Speaker 1: Push Kim. Hey everyone, it's Michael Lewis here and this
Speaker 1: is judging Sam. For the past few months, we've been
Speaker 1: covering the story of Sam Bankman Freed. He's the founder
Speaker 1: of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. It was worth billions of
Speaker 1: dollars before it came a part at the scenes. I
Speaker 1: wrote a book about all this and Sam called Going
Speaker 1: Infinite and reported on his trial here on the podcast.
Speaker 1: He was found guilty of fraud and conspiracy in his
Speaker 1: sentencing a schedule for later this week. Meanwhile, FTX has
Speaker 1: been going through bankruptcy proceedings, and in a surprising twist,
Speaker 1: ftx's lawyers recently announced that all the creditors will likely
Speaker 1: be paid in full. All the FDx customers who couldn't
Speaker 1: get their money out when FTX collapsed will probably get
Speaker 1: their money back. But my guest today argues that the
Speaker 1: bankruptcy process has been handled badly. His name is Jonathan Lipson.
Speaker 1: He's a bankruptcy expert at Temple University and he co
Speaker 1: wrote a research paper about the FTX bankruptcy that will
Speaker 1: be published next year in the Stanford Law Review. So
Speaker 1: Sam bachmcfreed has been tried, convicted, and is going to jail,
Speaker 1: and everybody's been paying attention to that, and that is
Speaker 1: seems to be the human drama. But there's this whole
Speaker 1: other legal process, the bankruptcy process, that's getting very little attention,
Speaker 1: and that you have written about. Why is it important?
Speaker 2: It's important for a number of reasons. You know, it
Speaker 2: is important because we're concerned about how the bankruptcy was
Speaker 2: run for the benefit of you know, creditors and investors
Speaker 2: and so on. There are millions of people who have
Speaker 2: lost money in this company, and if it was handled properly,
Speaker 2: perhaps they would do better. Number Two, it appears that
Speaker 2: the bankruptcy process itself and the company itself were you know,
Speaker 2: in effect accelerating and perhaps distorting the criminal prosecution. And
Speaker 2: you know, like that's a really serious problem because we
Speaker 2: have certain legitimate expectations about how prosecutors do their job,
Speaker 2: and for that matter, we have certain basic expectations about
Speaker 2: how lawyers are supposed to act.
Speaker 1: So let's back up. Can you just tell me what
Speaker 1: caught your eye in the first place. Let's start there,
Speaker 1: like what caught your fry.
Speaker 2: A lot of my work involves bankruptcy. I researched it,
Speaker 2: I write about it, teach it, and really I had
Speaker 2: no particular interest in crypto at all. I was interested
Speaker 2: in FTX only because it was the kind of a
Speaker 2: bankruptcy where you would have expected to see something that
Speaker 2: I had studied in the past, an examiner. The idea
Speaker 2: being that when Congress created the Bankruptcy Code, they said,
Speaker 2: in some cases, you really need somebody from the outside
Speaker 2: to come in and conduct an investigation of what happened
Speaker 2: and write a report about it for the public. In FTX,
Speaker 2: the the United States Trustee has sought an examiner at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the bankruptcy case, and to my surprise,
Speaker 2: and I think the surprised that some folks, the bankruptcy
Speaker 2: judge said no. And we can talk more about why
Speaker 2: it was surprising, but the short answer was that when
Speaker 2: the US Trustee sought to appeal that decision to the
Speaker 2: Third Circuit, I agreed to write an amikus brief in
Speaker 2: support of the US Trustee, basically seeking to have an
Speaker 2: examiner appointed. We won in the Third Circuit, and you know,
Speaker 2: as you probably know your listeners probably know, an examiner
Speaker 2: has been appointed in the case. As of a couple
Speaker 2: of days ago.
Speaker 1: I doubt our listeners do know because it's also our kane,
Speaker 1: and it's been striking to me how little attention the
Speaker 1: bankruptcy has gotten compared to the rest of the case.
Speaker 1: So act, let's go in a little more detail. Why
Speaker 1: would you have expected in this case for there to
Speaker 1: be an examiner? And actually backup, backup even further than that,
Speaker 1: just explain what the checks are on the bankruptcy process generally,
Speaker 1: like how we did this with your co author, David's.
Speaker 1: But let's deal a little refresher, Like a company goes
Speaker 1: into bankruptcy, then what happens.
Speaker 2: So you know, to take a step back, bankruptcy in
Speaker 2: the US is for companies like FTX that are purporting
Speaker 2: to reorganize. The basic intuition that Congress had in the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies was, well, we shouldn't just kill the company
Speaker 2: and sell off the assets to pay the creditors if
Speaker 2: we could avoid it, because if we can keep the
Speaker 2: company going, then everybody's probably going to be better off.
Speaker 2: We'll save jobs, the company will make more money because
Speaker 2: it'll be profitable, maybe if it returns to profitability, and
Speaker 2: you know, it's just just much better than what used
Speaker 2: to happen, which was a liquidation. But Congress realized that,
Speaker 2: you know, if you allow the company to stay in
Speaker 2: business even when it's in bankruptcy, then maybe the guys
Speaker 2: who got the company into trouble are still running the roost,
Speaker 2: and maybe that's not so great. So they said, look
Speaker 2: in large cases, in cases where we have any concerns
Speaker 2: about what happened before bankruptcy, an examiner should be appointed.
Speaker 2: Should be mandatory, right, the statute says an examiner shall
Speaker 2: be a I did in a certain class of cases.
Speaker 2: And the reason I got involved in all this in
Speaker 2: part is because you know, I did a study on
Speaker 2: these guys many years ago, because everybody sort of knew
Speaker 2: it didn't really happen the way Congress expected.
Speaker 1: How how did it not happen the way Congress expected?
Speaker 1: What was different?
Speaker 2: What was different is that, you know, while debtors and
Speaker 2: creditors fight all the time about all sorts of things,
Speaker 2: there is one thing they agree on, and that is
Speaker 2: that they hate examiners.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: They don't want somebody coming in from the outside poking
Speaker 2: around in their negotiations because basically, a Chapter eleven bankruptcy
Speaker 2: is just a protracted negotiation in the shadow of a
Speaker 2: court with some procedural rules that are designed to facilitate
Speaker 2: that negotiation. Right, So an examiner is a problem for that, right,
Speaker 2: because the examiner is coming in from the outside, maybe
Speaker 2: you know, asking questions of management that management doesn't necessarily
Speaker 2: want to answer, maybe, you know, interfering with or distracting
Speaker 2: from the negotiations that are happening, and certainly costing money. Right.
