To Crack Wu-Tang Album's Secrets, FOIA FOIA Y'All (Feat. Open Mike Eagle)

Hello, I'm Michelle Hussain, and for more than 20 years, I was at the BBC. Military withdrawal from Afghanistan. But all the time I was delivering the headlines, I wanted to go further than the news of the day, to spend more time with the people shaping our world. And that's what I'm doing here on this podcast. Speaking to people from Nigel Farage... Russia needs to be taught a lesson. ...to tech journalist Cara Swisher. And the tech industry is running wild. You know, they've gotten what they wanted and they've seen a huge run up in their stock prices. This will be a place where every weekend you can count on one essential conversation to help make sense of the world. So please join me, listen and subscribe to The Michelle Hussain Show from Bloomberg Weekend, wherever you get your podcasts. You certainly ask interesting questions. I gotta be honest I never thought I'd be doing a lawsuit about a single copy of a Wu-Tang record Yeah, I love this story and how the album ends up in the hands of the U.S. Marshals and it just sits there in a vault for like two years Cue the music I'm investigative journalist Jason Leopold I spend most of my days getting documents from the government I'm attorney Matt Topic and I fight them in court to open their files when they don't want to From Bloomberg and No Smiling this is Disclosure a podcast about buying loose government secrets, the Freedom of Information Act, and the unexpected places that takes us. Matt, what t-shirt are you wearing today? I've worn this thing a thousand times. It's a Bacon Mobile. Bacon Mobile, nice. It's like a food truck looking thing. It says Bacon Mobile $1. So prices have gone up quite a bit on bacon since I got this shirt. Yeah, they have. Also, the health risks as well, Matt. Oh, don't believe that. When you say that this t-shirt is like amazing, is it the quality of the shirt, the material? Yes. There were instances in my life where I would find a shirt that I loved, and it's usually a band t-shirt, that was so comfortable that I have to buy two in case the one got ripped. This is one of those. And the funny thing about this weird tick that I had of needing two of everything and how it relates to the FOIA is that back in the day, agencies would say to me when they're conducting a search, hey, do you mind if we remove the duplicates, like duplicate emails? And I'm like, yes, I mind. I want two of everything. So like two of everything even like extended to FOIA. Like they're telling me like may take longer. I'm like, but I want both. I need to have two of everything. I finally, you know, needed someone to tell me like, listen, you're not going to miss anything if you tell them to remove. It's not going to break. But for some reason, it was just like, no, I want both. You're deeply distrustful. That's very true. As you should be. It's your job. Which is why we fought as hard and long as we did against the government to get that bill of sale that showed finally how much the government sold once upon a time in Shaolin for. Do we need like a drum roll? Drum roll? No, not for Wu-Tang. We need like a record scratch. Hang on, let's do the backstory first. Can we start with what is Once Upon a Time in Shaolin? Okay. So the Justice Department didn't get its hands on some used Wu-Tang CD. This album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, wasn't just rare. It was singular, a creature of myth in an age of mass production. There's only one Mona Lisa, yo. RZA, the architect of the Wu-Tang Clan, wanted the album to be treated like a sacred artifact. It was a way to restore value to music by making it scarce, untouchable. In his view, people only truly value what they can't have. We're going to make one copy and you've got to go to a museum to hear it. The album's creation defied every convention of the music industry. No labels, no corporate fingerprints. it was all a shadow operation known only to RZA and the producer. Not even other Wu-Tang members. I didn't know anything about anything. Not Method Man, not Ghostface Killer. I was never really, you know what I... Over six years, the album took shape in fragments, recorded mostly in Staten Island, forged in Marrakech, and finally pressed into a double-disc set sealed inside a vault at one of Africa's finest hotels. This was RZA's phantom treasure. 