Ex-Buffett Lieutenant: I Did Nothing Wrong

David Sokol gave a lengthy, defiant interview on CNBC this morning, in which he breezily insisted that he’d done absolutely nothing wrong or unethical by buying 96,000 shares of Lubrizol, and then recommending boss Warren Buffett buy the company. Some had urged Sokol to get a securities lawyer before going on TV, Daily Intel reports, but Sokol went ahead with the interview without one—and might well regret it. Jim Cramer likened it to “a Charlie Sheen implosion interview.”

Sokol insisted he “didn’t have any inside information,” and that he didn’t think there was anything wrong with investing all that family capital in a company Berkshire Hathaway had no knowledge of. But asked if he would do the deal again in hindsight, he replied “What I would do differently is I just would never have mentioned it to Warren, and just made my own investment and left it alone. I think that’s a disservice to Berkshire, but if that’s what people want to do in the future, that’s fine.” (More Berkshire Hathaway stories.)