Speaker 2: The examiner doesn't work for free. The government doesn't pay
Speaker 2: the examiner. The examiner is paid really ultimately by creditors, right,
Speaker 2: in the same way that all of the folks who
Speaker 2: run the bankruptcy are ultimately paid by creditors.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, you know, if you think about it, kind of intuitively,
Speaker 2: the folks on the ground who run these cases are
Speaker 2: lawyers who see each other all the time in different cases,
Speaker 2: and you know, they fight sometimes and they get along sometimes.
Speaker 2: But what they don't want as an outsider, like for example,
Speaker 2: Bob Cleary, the prosecutor's now been appointed to be the
Speaker 2: examiner in FTX, coming in from the outside and saying, actually,
Speaker 2: let's do a little forensics here and see what actually happened.
Speaker 2: And so even though Congress said, oh, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we should have these, you know, examiners routinely, as you know,
Speaker 2: a way of serving the public interest in understanding what happened,
Speaker 2: Like nobody ever asks for them, and you know frequently
Speaker 2: judges say, yeah, we know the statute requires it, but
Speaker 2: you know, when in those rare cases they're asked, they've
Speaker 2: often said no. But the one exception that we found
Speaker 2: in our research was, well, look, when there's a massive
Speaker 2: free fall case like Enron or Lehman Brothers or World
Speaker 2: Commra any of these, you know, then you know, all
Speaker 2: the inside guys are like, well, right, we get it,
Speaker 2: like you do need somebody to come in and explain
Speaker 2: what the hell happened. And so in FTX, you're like, well,
Speaker 2: that certainly looks like that, right, it looks like Lehman
Speaker 2: and Ron or something. So that's why I was surprising
Speaker 2: that you didn't see an examiner appointed in FTX, although
Speaker 2: you know, the explanation that was given at the time was, well,
Speaker 2: you know, Bankment Freed had given up control of the
Speaker 2: company to a guy named John Ray, who I'm sure
Speaker 2: we'll talk about, who clearly was independent of Bankman Freed
Speaker 2: and who was a bankruptcy expert. He'd done a lot
Speaker 2: of work in a lot of cases. And so if
Speaker 2: you think that, you know, an examiner is just going
Speaker 2: to be independent of prior management, you know, Ray is
Speaker 2: that guy. I think the bigger problem than certainly the
Speaker 2: one that we focus on in the paper that we've
Speaker 2: just released, is the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell,
Speaker 2: who had been company counsel for certain purposes before bankruptcy,
Speaker 2: brought Ray in and you know, as far as we
Speaker 2: can tell, had a very specific set of interests in
Speaker 2: seeing how the bankruptcy was going to proceed, and so
Speaker 2: maybe they weren't quite as independent in a in a
Speaker 2: in a problematic way from Bankman Freed as you would
Speaker 2: have thought.
Speaker 1: My understanding, and this is from interviewing John Ray, is
Speaker 1: that Sullivan and Cromwell, who had been Sam Bankman Fried's
Speaker 1: lawyers before the bankruptcy in Good Times, had found John
Speaker 1: Ray to come in and take over from Sam Bankman Freed.
Speaker 1: And then the minute Sam Bankminfreed signs the documents handing
Speaker 1: the company to John Ray, he hires Sullivan and Cromwell
Speaker 1: to run the bankruptcy. And that's going to be worth
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars to Sullivan and Cromwell. Is
Speaker 1: that right?
Speaker 2: That's I think that's I think that's mostly correct. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that you know, the the kind of the
Speaker 2: three different versions of the story about this law firm, Sullivan, Cromwell,
Speaker 2: and just to be clear, like we are not out
Speaker 2: to get Cromwell, were not out to fight the verdict,
Speaker 2: like we just want to understand what happened here. But
Speaker 2: you know, there's a little bit of detail on all this.
Speaker 2: But you know, Solomon Cromwell was clearly doing important work
Speaker 2: for FTX before bankruptcy, and it was mostly work involving
Speaker 2: the acquisition of other companies like ledger X and other subsidiaries,
Speaker 2: and even more importantly representing FTX in dealings with regulators,
Speaker 2: in particular the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which
Speaker 2: was super important for FTX because they wanted to, you know,
Speaker 2: establish some kind of regulatory legitimacy for crypto. And it
Speaker 2: was really important for Solivon Cromwell because they're one of
Speaker 2: the premier firms at interacting with regulators. Many of the
Speaker 2: folks at the firm were former regulators themselves, and you know,
Speaker 2: they're an extremely well regarded firm precisely because they do
Speaker 2: that stuff really well. And you know, I think that
Speaker 2: the short version of the story is that Solomon Cromwell
Speaker 2: didn't probably know about the underlying problems at FTX until
Speaker 2: November eighth of twenty twenty two. But they were telling
Speaker 2: the world that everything was fine. They were implying that
Speaker 2: actually they did know everything they needed to know to
Speaker 2: say to the CFTC and to creditors and contract counterparts.
Speaker 2: FTX is rock solid, in the words of one of
Speaker 2: the Solovon Cromol lawyers, and I think probably on November
Speaker 2: eighth or around then, they woke up to the fact
Speaker 2: that things were not rock solid, that there was a
Speaker 2: problem because the company was commingling assets, even though Sam
Speaker 2: had promised everybody that would never happen.
Speaker 1: What is com mingling.
Speaker 2: It simply means that that FTX and Bankment Free had
Speaker 2: promised depositors that their crypto would be held by FTX,
Speaker 2: it would be on the FTX exchange and nobody else
Speaker 2: would have it. But that turned out to be false
Speaker 2: for some very important number of depositors because it ended
Speaker 2: up at a related company known as Alameda, and that
Speaker 2: was you know, a big problem because Alameda used the
Speaker 2: money for all these other purposes that obviously depositors didn't expect.