31 tracks. Every member of Wu-Tang on the record. With guest appearances from Redman, a few FC Barcelona players, and apparently the goddess of pop. That voice sound familiar? Yeah, it sounds a little bit like Cher. I say apparently because very few people have heard the album. And that's the point. In March 2014, RZA announced that he was about to put out an album like no one had ever done in the history of modern music. That's like the illest package right there, yeah. The illest album cover in the history of the world. The plan was for Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to disappear into private hands, sold to a single chosen bidder. Its new master would be bound by an oath of silence. Only the owner or those summoned to private, heavily guarded listening rituals would ever hear it. No recordings, no leaks, no exceptions. The album wouldn't be released publicly for 88 years. Once the world got wind of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, it indeed became a living legend. A guy from Forbes flew to Morocco to be one of the first to hear the record before it got auctioned off. I'm going to drive about 150 miles to Marrakesh, and then I'm going to go into the foothills of the Atlas Mountains to hear part of the Wu-Tang Clan's new secret album. At a MoMA PS1 unveiling, roughly 150 hand-picked guests endured TSA-level security, surrendering phones, passing double metal detector scans, and facing guards checking for bugs just to hear a 13-minute excerpt of the album, which, by the way, was locked behind velvet ropes and hulking security men. We are all in the very privileged situation to witness the first, the last, and the only public listening session of Once Upon a Time and Shaolin. But not everyone was so enthusiastic about the record. Fans were upset that they couldn't hear it. Other Wu-Tang members agreed. And many of them felt shut out of the project entirely. They took issue with the idea of their music being locked away like a private treasure. Not to mention how the producer went about the project. Everybody else just got paid whenever they got paid for their feature. But you didn't tell me that you're going to build the album around it. That's the sneaky s**t. That's Ghostface Killah on the Bootleg Kev podcast saying he didn't know his track would be turned into a secret Wu-Tang Clan album and sold for millions without the group being cut in. Didn't y'all going to do that and then don't even break nobody off after you sold that for that much? I'll be honest with you. I do like Wu-Tang Clan, and I thought it was just, wow, that's interesting. But it wasn't until they auctioned it off and then finding out who the buyer was where it suddenly became a little bit more interesting to me. Bill Maher comes on, right? Is that RZA? That's RZA on an interview series, Build. And he goes, hey, you guys hear about this scumbag? And it's Martin Screlly. I'm like, wait a minute. Hey, baby, that's the guy that bought the album. Boom. So Martin Shkreli is the pharma bro. The pharma bro. Pharma bro. The notorious pharma bro. He's best known as the pharma bro. Martin Shkreli. If I was aware of that, I may have a very different approach to putting that in his head. How do I want to describe him? I'm going to look and see how the internet has described him. I mean, I immediately found on Reddit, Shkreli is a piece of s*** that raised prescription drug prices thousands of percent. He's also been called a morally bankrupt sociopath, a garbage monster, and everything that's wrong with capitalism. And why is he hated? Well, tonight the head of a drug company who's accused of gouging patients says he should be thanked. I don't really care about people hating me. He was a pharma executive and a hedge fund manager. He had this company, and this is what earned him that notorious nickname Pharma Bro. he jacked up the price of this life-saving drug by like 5,000%. There's no excuse from going from $13.50 to $750 for one pill. This is a capitalist society, capitalist system, and capitalist rules. And my investors expect me to maximize profits. People started calling him the most hated man in America. What do you say to that single pregnant woman who might have AIDS? She needs teraprim in order to survive. He had testified before Congress about, you know, the drug, the price of which he raised. And he was very, very smug. On the advice of counsel I invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege against self Then he was charged with securities fraud Nothing to do with any price gouging but for defrauding investors in his hedge fund Busy guy Shame on the grill People hated him. They had choice words for him. And anyway, along the way, he purchased Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. What did you think the first time you listened to it? It was bad. But I don't think it was ever about the music. It's not exactly 36 Chambers, huh? So he wins the auction and he pays for the album with drug blood money, basically. Oh, man. So how much exactly did he pay for it? Most reports put it at $2 million. Shkreli himself has said $1.5 million. So how did the government get the album? Eventually gets to the point where they put him in jail. He's convicted of securities fraud, has a seven-year sentence. And as part of that, the government seized a bunch of his assets, including Once Upon a Time in Shalem. After he's convicted of securities