more room to thrive.

Claiming to be a free speech advocate while casually advocating for the imprisonment of anyone who dares to speak critically about public companies is a contradiction of the highest order.

In short, Tucker, I highly suggest you actually vet the people you welcome onto your platform. If you find yourself staring, mouth agape at your interviewee, repeatedly saying "Wow! This is unbelievable!" it may in fact be because it's unbelievable.

You reach a lot of people and this one was an avoidable miss. Good day.



FobTies
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Yeah, every time I hear someone say "short selling should be illegal", I know they are clueless on the topic, Tucker in this case.

But great insight into perspective that typically never gets heard. Trump gave him a full pardon, so feds cant bully him into silence.
FobTies
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One thing I have never understood is why the same public disclosure 13F requirements that exist for long positions, dont exist for short positions.

It takes quite a bit of time to build a large short position in a relatively small equity. Hindenburg needed to build that in the shadows, with others, before dropping the short report on the sheep.

The system is rigged in that regard. Hindenburg doesnt want us to know how they planned and milked this deal. They just want us to think they are Good Samaritans who just discovered this in passing.
Aggie1205
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I listened to the Bad Bets podcast about Milton. Complete fraud and not a good person. I didn't realize he got a pardon from Trump. I don't understand outside of buying their way out that people like him and Michelle Fiore got pardoned.

Why is Tucker providing this guy with an audience?
Rapier108
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Aggie1205 said:

I listened to the Bad Bets podcast about Milton. Complete fraud and not a good person. I didn't realize he got a pardon from Trump. I don't understand outside of buying their way out that people like him and Michelle Fiore got pardoned.

Why is Tucker providing this guy with an audience?

Two reasons.

He knows the people who live and breathe on his every word will eat it up and believe it. Even when it is shown to be bull****, they'll still defend him and make excuses for him putting out patently false information.

He really is not that bright and can be easily tricked because he sees conspiracies in everything.
"If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves." - Sir Winston Churchill
FobTies
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Milton pumped a pre-revenue hydrogen concept, and the stock memed to astronomical levels. Thats a house of cards doomed to fail. Not excusing that, but the lengths to which the feds went to work with conflicted short sellers is unacceptable.

If none of us can call the feds amd CNBC to juice our investments, neither should anyone else. Those same feds went after Twitter pump and dumpers like Zack Morris, but work side by side with the ones on Wall St. Rules for thee, but not for me.
Aggie1205
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This wasn't something where he thought he could do this and it just didn't work out. He was straight up committing fraud and faking it. He is similar to Elizabeth Holmes.

Fob- do you think his pardon was justified?
FobTies
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Based on the unethical prosecutorial conduct that the NY Southern District is notorious for here and on other cases, yes, pardon him.

Nothing wrong with getting exposed for putting lipstick on a pig and hyping up his concept biz. I dont condone that. Investors knew it had no revenue, and were informed of the typical forward looking statement disclosure that accompanied his comments that turned out to be "materially different".

Is Chamath a fraud for Clover? What about all the other SPACs around that time that fleeced shareholders?

Maybe the guy was a dbag, I don't know him. My concern is more around the political tactics Wall St. and gov used in this case. They even accused him of being a "Russian Asset".

A thread on Nikola as a fake business could be started on the biz board...
Kansas Kid
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FobTies said:

Based on the unethical prosecutorial conduct that the NY Southern District is notorious for here and on other cases, yes, pardon him.

Nothing wrong with getting exposed for putting lipstick on a pig and hyping up his concept biz. I dont condone that. Investors knew it had no revenue, and were informed of the typical forward looking statement disclosure that accompanied his comments that turned out to be "materially different".

Is Chamath a fraud for Clover? What about all the other SPACs around that time that fleeced shareholders?

Maybe the guy was a dbag, I don't know him. My concern is more around the political tactics Wall St. and gov used in this case. They even accused him of being a "Russian Asset".

A thread on Nikola as a fake business could be started on the biz board...

People weren't buying this based on the current financials. They were buying it thinking they were getting the next Tesla based on the technology this guy hyped including that they had a fully functioning electric truck with a video showing one moving only to find out it had no power system and moved only because it was going downhill. Similar claims about hydrogen producing and fuel cell vehicles with proprietary technology. You can't seriously tell me this was something the CEO would think was legal or based on forecasts that were "materially different". This was a flat out fraud like Theranos with the only difference is at least Theranos fleeced wealthy investors vs small retail investors. I would hope any administration would want to prosecute this guy. 4 years is really light for a crime of this magnitude and audacity.