Speaker 2: And so, you know, I don't know that the most
Speaker 2: sort of the you know, nefarious version of the story
Speaker 2: of Solomon Promwell is true, namely that they you know,
Speaker 2: they got John ready to come in and steal the
Speaker 2: company from bankman free. I think that's improbable, if only
Speaker 2: because Suli Cromwell has tons of money already, Like they
Speaker 2: don't really need hundreds of millions of dollars because they
Speaker 2: already have hundreds of millions of dollars. I do, however,
Speaker 2: think they might have panicked, and I think in that
Speaker 2: moment of panic did several things that we'd describe in
Speaker 2: our paper that I think at minimum were ethically problematic
Speaker 2: and from our perspective, more importantly problematic, from the bankruptcy perspective,
Speaker 2: from the process, the perspective of the goals of the
Speaker 2: bankruptcy process.
Speaker 1: And they're all going that are going on behind closed
Speaker 1: doors because there's no examiner to reveal all this. Describe
Speaker 1: those things that you think Sulimon Crumwell did that are problematic.
Speaker 2: Sure, So I think the first thing that happens is
Speaker 2: you know, on November eighth, Tourney named Andy Dieterrik, who's
Speaker 2: an important person in the story as a bankruptcy lawyer,
Speaker 2: I think, realizes, you know, because he gets at a
Speaker 2: panic call from some lower level attorneys at FTX that
Speaker 2: there's commingling going on that there's a real problem that
Speaker 2: the company is having a liquidity crisis because they can't
Speaker 2: honor withdrawals. We don't know what happens internally at S
Speaker 2: and C, but we do know that the very next
Speaker 2: day Sullivan and Cromwell does something very important, which is
Speaker 2: that they go to the prosecutors. Now that's a problem
Speaker 2: for a couple of reasons. Number One, you're not really
Speaker 2: supposed to go to the prosecutors and rat your client
Speaker 2: out unless a couple of things are true. Number One,
Speaker 2: you're sure there's a crime, and we don't know that
Speaker 2: they had determined that. Number Two, you've gone to the
Speaker 2: highest authority in the company to confirm that there's a
Speaker 2: crime and confront them and say, by the way, we
Speaker 2: think there's a crime, you should stop committing that crime.
Speaker 2: We don't think there's any evidence of that. And then
Speaker 2: number three, say to that highest authority, if you don't stop.
Speaker 2: We might have to go to the authorities because otherwise
Speaker 2: we'll be implicated in it, and we don't want that.
Speaker 2: We don't see any evidence that that happened either, quite
Speaker 2: the contrary. So the second thing that happens that's really
Speaker 2: problematic is that on that same day, November ninth, when
Speaker 2: they went to the prosecutors, the same lawyer, Andy Dieterrick,
Speaker 2: sent Sam Bateman Freed what I think is a very
Speaker 2: important email. I call it the reassurance email. At nine
Speaker 2: point thirty two that evening, he sends Sam an email
Speaker 2: basically saying, look, we are here to help you in
Speaker 2: your efforts to rescue FTX however we can. And that
Speaker 2: meant something very specific because basically Sam's view of life,
Speaker 2: as far as I can tell, was he thought there
Speaker 2: was just a liquidity crisis and that crisis could be
Speaker 2: solved by finding more liquidity, finding new loans, which is
Speaker 2: normally what happens when companies have liquidity crises but are
Speaker 2: otherwise basically sound. So Solivon Cromwell, this attorney, mister Deeter,
Speaker 2: sends Sam this email saying we're here to help you
Speaker 2: do that however we can, and you know by the way,
Speaker 2: we need you to sign a contract to hire Genre.
Speaker 2: He'll come in as what's known as the Chief Restructuring
Speaker 2: Officer a CRO, which implies that Sam would remain the
Speaker 2: CEO of the chief executive officer. Sam, we want you
Speaker 2: to remain director, Sam. We want you to continue to
Speaker 2: go out and find resources for the company. You know,
Speaker 2: financing for the company. Sam, you know, the bankruptcy if
Speaker 2: that happens at all, it's just an alternative, and it's
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks away, but we need to be ready.
Speaker 2: And here are some things that we need you to do.
Speaker 2: All very normal things to say to a client that
Speaker 2: is facing a liquidity crisis and may have to go
Speaker 2: into bankruptcy, but not what you say to a client
Speaker 2: who you think is committed crimes, and when you've already,
Speaker 2: you know, without the knowledge of that client, gone to
Speaker 2: the prosecutors to inform the prosecutors apparently that there were
Speaker 2: crimes ongoing. So, to me, the second big problem, and
Speaker 2: in some ways, you know, I don't know if it's
Speaker 2: the biggest, but it's a really big one, is what
Speaker 2: I appears to us to have been deception. Now, maybe
Speaker 2: it turns out that there's more to the story than
Speaker 2: we know. Maybe Sam knew. Sam has you know, I
Speaker 2: talked to him. He said no, absolutely not. We had
Speaker 2: no idea. He did have his own lawyers by this point, right,
Speaker 2: Paul Weiss was involved, and you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: if they knew or not. If they did, there's a
Speaker 2: different kind of problem. But in any case, you know
Speaker 2: that this reassurance email I think is all in service
Speaker 2: of getting Sam to do the thing that he did
Speaker 2: then in the early morning hours I guess the eleventh
Speaker 2: of November, which is sign over not just control of
Speaker 2: the company but all of his powers, you know, having
Speaker 2: anything to do with company to John Ray, which you
Speaker 2: know ends up being I think, from bankman Freed's perspective, disasters.
Speaker 1: Given how that, it's unusual that Sullivan and Cromwell would
Speaker 1: have gone to the prosecutors right away. Do you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts about why they might have done that.
Speaker 2: I do. I think that that's to me most consistent
Speaker 2: with a story panic. I think they correctly view themselves
Speaker 2: as being really important intermediaries between large, important regulated companies
Speaker 2: and the folks who regulate those companies, and if you've
Speaker 2: been making a significant mistake with those regulators for a
Speaker 2: while with a prominent company, and you wake up one
Speaker 2: morning and realize that, like maybe you panic, Maybe that's
Speaker 2: a problem for you. Now there are a variety of
Speaker 2: ways you could fix that. They could have, you know,
Speaker 2: withdrawn and perhaps tried to ameliorate that with the regulators.