fraud, he owes a bunch of restitution and then they need to seize his assets in order to pay back the victims. Is that the idea? Exactly. I got to say, as a piece of performance art, if that's what you look at the album as, it's doing pretty good right now. Yeah. Right. It ends up in the hands of this crazy guy and then it gets seized by the federal government. Right. In an asset seizure to pay off the guy's restitution. Like, I mean, how amazing is that? You couldn't have made a better storyline for this album. It's amazing. So they seized this album. And that's kind of the last thing we hear about it for probably about three, you know, over three years. So what's going on in the summer of 2021, Jason, that causes you to make this request? There was so much secrecy around this. What was happening at that time was the Justice Department and the U.S. Marshals had this joint announcement where they sold Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. To whom? They didn't say who they sold it to. But here's what the announcement said. Read by rapper and comedian, Open Mike Eagle. The contract of sale contains a confidentiality provision that protects information relating to the buyer and price. It was that secret. So I filed a request with the DOJ criminal division after the announcement, and they were taking an unnecessarily long time to respond. I sent this to you because I wanted to sue. Well, you wanted your records and you realized it was going to take a lawsuit to get it. I assume he didn't just like want to sue. Why would you assume that? I was just trying to make you sound good, buddy, but that's fine. Jason enjoys the combat. Yes, Matt. I enjoy the government fulfilling their duty to release records that belong to the public. And sometimes that takes a lawsuit. Okay, fair enough. Let me read the email. Start us up, buddy. All right. I get an email from Jason about a request that he made to the Colonel Division of the Justice Department. I request disclosure from the Asset Recovery Section in the Office of the Criminal Division for the following records. One, a copy of the receipt of sale of the album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by the recording group Wu-Tang Clan. A copy of the contract and returns of sale by the government of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Any and all photographs and video in possession of the Asset Recovery Section of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. any legal memos, opinions, and guidance provided to the asset recovery section related or referring to the sale of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and just a bunch of other communications about all this stuff. This is like the most formal email I've ever gotten from you. May I have some lawsuits, please? Please, sir. Can I sue? There's not even any profanity in this. Anyway, so we filed the lawsuit and in only a few short months, I actually did get some records. Which is surprising because sometimes it can take years before we'll see anything. It's January 2022, and the first batch of records hits my inbox. And what's the first thing that catches my eye? Photos. There are photos of the mythical once upon a time in Shaolin. Take a look at these photos, Matt. What do you see? So the first thing I see is this black box with a Wu-Tang insignia on top that kind of looks like a large cigar humidor. It's not just a black box. It's a cedarwood box covered in black cow leather with light beige velvet lining, according to the asset list. Looking at this, someone has not taken very good care of this. It's like scratched up. It looks like there's like cigarette ash on it. Like, I don't know what this thing's been through, but I don't think Mr. Skrilley just put this in like somewhere where he's safe. It's a little worn for wear. What's inside the box? So you open up the box and then there's another box inside that is like gold and it's got really sort of intricate patterns on it and another Wu-Tang insignia on top of it. It's a nickel silver box and an inner jewel case containing two CDs over cedar wood with black cow leather lining to be precise. This one looks like it's maybe gotten a little bit of use too. These descriptions are so damn sexy. Yeah, it's real sexy. Wait, there's also a leather-bound lyric book that looks like it came from Gandalf. Yes, totally. It's got this medieval kind of leather look with some fancy metal work on it. And look, the Certificate of Purchase has its own book. We've got a gold certificate with some insignias on it, and then it looks like we've got a wax imprint, something that would have been used hundreds of years ago. What does it say, Matt? Dear Mr. Martin Shkreli, here by your purchase certificate from Skluze, congratulations on your purchase. Right. Martin Shkreli's name is now permanently associated with his album. For just $1.5 million, hip-hop culture could be yours. But I wanted to know how much the DOJ sold it for. More on that after the break. