Grant Cardone sues for being called not a billionaire, but his own emails suggest it

[Grant Cardone licking a gold brick, and John Legere in the inset]

You’ve probably heard some of the details about a high-stakes court fight that’s been going on in Miami between energetic motivational speaker and major Scientology donor Grant Cardone, and former T-Mobile US CEO John Legere.

We’ve been observing Cardone for more than a decade. He first got on our radar in 2011 when he starred briefly in a National Geographic series called Turnaround King, that had him giving advice to struggling business owners. More recently he was featured in the Discovery Plus series Undercover Billionaire. And descriptions of him usually note that he manages a real estate portfolio worth about $4 billion.

In Scientology, Grant and his wife Elena have achieved the donor level of “Diamond Laureate” for giving about $15 million to the International Association of Scientologists, the church’s membership organization. They’ve likely given millions more in other ways to the church.

In the $100 million defamation lawsuit against Legere that Cardone filed in January, he claimed that at one time the two of them were pretty tight: Two high-flying, high-visibility business figures each with massive social media followings.

But then, around 2021, after Legere had expressed an interest in Cardone’s “10X Health” initiatives, Legere became critical of Cardone, and began confronting him with ugly public accusations in online settings.

By 2023, things had become so bad, Legere went on an extended verbal attack on Cardone in a live, public chat room that June (referred to as “the exchange” in the lawsuit), taking numerous rather vicious jabs at him.

“[Legere'] attacked Plaintiff Grant Cardone's businesses, character, reputation, and religious beliefs," the lawsuit says.

"Grant, you are the biggest bullshit artist on the planet, OK?" Legere said at the beginning of the exchange.

Legere cited Cardone's admitted history as a recovering drug addict, and asked him if he also had a drinking problem. He called Cardone a "con man" and predicted that within a year Cardone would be found "guilty of fraud," and called him a "fake" and said he'd never do business with him.

Then came this back-and-forth:

Legere: By the way, he's not a billionaire. He doesn't have close to a billion. And he is, somebody here, he somebody who is self-promoting. And if you go to the world, go to the world of CNBC, go to CNN, go to the world, ask about Grant Cardone. He doesn't exist.

Cardone: How do you, how do you know what I'm worth, John?

Legere: How do I know what you're spending under-the-radar to live your lifestyle?

Cardone: How do you know where my money comes from? How do you? You don't know anything about me financially. Just admit that, John.

Legere: So how much you paying to the church, Grant?"

Cardone: What, John, what does that matter?

Legere: How much you paying to the church?

Cardone: John, what do you know about me financially? You just said, you just made a bunch of claims about, I'm...

Legere: What I know, Grant, is that you say all the time you're a billionaire, that you have four billion. So, you know, in real estate, do you, are you a billionaire?

Cardone: John, what do you know about my financial...?

Legere: Here's your chance. Here's your chance Grant. Are you a billionaire?

Cardone: I don't need a chance with you. You're the one that...

Legere: Are you a billionaire? Tell the group. Hey, hey, Grant, your profile says you're a billionaire. Are you a billionaire?

Cardone: John, I'm not gonna even answer your questions right now.

Legere: Are you? Are you close? Let the group know that a very simple statement, is Grant Cardone a billionaire, yes or no? He won't answer.

Cardone: Well, it would be hard for me to state that. I don't know I could state publicly and it not be true without having banks come back and say, ‘Bro, what are you doing?’

Legere: So, you know what the answer is? Grant, you're not. Assets versus debt with market at seven percent mortgage rates. How you doing?

Cardone: John, I'm doing great. How, how do you know?

Legere: You say it all the time. You're a billionaire. You say it all the time, but you're not, and you won't say it.

And so it goes, for even more back-and-forth, with Legere also asking Cardone if his “church” would come after him for criticizing Cardone, a reference to Scientology’s reputation for retaliation.

The lawsuit alleges that Legere also made jabs at Cardone on Twitter, and lists numerous examples through March 2023.

Cardone’s lawsuit claimed that Legere’s attacks have cost him $100 million in business as a result of the hit on his reputation.

In February, Legere responded to the lawsuit with a motion to dismiss, saying that although he and Cardone had engaged in “spirited debate” online, his comments were opinions and were not legally defamatory.

“Mr. Legere’s statements were opinions and hyperbole protected by the First Amendment,” the motion stated.

And as far as claiming that Cardone was not a billionaire, his lawsuit had not, in fact, produced any evidence to the contrary, Legere pointed out.

And it’s true. Although the largest portion of “the exchange” that Cardone says is defamatory consisted of Legere questioning whether Cardone was actually a billionaire, Cardone apparently wanted the court to believe that merely suggesting he didn’t have more than a billion dollars was somehow defamatory, as if the court should assume that Cardone is actually worth that much.

In his reply to the motion filed in April, Cardone and his attorneys didn’t respond to that point.

But in May, Judge William Thomas of the 11th Judicial Circuit Court of Miami-Dade County dismissed Legere’s motion to dismiss, allowing the case to move into a discovery phase.

Legere is scheduled to be deposed by Cardone’s team on January 10 in Manhattan.

We don’t profess to know whether Legere’s attacks calling Cardone a “fraud” and a “con man” are defamatory or not, but as for accusing Cardone of lying about being a billionaire, there seems to be something to what Legere was getting to.

Numerous websites that track the wealth of celebrities estimate that although Cardone might manage $4 billion in real estate investments, his own personal wealth is more like $600 million.

And one of our readers forwarded something to us that we thought our readers would be interested in hearing about.

The first item is an email that Cardone sent out to his subscribers on September 25, 2023, or just a couple of months after “the exchange” with Legere.

In it, Cardone writes at length about how important it is to network and spend time with people wealthier than yourself to get their perspective on things.

In particular, Cardone mentions a multi-billionaire and fellow Scientologist, Bob Duggan.

“Considering that it’s one of my goals to become a billionaire,” Cardone writes, he sought out Duggan to spend time with him.

The second item was an email that Cardone sent out to his subscribers this past April, three months after he had filed his lawsuit against Legere.

Again, he gushed about Bob Duggan and Duggan’s wealth and ideas. And at the end of another lengthy email, Cardone listed the things he learned from Bob, finishing it up with this statement:

“If they’re good enough for a billionaire, they’re good enough for me.”

So, in emails he sent last September and just this past April, the first one after the exchange with Legere and the second after he had sued the former T-Mobile CEO, Grant Cardone sent out messages to his subscribers with anecdotes about how he was hoping some day to become a billionaire by hanging out with someone like Bob Duggan.

Is it proof that Cardone himself knows that he’s not a billionaire, and therefore Legere calling him out about it was actually the truth, and not defamatory?

We don’t know. Legere may have been unwise to verbally attack Cardone in a public setting like that, and he may end up paying a large amount because of it. (According to the Guardian, in August Legere offered to make a public apology to Cardone in order to dismiss the suit, but Cardone turned it down.)

We’ll keep an eye on the lawsuit and see what we can find out after Legere gives his deposition in January.

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