Speaker 2: And maybe they even did that. We don't know, because
Speaker 2: although they had filed an application for FTX with the CFTC,
Speaker 2: they withdrew it the same day that the company went
Speaker 2: into bankruptcy, the eleventh of November, and nobody's ever seen
Speaker 2: it since then. So we don't really know what else
Speaker 2: they said to the CFTC, but we know a little bit.
Speaker 2: But so I think they were just concerned about protecting
Speaker 2: their reputation. I think it's also true that, you know,
Speaker 2: Dieter k had said like, look, we want to build
Speaker 2: a Chapter eleven practice here. We don't have one. Right.
Speaker 2: We are great litigators, we're great regulatory lawyers, we're great
Speaker 2: corporate lawyers. But we should also be doing Chapter eleven work.
Speaker 2: And this might be an entree into it. More importantly,
Speaker 2: I think, from a very strategic standpoint, is if you're
Speaker 2: the lawyer for the company in bankruptcy, as Solving promo is,
Speaker 2: you control the process, You control all of the information
Speaker 2: at the company. As a practical matter, unless you have
Speaker 2: a fight with management, you and management will be aligned
Speaker 2: on really everything having to do with the company. And
Speaker 2: so one of the things that we figured out very
Speaker 2: early on is that it appeared that Solving, Cromwell and
Speaker 2: Ray were actually providing significant support to the prosecution of
Speaker 2: Bankman Freed.
Speaker 1: How unusual is that? I mean, the creditors are paying
Speaker 1: for that. Solivan and Crommell's billing the company to provide
Speaker 1: the prosecutors with information that will help them make their
Speaker 1: case against Sam Bankman Freed. Creditors don't sign off on that.
Speaker 1: It's unclear why that's even in the creditors' interests. So
Speaker 1: how do they is that? Is that unusual? I mean,
Speaker 1: I just don't know. Is it unusual? And yeah, it's unusual?
Speaker 1: Hous it unusual?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. So I want to be
Speaker 2: careful here. I mean, you know there the creditors are
Speaker 2: represented in the case by an official committee of unsecured
Speaker 2: creditors yep, and they have their own lawyers of firm
Speaker 2: called Paul Hasting's a very good firm, and you know,
Speaker 2: one response, you can imagine Solving Cromwell having to anything
Speaker 2: we have to say as well, like, look, the creditors
Speaker 2: have lawyers and they haven't objected to it. I have
Speaker 2: never seen this level of support by a company in
Speaker 2: bankruptcy for the prosecution of its insiders at you know,
Speaker 2: this level, this cost, this intensity. I haven't studied it
Speaker 2: carefully because it doesn't happen much. And certainly it makes
Speaker 2: sense for the company to cooperate and to enter into
Speaker 2: some kind of plea agreement or something of some sort
Speaker 2: with the prosecutors, you know, which I think does happen
Speaker 2: fairly frequently, and part of that will, you know, undoubtedly
Speaker 2: require some cooperation. The cooperation is different from running analyzes.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the lawyers for Solving and
Speaker 2: Cromwell gets up in court in I think February of
Speaker 2: twenty three at the hearing on the appointment of the Examiner,
Speaker 2: initial hearing on that and says, you know, we've been
Speaker 2: doing tens of millions of dollars worth of work in
Speaker 2: support of the prosecution and other interactions with regulars. Well,
Speaker 2: that's shocking, that's shocking, because that's tens of millions of
Speaker 2: creditor dollars that they're spending on this, and I think
Speaker 2: he thought that that was in service of the argument
Speaker 2: that we don't need an examiner because we'd have to
Speaker 2: spend tens of millions of dollars on an examiner too,
Speaker 2: which isn't really true because the examiner is really just
Speaker 2: focusing on Solivan and Cromwell, not all the other stuff.
Speaker 2: But it was pretty surprising. It was pretty surprising.
Speaker 1: I guess how much ConTroll do John Ray and Sullivan
Speaker 1: and Cromwell have of the information inside of FTX, Like
Speaker 1: how easily accessed is that information by either the prosecutors
Speaker 1: or the defense attorneys, And how hard is it to
Speaker 1: see inside and see why they're doing what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great question. So first of all, I think Ray,
Speaker 2: you know, is the CEO of a company, has, you know,
Speaker 2: all the powers that bankman free would have had enhanced
Speaker 2: to a certain extent by the bankruptcy good, so he
Speaker 2: controls it all. Counsel to the company solventing problem was
Speaker 2: retained by Ray. That was I think one of the
Speaker 2: first things he did. So they too have unfettered access
Speaker 2: to all of the company's information, all the company's resources.
Speaker 2: I think that's a lot of money, a lot of
Speaker 2: other assets, and they can decide who gets to see
Speaker 2: it and who doesn't. So, for example, I think they
Speaker 2: decided to let the prosecutor see, you know, if not
Speaker 2: all of it, a great deal of it, and to
Speaker 2: perform significant analyzes. That's certainly what Bankman Freed's lawyers alleged
Speaker 2: in the criminal case, and we've seen some evidence of
Speaker 2: that independently. But they're not obligated to share it with
Speaker 2: anybody else if they don't want to, so they haven't,
Speaker 2: for example, allowed Bankment Freed access to any of the
Speaker 2: information as far as I can tell at all, which
Speaker 2: creates a very basic problem in criminal law, which is
Speaker 2: a little outside of my expertise, but basically, you know,
Speaker 2: the concern that was raised in the criminal trial is, look,
Speaker 2: the government has a due need to provide what's called
Speaker 2: for exculpatory information, evidence that you know they have that
Speaker 2: would exonerate Sam. The government has that duty, but other
Speaker 2: private actors don't have that duty. And so the fight
Speaker 2: in the criminal trial and part was about whether ft
Speaker 2: X had the duty to provide exculpatory evidence to help
Speaker 2: Sam's defense, and the answer was no, right, they didn't
Speaker 2: have to do that and didn't do that. And so
Speaker 2: it's not at all difficult to imagine that the prosecutors
Speaker 2: were like, this is awesome. This is the best thing
Speaker 2: that's ever happened to us, because we have really smart
Speaker 2: lawyers and other people to analyze this stuff, and we
Speaker 2: don't have to share hardly any of it unless we
Speaker 2: choose to with the defense. It's like kaching, like it's
Speaker 2: awesome for the prosecutors, right, I mean, it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's and you can imagine that. And I don't mean,
Speaker 2: you know, cast us persons on the prosecutors, like, I
Speaker 2: think they have very good reason to want to take
Speaker 2: advantage of this right.