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. The time is approximately 11.15 a.m. About to start consensual telephone call with Dr. Daiwa Zhang. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. I've never seen that much evidence in my entire career, and I don't think we'll ever see that much evidence again. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau from Bloomberg Podcasts starting on February 13th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I get the first batch of records, and they are incredible. The majority, a good 50 pages, are just photos. I'm seeing Once Upon a Time in Shaolin for the first time. But how much did the government auction it off for? I was dying to know. And right there before my eyes, at the end of the batch of records, is the purchase agreement. I was about to find out. There, toward the bottom. Purchase price. Quote, the price is redacted. They redacted the price. But wait, the very last page. United States Marshals Bill of Sale. Quote, now therefore, and in consideration of the payment of the sum of, redacted. The reason for trade secrets. Matt, can you explain that? So there's an exemption in FOIA that says the government isn't required to release trade secret kind of information that they receive from people or companies in the course of doing government stuff. So the government's argument is that this is a trade secret and they're not supposed to release it. But our counter to that was basically that the buyer had already publicly announced what they paid for it. Right. In October 2021, the New York Times revealed that the new owners of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, a digital art and crypto collective known as PleaserDAO, had paid the equivalent of $4 million in a cryptocurrency tied to the dollar for the album. According to the story, PleaserDAO obtained it through an intermediary, which then paid the government. I wanted to see if the bill of sale backed that up. So I was furious. The people absolutely deserve to know what their government is up to, how much they're auctioning off for. But it would take another three years to find out. Why? Because there were still more records to come, and I couldn challenge the exemptions until all records were in What happened next was at times illuminating Other times it was maddening I get the next batch of records nearly four months later I open them up and they appear to be emails between the attorneys. Matt and open Mike Eagle, want to read some? So this is an email thread titled Scrawly Update, Wednesday, 14 July 2021, 12-2001. Hi Jackie and Alex. Redacted. Then another redaction that's even bigger. Thanks, Laura. And then we've got another part of the email, from Claire that says, Dear Jackie and Alex. And it's an even bigger redacted box. So we know who's talking, but we have no idea what they're saying because they've redacted it all based on some FOIA exemptions. The government stripped out all the behind-the-scenes discussions that were taking place in emails that would kind of give us a window into how they were managing and setting up the sale of the album. And this is kind of how it went for a few months. I get a slow trickle of records and inside was nothing much. But a few things were kind of hilarious. So here's an email from one of the attorneys at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York. The subject line is Shkreli, Wu-Tang Clan album and Picasso. All. Earlier this morning and following yesterday's denial of Shkreli's cert petition, the Marshals took custody of the Wu-Tang Clan album and Picasso sketch that he owned. then somebody responds to that email and says, today's call focused on the album only. We will follow up to discuss the Picasso, which is worth far less. It's more like a sketch. And I believe it was appraised to being worth less than $30,000. It's more like a sketch. Wu-Tang's single copy album is worth more than a Picasso sketch. I mean, you know, I'm not an art collector. That seems kind of low to me for a Picasso sketch, but he's got like a million of them. You know, this is the only copy. I mean, it's kind of a brilliant idea, right? They make an album, they make one copy of it. It's going to be worth, you know, a fair amount. He also had a copy of The Carter Five by Lil Wayne and they considered seizing that too, but we never got how much that's worth. I don't know what that is. You got to leave that part in where Matt says, I don't know what that is. So these records were interesting just in terms of getting a little understanding on how they were communicating. behind the scenes. There were some emails about prospective buyers. And this one is kind of funny. It's from an attorney representing an interested buyer. Hi, Claire and Laura. I just wanted to let you know that my client