Fortunately, I didn't invest in this but I know people who lost a lot of money

ETA. There are other SPACs that absolutely should be investigated and prosecuted where there was fraud and material securities violations. .
FobTies
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That sucks people lost money thinking they were buying the next Tesla, only to find out it was hyped up conceptual garbage. There were many other SPACs that made misleading statements accompanied by disclaimers, that weren't targeted by Hindenburg or persecuted unfairly by feds. They just crashed as demand dried up, probably would have happened with Nikola.

Im not excusing Milton's behavior any more than you are excusing the feds for accusing him of being a "Russian Asset".
Aggie1205
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Should all those prosecuted by the NY Southern District during that time be given pardons or only the ones who gave a lot of money to Trump?
Science Denier
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Quote:

People weren't buying this based on the current financials


Sounds like buying Bitcoin.
LOL OLD
FobTies
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Any person falsely accused of being a Russian Asset by the feds should be pardoned.
Aggie1205
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Can you point to where he was accused of being a Russian agent? I can't find anything from a google search. The only thing that mentions it is his interview with Tucker where he claims it. But we know he is full of it and reading the transcript he makes a bunch of other claims that seem dubious. He is trying to tie himself as being like Trump.

The bottom line is that he is out because he paid to get out.
buzzardb267
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The American Greed episode on Milton is fascinating. Nothing but pure, unadulterated fraud!
"ROGER - OUT"
TX AG 88
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A friend of mine was sold on this, and i bought and sold some. Fortunately, I'm net positive with some "free" shares still in my account. Too low to be worth selling, just holding in case the lottery hits or something.

It was a semi-good story with a lot of upside until the founder got outed.
bobbranco
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Tucker got sucked in by that snake oil salesman. LOL.

Nikola and Milton were known frauds 5 years ago...
BigRobSA
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Selling short people?

I thought we fought a war over people as property?
Picard
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P.H. Dexippus
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BigRobSA said:

Selling short people?

I thought we fought a war over people as property?

You may not be aware, but there's a documentary on Wall Street selling short people since the late 1980s.
flown-the-coop
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Nikola Tesla, upon his death, left many trunks containing stuff he was working on. One of the guys who accessed those trunks, John Trump.

Uncle John and Nicola Tesla. Now this with Nikola and the fallout with Elon over Tesla.

And John Trump worked on radiation therapy and then now there is still no cure for cancer?

Really makes you think.
rebel99
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I did not watch the video, but allow me to opine…

Naked short selling (borrowing shares that do not exist to sell) should absolutely be illegal. This differs fundamentally from naked short options.
Aggie1205
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Aggie1205 said:

I listened to the Bad Bets podcast about Milton. Complete fraud and not a good person. I didn't realize he got a pardon from Trump. I don't understand outside of buying their way out that people like him and Michelle Fiore got pardoned.

Why is Tucker providing this guy with an audience?

Speaking of Michelle Fiore she is now charged with judicial misconduct as she didn't return the money she stole before and didn't follow the law on at least notifying the parties that donated that the money was being used for something else.

Quote:

The charging document focuses heavily on Fiore's conduct after she was sworn in as a judicial officer in December 2022. The commission argues that once the donations could no longer be used to build the memorial statue, Fiore came under a strict legal obligation to notify the donors that the specific purpose of their contributions had been "abrogated."

If she didn't steal them money in the first place then why didn't she just return it or re-purpose it per the law? Oh wait, she had to get cosmetic procedures done.

Quote:

The saga began in 2019 when Fiore, then a Las Vegas city councilwoman, solicited tens of thousands of dollars to build a statue honoring Officers Alyn Beck and Igor Soldo, who were killed in the line of duty. While the monument was eventually erected in a Las Vegas park, it was funded entirely by a separate development company.
Federal investigators found that the donations Fiore collected were instead quickly converted to cash and used to pay for her daughter's wedding, her own rent, and various cosmetic procedures.

Sq 17
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Aggie1205 said:



I don't understand outside of buying their way out that people like him and Michelle Fiore got pardoned


Yes they bribed somebody
Really not that hard to understand

Unless you are under the delusion that Team Trump can't be bought
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