Speaker 1: They would to win. They would to win exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, your paper pointed out something it had not.
Speaker 1: It's an idiocy of mine had not occurred to me,
Speaker 1: and that was that the check on the bankruptcy process
Speaker 1: is the Department of Justice. The person in the bankruptcy,
Speaker 1: the trustee is a is an employee of the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice. But it's also the Department of Justice that's
Speaker 1: bringing the case against Sam Bankman free. And so you
Speaker 1: wonder what happened between when you see that the trustee
Speaker 1: not pressing really hard for an examiner or not making
Speaker 1: a huge stink when the examiner is not appointed, you
Speaker 1: wonder what conversations occurred within the Department of Justice on
Speaker 1: this subject.
Speaker 2: No, that's a great point, and yes, I mean we
Speaker 2: you know that the subtitle of the paper is conflicts
Speaker 2: of you know, public and private interests in chapter eleven,
Speaker 2: because you know, it's easy enough to say, well, it
Speaker 2: looks like there might be some evidence that Sullivan and
Speaker 2: Cromwell had a kind of private conflict of interest. They
Speaker 2: didn't want any of their mistakes, you know, before bankruptcy
Speaker 2: to be revealed, and so they're you know, use the
Speaker 2: bankruptcy to conceal that. But it's also apparently the case
Speaker 2: that there was some kind of conflict between the public
Speaker 2: actors here, as you point out. So the US Trustee
Speaker 2: Program is the watchdog for the bankruptcy system, and they're
Speaker 2: not the only people are going to ask for an examiner,
Speaker 2: but they did here, and they often are the ones
Speaker 2: who do. They're the ones who was supposed to police
Speaker 2: for conflicts of interest, and they did object to solvent
Speaker 2: Cromwell's retention. But I'm not sure they knew any of
Speaker 2: the stuff that we've now put forward. But at the
Speaker 2: same time, the Southern District of New York US Attorney
Speaker 2: program is part of the Department of Justice, and it's
Speaker 2: not at all difficult to imagine that there were tough
Speaker 2: negotiations between them, Because if the prosecutors are getting really
Speaker 2: important support from FTX and Solivan Cromwell, you know, who
Speaker 2: have a very large and very well respected white collar practice,
Speaker 2: maybe the US attorneys in New York don't want anybody
Speaker 2: to toss Solivan Cromwell out on grounds that they have
Speaker 2: some kind of conflict. Maybe you don't want an examiner
Speaker 2: coming in and poking around to figure any of that
Speaker 2: stuff out. So there's a tension. There's a kind of conflict,
Speaker 2: we think, between the US trustee, who wants this transparency
Speaker 2: and wants this stuff to come out because that's their job,
Speaker 2: and the prosecutors, who, under these circumstances, which we think
Speaker 2: are probably unusual, to say no, no, no, no, this is like
Speaker 2: a really good thing, do not mess it up. And
Speaker 2: you know, obviously we have no idea if that's really true,
Speaker 2: although we have good reason to think it is. Certainly
Speaker 2: we have no idea how it gets resolved, because there
Speaker 2: is no rule book for resolving those kinds of you know,
Speaker 2: internal disputes in the Department of Justice, at least not
Speaker 2: one that's public.
Speaker 1: Judging. Sam will be right back. We're back. So there's
Speaker 1: one other thing I wanted to ask you about. It
Speaker 1: seems that's one of the unusual things about the ftics
Speaker 1: bankruptcy is just how many assets were still there. It's
Speaker 1: sounding more and more like the deposit are going to
Speaker 1: get all their money back with interest, that they're sitting
Speaker 1: on a pile of many, many billions of dollars of assets.
Speaker 1: And is that unusual? Is it unusual for the bankrupt
Speaker 1: company to have such wealth inside of it? And does
Speaker 1: that change? Does that have is that queering in any
Speaker 1: way the way the bankruptcy might be conducted, Like, does it,
Speaker 1: for example, create an incentive to string it out longer
Speaker 1: because it's because you can actually bill so much more
Speaker 1: because the money is there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So put that incentive question to one side, because
Speaker 2: that is the right question, and we'll come back to
Speaker 2: it in a second. You know, the crypto cases are
Speaker 2: kind of unusual because you know, these firms, especially the exchanges,
Speaker 2: seem to look a little bit like banks, but they
Speaker 2: weren't regulated like banks, and banks themselves are not allowed
Speaker 2: to go into bankruptcy for a good reason, like it
Speaker 2: would totally screw up the system if they could. You know,
Speaker 2: I think most companies when they go into bankruptcy that
Speaker 2: have you know, any real business that's going you know,
Speaker 2: they're not going to be solvent, and they're not going
Speaker 2: to pay creditors in full, but they'll pay something. Probably
Speaker 2: they will pay them, you know, partially in cash and
Speaker 2: partially in stock of the company will issue new stock,
Speaker 2: and they'll wipe out the old shareholders, which is intuitive, right,
Speaker 2: Like all right, well, you know, the old shared holders
Speaker 2: took the risk and they lost you know, the kinds
Speaker 2: of assets that the peers saw that FTX was sitting on,
Speaker 2: you know, like anthropic stock, like all that stuff seems
Speaker 2: extraordinary to me. I think you called it in your
Speaker 2: book the Dragon's Layer, which I thought was such a colorful,
Speaker 2: you know, way of capturing this strange collection of assets,
Speaker 2: many of which turned out to be quite valuable that
Speaker 2: Alameda or you know, other entities and the complex were
Speaker 2: holding on to and that's highly unusual. The other thing
Speaker 2: to bear in mind is that even though the company
Speaker 2: has said, well, we think that customers may get their
Speaker 2: deposits back, they've said that the value of those deposits
Speaker 2: has been determined as of the data of the bankruptcy petition,
Speaker 2: which is November eleventh, when the value of those deposits
Speaker 2: was quite a bit lower, right, So, well.
Speaker 1: Means they all got dollarized. Then it was sort of
Speaker 1: like if you had crypto, you got the dollar value
Speaker 1: equivalent and that's what you're going to get back.