is still interested in buying at $1 million. To be clear, he doesn't have $1 million right now, but thinks he could raise it in a reasonable amount of time. Please let me know if there's any interest or also please do make a counter offer if you have one. Thanks. Best redacted. Yeah, I think he's going to have to do better than that. That's not even close to what Shkreli paid. Yeah, this is like a classic lowball. Hey, I'm giving you this garbage offer, but please counter as somebody who negotiates all the time. That's always kind of annoying. Like, come on, give me a real offer. And then there's this one from an attorney in the asset forfeiture unit asking for a background check on a potential buyer who may have a large wallet, large in all caps. It says, hi, Will, could you please look into both redacted and let me know if there are any red flags that would raise concerns or due diligence, criminal history, issues with dirty funds, etc. Any indication that they could have a conflict of interest with Martin Shkreli? Thanks. At least from what we saw, there's no one discussing, holy crap, we got Wu-Tang Clan once upon a time in Shaolin. We got to go, you know, have a listening party. It was really centered on business, on legal business. The closest we get to any kind of excitement about the record is this email between two assistant U.S. attorneys on the case when they're getting close to closing a deal. I'm going to wear my Shaolin lid. What is a Shaolin lid? For good luck all week, dot, dot, dot, exclamation point. Like a hat? Yeah. I mean, that's what's coming to mind for me. I actually looked up Shaolin lid and didn't find much on Google. Shaolin has been part of the Wu-Tang mythology all along. But Shaolin lid? I mean, I don't know. He's got to be talking about a hat. She's got to be talking about a hat. But you can't tell if their excitement is because they're interested in the record or if they're just ready to be done with Shkreli. There's one email while the attorneys are shoring up loose ends with the sale when one comments, hopefully this will mean the end of all things Shkreli for us! Exclamation point. And the end in all caps. The end. And by July 2021, the assistant U.S. attorneys seem to relish a little hardball from a judge presiding over yet another case, one in civil court Shkreli was involved in. The subject says, see attached decisions from Judge Nathan. Looks like she isn't going to tolerate any more delays from Shkreli. And the email reads, it's about time someone stopped tolerating his nonsense. Also, that's a ridiculously long subject line. It's like two sentences. I mean, basically, they put the body of the email in the subject line. It's a little invasive to the inbox, in my opinion. So during the course of this litigation, you know, we got to a point where it was kind of interesting at first, but certainly the redactions didn't help and it became just boring. And I'm not really getting what I need. And to make matters worse, after a year of document dumps, the government tells us we're not even close to the end. They miraculously found 10,000 more emails. I don't know how you misplace those, but I'm getting about 100 at a time. And it could be years before I could challenge the redactions. So I did something I've never done before. That's after the break. So I wanted to get everything. I wanted to know how much the government auctioned the album off for, who they sold it to, the name of the corporate entity that purchased the album, pretty much everything that they were withholding. And so I was like, okay, I'm done with these emails. They're really not telling me anything. I said, let's just move forward with getting what I want. I told my attorneys that I was willing to give up the rest of the emails so they could challenge what we believed was the agency's improper use of the trade secrets and privacy exemptions. And so we entered into negotiations with the government and the government maintained that this person had a privacy interest and that his or her name would not be disclosed. Making a long story short, you know, got to an agreement that basically the government said, if I didn't pursue the name of the individual buyer, meaning like if I were to just drop that, they would give us the name of the corporate entity that purchased the album as well as the purchase price. And I thought that that was a good deal. One, because I figured like, okay, if I get the name of the corporate entity, then maybe I could use that to kind of chase down who the buyer is. Who actually purchased the album? But once we came to the decision like, okay, we want to like give up this to get that. I don't think that was more than weeks or maybe like a few months. So finally, in July 2025, it came. The purchase agreement. With a lot of redactions lifted. This asset purchase agreement is made as of July 19th, 2021. By the United States