To read please see Mickelson’s biographer Alan Shipnuck’s Fire Pit collective below

https://firepitcollective.com/how-phil-betrayed-billy-legal-maneuvering-and-a-friendship-destroyed/

The most significant part is that it brings to light a money laundering investigation by the IRS.

Walters asked stockbroker Gregory Silvera to do Mickelson a favour.

“Mickelson wanted to transfer several million dollars to Silveira and then have Silveira wire it from his personal bank account to the offshore book to payoff Phil’s gambling losses. Unfortunately for Silveira, he said yes. The wire transfer quickly caught the attention of the criminal division of the IRS.

From the book “With the feds on his heels, Phil told me that his friends at KPMG, his main corporate sponsor at the time, had introduced him to a D.C. attorney named Gregory Craig. He was not just any lawyer; Craig had been chief White House counsel for President Obama. With boyish looks and trademark white tousled hair, Craig had an Ivy League pedigree, having attended Harvard as an undergrad and Yale Law School. Craig also was tight with Preet Bharara, then the U.S. attorney in the powerful Southern District of New York, former U.S. attorney general Loretta Lynch, and the director of enforcement at the SEC. Now that’s political juice.

With Mickelson in the midst of a money-laundering investigation and a target of an insider-trading investigation, what did super-lawyer Craig do to get the prosecutors off Phil’s back? He performed a legal trick so improbable that it was like Harry Houdini pulling a rabbit out of a hat while in chains underwater.

On May 19, 2016 – nearly a year before my trial – the SEC issued a press release headlined “Pro Golfer Agrees to Repay Trading Profits.’’ The statement, which was related solely to the Dean Foods case, named Phil as a “relief defendant,” government-speak for people not accused of any wrongdoing but named in complaints for “purposes of recovering alleged ill-gotten gains in their possession from schemes perpetrated by others.”

It went on: “Mickelson neither admitted nor denied the allegations in the SEC’s complaint and agreed to pay full disgorgement of his trading profits totaling $931,738.12 plus interest of $105,291.69.” It also noted that I had “urged” Mickelson to trade in Dean Foods stock and he later sold almost $1 million in profits to pay off part of his gambling debt to me.

“Mickelson will repay the money he made from his trading in Dean Foods because he should not be allowed to profit from Walters’s illegal conduct,” the press release stated.

There was no mention of any money-laundering investigation. Craig chimed in on cue by releasing his own statement claiming that Phil was “an innocent bystander” to any alleged wrongdoing by other people.

Phil and Bharara both got what they wanted. Phil’s attorneys issued a statement that made it look like Phil was an innocent victim of an insider-trading case that implicated me. And in the process, Phil was off the hook on the money-laundering case. The only person who ended up looking guilty was me”

Walters was convicted and sent to prison for five years. Mickelson’s trading in Dean Foods was used as evidence against Walters, but Mickelson did not testify at trial. The golfer’s lawyers informed the prosecution and defense that if called by either side, Mickelson would decline to testify based on his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

So, the involvement in the insider trading case is new, previously not revealed. The other telling thing is Walters summing up of Mickelson’s character.

This is all a far cry from how most fans have perceived him in the past. Indeed, even the ubiquitous thumbs up gesture may not be the jolly friendly gesture that it seems.

There’s considerable debate about what the gesture actually did mean in Roman times. . A classical source suggests that the default action was to kill the defeated opponent; thus, “thumbs down” would have signified that the losing gladiator was to be spared, and “thumbs up” meant he was to be killed.

Therefore, the thumbs up isn’t necessarily a everything’s great gesture from Phil. No, he’s the smartest guy in the room, and no doubt a scholar of classical antiquity. His thumbs up actually means “you’re going to get killed”. Probably a subtle sign to his opponents on the golf course.

But reading this sad, sorry tale about gambling in the fast lane it does go to his character. There’s a lack of loyalty and going back on his word in order tomprotect his image and public profile.

This is just the latest chapter in a long line of attention seeking dramas that Mickelson gets embroiled in. When he finally leaves professional golf, either to go into US politics or play Baron Hardup in panto over here, it will be awfully quiet.

Now this is out there, and Mickelson personally does not come across well, what drama will be next?

Like a magician, there will be more to come and I think I know what will be happening next.

To be continued.