Speaker 2: So you right, And that's very different from actually getting
Speaker 2: your crypto back, because to day that crypto is it
Speaker 2: sounds like it's worth a great deal more than it
Speaker 2: was back then. And so you know, if if in
Speaker 2: fact it was your crypto, always, even if the company
Speaker 2: was comingling, it should just be your crypto. They should
Speaker 2: just give it back to you. And if it's worth more,
Speaker 2: muzzle tough. And if it's not worth more, it's too
Speaker 2: bad for you. But neither way, right, the company is
Speaker 2: getting the delta there. The company is getting the delta there,
Speaker 2: and that in part is presumably subsidizing everything else that's happening.
Speaker 2: On top of the fact that the company did have
Speaker 2: all of these assets, some of which looked like they
Speaker 2: were extremely valuable. Now your question about incentives is the
Speaker 2: right one, which is like, well, who's got what incentives here?
Speaker 2: You know, ordinarily in a reorganization, the lawyers always get
Speaker 2: paid off the top, and you know, people grouse about it,
Speaker 2: but it's not a big deal because otherwise, how are
Speaker 2: you going to get it done? Right?
Speaker 1: Can't?
Speaker 2: And so you know, the company make sure that its
Speaker 2: plan to reorganize has you know, sufficient cash build into
Speaker 2: it to make sure that those lawyers get paid. But
Speaker 2: mostly the money is going to go to keep the
Speaker 2: company going. One of the most troubling things in the
Speaker 2: bankruptcy here is that it doesn't really look like Ray
Speaker 2: ever honored the promise that deeterrik had made to Bankman
Speaker 2: Free back in November ninth of twenty twenty two, which
Speaker 2: is like, we're here to help you rescue this company.
Speaker 2: And you know that would presumably have involved finding new
Speaker 2: financing to you know, provide the liquidity that you needed
Speaker 2: to permit withdrawals to start again and to then keep going.
Speaker 2: Because if the company was fundamentally profitable but have this
Speaker 2: you know, serious problem. I don't think anybody disputes there
Speaker 2: was a serious problem of commingling, right, But you've stopped
Speaker 2: that problem and you've found ways to fix it. And
Speaker 2: otherwise these exchanges are pretty viable, like the most value
Speaker 2: for the most people, but would come from keeping the
Speaker 2: business going. One of the other remarkable things about the
Speaker 2: Examiner hearing again from you know about a year ago,
Speaker 2: little over a year ago, is that Ray testifies extensively
Speaker 2: and he says, I never talked to Bangman Freed Yea.
Speaker 1: He told me that I couldn't. That blew my mind too,
Speaker 1: because it's he and the other executives are trove of information.
Speaker 1: You would think you'd want the information, but he told
Speaker 1: me he didn't. As a matter of principle, he said
Speaker 1: he didn't speak to him.
Speaker 2: Very early in the case. Because what did Sam do
Speaker 2: in the middle of November of twenty twenty two. He
Speaker 2: did what Sullivan Cromwell encouraged him to do and what
Speaker 2: he thought he should be doing, which is trying to
Speaker 2: find rescue financing. So he goes out and he gets
Speaker 2: Tron and Numura and who knows, you know, all these
Speaker 2: other folks to say, yeah, we'll lend you three or
Speaker 2: four billion dollars. Now I have no idea if those
Speaker 2: were worth the paper that they were written on, Like,
Speaker 2: I just don't know. I do know that your job
Speaker 2: as the CEO of the company in chapter eleven is
Speaker 2: to at least figure it out right, take a look
Speaker 2: at them, say ah hm, are these good or not?
Speaker 2: Like Sam, tell me about these things. We understand you
Speaker 2: might have some other issues, but at least at least, like,
Speaker 2: you know, make the connection, help us understand how we
Speaker 2: can do this. And they didn't do that, and that
Speaker 2: to me is extraordinary, right, It's extraordinary for a couple
Speaker 2: of reasons, one being that, like if the point of
Speaker 2: having this whole system Congress created in the seventies is
Speaker 2: to keep viable companies going, then for whatever reasons, a
Speaker 2: decision was made to not do that. Now we don't
Speaker 2: know obviously internally what was going on, and they definitely
Speaker 2: made they being FTX and Solvent Promo made some you know,
Speaker 2: statements about possibly restarting the exchange, and so maybe they tried.
Speaker 2: I know, ultimately they didn't, and they just blamed it
Speaker 2: on Bateman Free But again it you know, if Ray
Speaker 2: was correct when he said, well, this is just old
Speaker 2: fashion embezzlement, and we know factually everybody agrees that there
Speaker 2: was commingling between Alameda and FTX, and that I think
Speaker 2: that was stopped then, Like this was a simple problem
Speaker 2: and that the criminal part of it was solved a
Speaker 2: while ago or very easily. So why not restart the
Speaker 2: exchanges if you think they're fundamentally sound? Like this problem
Speaker 2: it was like, you know, it was like a benign tumor.
Speaker 2: It was a tumor. It had to be taken out,
Speaker 2: but it was benign and there was no reason to
Speaker 2: think that it had metastasie.
Speaker 1: And so getting back to you, why wouldn't they have
Speaker 1: done that? What are their incentives and the.
Speaker 2: Incentives I think they're sort of two conflicting ones. One
Speaker 2: is the one kind of on the surface that you identify,
Speaker 2: which is like, well, you know, the lawyers can make
Speaker 2: lots and lots of money in the case by billing,
Speaker 2: and so in fact they have, I mean, the billing
Speaker 2: rate in the case has been extraordinary. So that's on
Speaker 2: the surface. But as I said earlier, like I don't
Speaker 2: think Sullivan Cromwell was interested in stealing the business from
Speaker 2: bankman Freed like to make money on it, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: like they don't need the money. I think they were
Speaker 2: concerned about embarrassment. I think they wanted to maintain good
Speaker 2: relations with the government and public actors. And number two
Speaker 2: and this is a little more subtle. You know, you
Speaker 2: can imagine that Sullivan Cromwell sort of shows up at
Speaker 2: the prosecutor's office on November ninth and says, we know
Speaker 2: you've been concerned about Crypto for a while. We've got
Speaker 2: a story to tell you. And then you know, maybe
Speaker 2: that prosecutors were already thinking about it and investigating whatever,
Speaker 2: but they come to realize that, like, there's this incredibly
Speaker 2: fortuitous set of events that can make it possible for
Speaker 2: Sullivan and Cromwell to really be heroes to the prosecutors
Speaker 2: that they work with all the time, to be heroes
Speaker 2: to the regulators who they might have you know, misled
Speaker 2: a little bit earlier, but who they've now made, you know,
Speaker 2: functional amends with. And by the way, we get to
Speaker 2: build a chapter eleven practice along the way. So I
Speaker 2: think those are the kinds of incentives that are more
Speaker 2: plausibly at work. But again, you know, we don't know
Speaker 2: there's more to the story, and we don't know what
Speaker 2: that story.