Marshal Service for and on behalf of the United States of America and Redacted. And WTC Endeavors Limited, a Hong Kong limited company. And then scrolling down, it says purchase price. So the government sold the album for $2,238,482.30 for the assets. And purchasers will also reimburse the U.S. Marshals Service for its expenses in the amount of $7,162.27 for a total payment of $2,245,644.57. That's what the government withheld under trade secrets for, geez, for more than three years. How did they get to that number? So it's interesting and a good question. And what I discovered was, is that they basically were just looking to sell the album to cover what he owed the government. But might it not have been worth more than that? Well, if there was more money to be had, it might be that that's money that would have to go to Screlly. It's like if you're in foreclosure on your house if you owe like a hundred thousand and your house is worth 300 I don think the bank in most States gets to just like pocket the other But I not a specialist in the sale of one albums to satisfy government debts In total, Shkreli owed the government more than $7 million, and the album satisfied the outstanding balance. That's what I thought. So that invites an inquiry into whether they really got as much for it as they could have, because you could see how they don't really have a whole lot of incentive to get any more money for it than whatever it is to satisfy the judgment. If the money is just going to go back to Shkreli, the guy whose case they can't wait to be done with, and probably for good reason, then, you know, that's why there's an interest in knowing what the amount is, because I think that's a fair thing to scrutinize on. So what we ended up with in the end was the purchase price. And that was a big deal to get that. I mean, it felt like, holy crap, we'd pry loose a significant amount of information. And by the way, the DOJ made it clear to us that PleaserDAO, the crypto collective that currently owns the album, wasn't connected in any way to the corporate entity or the individual who purchased the album. So I thought that was very interesting that PleaserDAO was not the direct purchaser of any of this. So I found this, you know, kind of fascinating. So the name of the company that was set up to purchase Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is WTC Endeavors Limited, right? So assuming WTC Endeavors Limited, Wu-Tang Clan Endeavors Limited. It's incorporated in Hong Kong in May 2020, and then dissolved in March 2023. So just through a little sleuthing after we get the unredacted documents with the purchase price, you know, we were able to see various officers who are affiliated with WTC Endeavors, but none of those names were well known. So to me, it appears that the actual name of the person who bought Once Upon a Time in Shaolin is not even noteworthy. So the best read I have is that the Justice Department sold the album to someone, we still don't know who, for $2.2 million, a bit more than Shkreli paid. And that person or entity basically turned around and sold it again to Pleaser Dow for $4 million worth of crypto. So that's not really a bad deal. It sold for a fair amount more than Shkrawly paid for it, right? Like double. Right. Which is good for RZA, I guess. It's like it appreciates like a house or something. It's like it gets more and more valuable over time. Now, do you think any curious people in the Justice Department decided they would just go ahead and give it a little listen? Yes. Yes. You think so? That was part of like what I was hoping that all of the emails that we obtained through FOIA, through the lawsuit that we filed, would actually have someone inside DOJ saying, hey, I just listened to Wu-Tang last night. Oh, man. You know, what an incredible album. But no luck. You didn't meet and sign it. I mean, there were 10,000 more emails we never got to see. But I will say to this day, even though we do not have evidence that the government threw a listening party for once upon a time in Sheldon. The saddest listening party that there ever was in the world. I know. But I absolutely believe they listened to it. Come on. I mean, they could take the position, like, look, if we're going to sell this asset, we have to listen to it first so we know what we're selling. Right. Right. You know, we need to make sure it's authentic. It's really Wu-Tang. Yeah. Of course they listen to it. By the way, we'll need to contact DOJ and ask them. Whether anyone listened to it? Whether anyone listened to it. You could also ask any credit card receipts or reimbursement for any food or beverages that were purchased for the purposes of a Wu-Tang listening party. And you could kind of indirectly get the answer through that. Okay, we asked the U.S. Attorney's Office or the Eastern District of New York if anyone listened to the album. And they said, no comment. I mean, I suspect that just their policy is just always going to be no comment, but that really kind of feels like if they were going to deny it, they would have said no. It's the equivalent, Matt, of a Glomar response. It is. It is exactly a Glomar response. There's actually a stipulation in the purchase agreement that says at closing, the buyer could play, quote, at least the first 10 seconds of each track. But they had to bring their own CD player. Look, we're not giving you the CD player. And that's funny because I know the government has a lot of CD players because they're always producing us documents on CDs. So it sounds like they followed through. There's an email from an attorney with the marshals asking for a meeting room with an electrical outlet so the buyer can plug in their CD player. I guess it's fair, right? Like they don't want to get home and be like, what the hell? This thing doesn't work. I can't even play it. The government's like, sorry, buyer beware. You're out of luck. Or if it skips, right? CDs skip. And this is kind of interesting. So Pleaser Dow is bound by the same restrictions as Shkreli was when he purchased the album, right? They can't stream it or duplicate it until 2103. That sounds like way far in the future. Last year, however, they found a workaround following discussions with the original artist and producer. The album was turned into an NFT. and for the equivalent of a dollar, fans can listen to a five-minute sampler of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin. Each sale will speed up the release of the album by 88 seconds. 88 seconds. Okay, so how much would it cost to speed it up by a year then? Okay, we actually did this math. It would cost more than $350,000 to speed up the release of Once Upon a Time in Shaolin by one year. Whoa. So have you heard it? I didn't buy a sample with Bitcoin, but Shkreli did make a video of himself playing the record. Let me play at least a little bit. That's the intro. I guess you can get a little bit of track too. It sounds theatrical, like you're getting ready for something big. It definitely sounds like Wu-Tang. I mean, I could see it in a movie. Mission Impossible. But watching it with Shkreli's reaction to it is so distracting and disturbing. Look, he's bobbing his head in the haircut. Like, he's a Keebler elf. You know, my advice is to close your eyes and just do not look at Shkreli while listening to this. but this was a pretty amazing use of FOIA if I do say so myself, patting myself on the back here. It felt like we really knocked down some walls here that the government put up, trade secrets, which didn't make sense to me at least, getting over that hurdle to obtain the purchase price and then the name of the corporate entity that then bought it and then sold it, immediately sold it to another entity. It's kind of amazing. And we learned that FOIA is so broad, it can even get you records about a one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang album that ended up in the hands of a pharma bro and then ended up in the hands of the government who sold it so that the pharma bro could pay off what he owes for the damage he caused. That's the power of FOIA. And if it wasn't clear already, docs rule everything around us. FOIA, FOIA requests, y'all. Hey, open mic, Eagle. By the way, what do you think about all this? It further emphasizes how dumb this all is. There is a $2 million Wu-Tang album, some weird guy bought it, and that weird guy went to jail, and now the government is selling it to people, and they won't tell you who they sold it to. This is all very stupid. And there's real problems in the world that I wish these millions of dollars could be addressing somehow instead of the government doing a weird deal with a secret album that's probably not even good. And there you have it. From Bloomberg and No Smiling, this is Disclosure. The show is hosted by Matt Topic and me, Jason Leopold. It's produced by Heather Schroering and Sean Cannon for No Smiling. Our editor for Bloomberg is Jeff Brokot. Our executive producers for Bloomberg are Sage Bauman and me, Jason Leopold. And our executive producers for No Smiling are Sean Cannon, Heather Schroering, and Matt Topic. The Disclosure theme song is by Nick, with additional music by Nick and Epidemic Sound. Sound design and mixing is by Sean Cannon. Emails were read this week by Open Mic Eagle. For more transparency news and important document dumps, you can subscribe to my weekly FOIA Files newsletter at bloomberg.com slash FOIA Files. That's F-O-I-A Files. To get every episode early on Apple Podcasts, become a bloomberg.com subscriber today. Check out our special intro offer right now at bloomberg.com slash podcast offer or click the link in the show notes. You'll also unlock deep reporting, data and analysis from reporters around the world. We'll see you again next Tuesday. Boy, you get the records.