Speaker 1: But why does that lead to not trying to restart
Speaker 1: the company as a going enterprise.
Speaker 2: Right, because if you restart the company is a going enterprise,
Speaker 2: it comes out of bankruptcy sooner, and I think more
Speaker 2: information about the company comes out sooner. What I think
Speaker 2: is going to happen is, if you know, FTX and
Speaker 2: Solvent and Promwell are able to do what they want
Speaker 2: to do, they're going to liquidate the company and seal
Speaker 2: all the records.
Speaker 1: So no, don't do No one will ever know what happened.
Speaker 2: Correct, And so if you reorganize the company instead and
Speaker 2: it survives as a going concern, oh guess what. They're
Speaker 2: going to be managers, and they're going to be shareholders,
Speaker 2: and they're going to be other human beings interacting with
Speaker 2: this large company, and they're going to learn all sorts
Speaker 2: of stuff that might not be so great for Solving
Speaker 2: and Cromwell, mostly about what happened in that moment of panic,
Speaker 2: if it was in fact a moment of panic, and
Speaker 2: then thereafter, because there were many, many puzzling decisions made
Speaker 2: during the bankruptcy case that are hard to explain accept
Speaker 2: perhaps as a way of helping Solve and Promwell manage
Speaker 2: these other problems, which is, you know, if we're right,
Speaker 2: is a very very big problem. All of that would
Speaker 2: come out eventually if the company were reorganized.
Speaker 1: So the Court of Appeals reversed the bankruptcy judge on
Speaker 1: the subject of the examiner. How unusual is that? How
Speaker 1: unusual is it for a court of appeals to say,
Speaker 1: to tell the bankruptcy judge, know you did it wrong?
Speaker 2: So it was this is the third Circuit Court of Appeals,
Speaker 2: which is, you know, a very sort of well regarded
Speaker 2: powerful court. I don't think the reversal rate. I don't
Speaker 2: think it was that unusual, and especially in this case,
Speaker 2: because the statute is clear. It's obvious. It's so obvious, right,
Speaker 2: And so to me, part of what's so interesting about this,
Speaker 2: and I don't know the answer is why Solivan Cromwell
Speaker 2: didn't just settle this request for an examiner back when
Speaker 2: the US Trustee made the request. Because if I'm Solivan
Speaker 2: and Cromwell, like I should be like, sure, we have
Speaker 2: nothing to hide here, guys, there's no problem here, bring
Speaker 2: an examiner, and like, let's keep it focused on you know,
Speaker 2: you concerned about our conflict. We have no conflict. We
Speaker 2: got nothing to hide from you. And keep it short,
Speaker 2: keep it sweet, keep it focused, all of which they
Speaker 2: could have done by agreement with the US Trustee. And
Speaker 2: that like, if I'm Solivan Promo, that's a total win
Speaker 2: because you can say, hey, we had an examiner, We're
Speaker 2: all fine, Like he gave us a clean bill of health.
Speaker 2: Nothing to see here, guys. And by the way, if
Speaker 2: that had happened, I wouldn't be here right.
Speaker 1: An attorney named Bob Cleary has been appointed as the examiner,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious what happens next. Is he a genuinely
Speaker 1: independent person or is he Is he a bankruptcy person
Speaker 1: who's is a repeat player in this in the bankruptcy system.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not that he was the prosecutor. Apparently the
Speaker 2: prosecutor who prosecuted the unibomber ted Kazinski. Oh, when he
Speaker 2: was a prosecutor, and now he's a white collar, you know,
Speaker 2: criminal defense lawyer at Patterson Bell Knapp is not a
Speaker 2: bankruptcy insider. If I guess, I would say he's probably
Speaker 2: very independent. I think the bigger question about Cleary is
Speaker 2: going to be how much access he really has to
Speaker 2: what really happened. And it's not at all difficult for
Speaker 2: Solivan Promo FTX just row sand in his gears.
Speaker 1: How would they do that? How would they do that?
Speaker 1: So he does have the right to walk in and
Speaker 1: ask for anything.
Speaker 2: I have not seen the final order on the scope
Speaker 2: of his retention, but unless it orders the company to
Speaker 2: waive privilege and you know, gives him access to everything,
Speaker 2: even if it's been designated confidential, he's going to have
Speaker 2: to ask for it. And the company absolutely can fight
Speaker 2: about things like privilege, attorney client privilege, and can absolutely
Speaker 2: fight about things like confidentiality. My guess is that at
Speaker 2: this point Sullivan and Cromwell probably won't fight too hard,
Speaker 2: certainly not openly. I mean, they were fighting the examiner
Speaker 2: tooth and nail until a couple of weeks ago, and
Speaker 2: then they seem to have stopped. So I think they
Speaker 2: understand that, you know, they should just sort of you know,
Speaker 2: like take the medicine and deal with it. But they
Speaker 2: can still you know, fight in sort of small ways.
Speaker 2: And whether clearly has the resources meaning basically the money,
Speaker 2: the budget for the bankruptcy court, you know, really from
Speaker 2: the company, Whether the bankruptcy court has the patience to
Speaker 2: deal with challenges buy cleary to whatever Solivon Cromwell, may
Speaker 2: or FTX might be withholding. You know, those are questions
Speaker 2: that will have to be answered. He's going to produce
Speaker 2: a report in fairly short order. My hunt is that
Speaker 2: it will say something like this. You know, we've investigated.
Speaker 2: We couldn't get everything we wanted to see. We saw
Speaker 2: a lot. We think there's some problems. This is not great,
Speaker 2: but you know, mostly the problems that we've seen would
Speaker 2: involve claims of you know, an ethical nature having to
Speaker 2: do with bankment freed and they don't really affect the bankruptcy.
Speaker 2: The scope of our retention really doesn't ask us to
Speaker 2: look at the whole bankruptcy and everything else. So, you know,
Speaker 2: unless the judge wants to do a fuller thing, you know,
Speaker 2: we're not really going to say but we'll wag a
Speaker 2: finger at Sulivan Cromwell and we'll let it go. Now
Speaker 2: that's not great, but it wouldn't be terribly surprising. That's
Speaker 2: why we say in the paper we think that most
Speaker 2: of the damage has been done and it can't be undone.
Speaker 1: Do you have any idea whether Bob Cleary is read
Speaker 1: your paper.
Speaker 2: Not a clue?
Speaker 1: Well, he should write, I mean if he reads your
Speaker 1: paper he's going to have, he's gonna be able to
Speaker 1: ask some questions that he might it might not occur
Speaker 1: to him otherwise.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and for that matter, Solivon Cromwell should read it, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, like, you know, we are not hiding anything
Speaker 2: from them. They may well have a different version of
Speaker 2: the facts than we have. Undoubtedly they do. Undoubtedly they
Speaker 2: know more facts than we know. And if they think
Speaker 2: we have gotten something wrong, if they think we are
Speaker 2: missing some important things, like they should tell us, like
Speaker 2: you know, we're not. We're not here to get anybody.
Speaker 2: We're just here to get the truth.
Speaker 1: How did talking to Sam directly and his mom affect
Speaker 1: your view of the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. I you know, got connected
Speaker 2: to them initially through a colleague of mine at Stanford
Speaker 2: who's you know, called me after I'd already agreed to
Speaker 2: do the Amigas brief to say, you know, can I
Speaker 2: tell you this crazy story and ask you a favor?
Speaker 2: And he told me, you know, basically Sam's version of
Speaker 2: the Solvent Cromwell stole the company from me story. And
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, that can't be right, that's nuts.
Speaker 2: He's like, well, look would you talk to them? Would
Speaker 2: you do me a favor and talk to them about this?
Speaker 2: I'm like, of course, I'll talk to anybody. I can't
Speaker 2: be the lawyer, but I'll talk to anybody. And I
Speaker 2: did talk to them, and you know, he sent me,
Speaker 2: They sent me the you know, all the stuff that
Speaker 2: Sam was sending to everybody about this, and over time
Speaker 2: I came to appreciate that there was more to the
Speaker 2: story than just solving Cromwell's version of it.
Speaker 1: What did do you come come away from this experience
Speaker 1: thinking that the bankruptcy system needs to be reformed.
Speaker 2: M That's a great question. So no, David and I
Speaker 2: do have some pretty concrete recommendations in the final part
Speaker 2: of the paper, like we think maybe, you know, we
Speaker 2: should use examiners a little more frequently on a somewhat
Speaker 2: more targeted basis, because again, you need this kind of
Speaker 2: outside check. We think in a broader class of cases,
Speaker 2: we absolutely think that judges should take much more seriously
Speaker 2: questions about whether the lawyers for the company who have
Speaker 2: so much control and power in these cases, really had
Speaker 2: any pre bankruptcy relationships here, you know, or in any
Speaker 2: case like this, and it's you know, it's it's tricky
Speaker 2: because you know, every large firm has done something for
Speaker 2: every large company, So I've always had some kind of relationship,
Speaker 2: not always but frequently. It's not hard to imagine it,
Speaker 2: but you really, you know, need to like take a
Speaker 2: beat if you're the judge, think about like, okay, exactly
Speaker 2: what's going on here. So, you know, we think judges
Speaker 2: should be more mindful of this kind of problem. We
Speaker 2: think that you should use examiners a little bit more.
Speaker 2: We think the US Trustee should probably have more independence
Speaker 2: in the Justice Department or from the Justice Department, maybe
Speaker 2: be housed outside. You know, the truth is the US
Speaker 2: Trustee is often the only person coming into the bankrupcy
Speaker 2: court and saying like, hey, guys, we think there's a
Speaker 2: problem here. Can you please slow this down? And you know,
Speaker 2: the I think sometimes the judges feel like the US
Speaker 2: Trustees are just kind of meddlesome bureaucrats and they don't
Speaker 2: maybe you know, get quite the difference that they deserve.
Speaker 2: You know, here they were I think, onto something very important,
Speaker 2: even though they were limited in what they could do
Speaker 2: because of the relationship with the prosecutors.
Speaker 1: The paper was great. It's very very I mean for
Speaker 1: a for this kind of thing, it was really it
Speaker 1: was a page turner.
Speaker 2: Se congratulations, Well, that is very kind of been thinking.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Lipson is a bankruptcy expert at Temple University. And
Speaker 1: as for Sullivan Cromwell, all I can say is that
Speaker 1: a spokesperson for Sullivan and Cromwell referred me to a
Speaker 1: statement from the FTX debtors which reads as follows quote.
Speaker 1: In an effort to support mister Bankman Freed at the
Speaker 1: expense of his victims and the dedicated professionals who have
Speaker 1: worked tirelessly to rectify the harm he caused, certain academics
Speaker 1: and others have parroted his false narratives, certain of which
Speaker 1: cite their source as being interviews with Sam Bankmanfreed and
Speaker 1: his parents in an attempt to elevate his standing and
Speaker 1: image before the court that is about to sentence him.
Speaker 1: In fact, but for the work of a large team
Speaker 1: of committed advisors, including Sullivan and Cromwell and others who
Speaker 1: have been unfairly maligned as part of mister Bankman Freed's
Speaker 1: defense strategy, billions of additional dollars would have been lost
Speaker 1: or stolen, and the recoveries to customers would be a
Speaker 1: fraction of what we can now expect. It's time to
Speaker 1: put blame where it rightfully belongs. And coming up on
Speaker 1: Judging Sam, I'll be in court for a sentencing and
Speaker 1: I'm also going to speak to a formal federal prosecutor
Speaker 1: and possibly Sam Bagman freed himself. Judging Sam is hosted
Speaker 1: by Me Michael Lewis Lydia Gene Kott is our court reporter.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Ariella Markowitz and edited by
Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein. It was engineered by Sarah Bruguer. The music
Speaker 1: was composed by Matthias Bossi and John Evans of stell
Speaker 1: Wagon Symphonette. Judging Sam is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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