Former US president Donald Trump has been accused of sharing sensitive defense information with Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt, according to a Friday report by ABC News.
The report alleges that months after leaving the White House, Trump revealed potentially sensitive information about US nuclear submarines to Pratt, a member of Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago Club.
Pratt then shared those secrets with a number of other people, including “more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his own employees, and a handful of journalists,” said the report.
The FBI has already interviewed Pratt twice in the last year.
According to the report, Trump excitedly shared information relating to the number of nuclear warheads on an American submarine and how close those submarines could approach a Russian submarine undetected.
Trump shared this information after Pratt told Trump that he believed that Australia should be buying submarines from the United States.
This related to the scandal that occurred earlier that year involving the sudden abrogation of the French-Australian submarine deal in favor of the United States and the United Kingdom called the AUKUS pact.
Pratt relayed Trump’s remarks to at least 45 other people, including six journalists, 11 of his company’s employees, 10 Australian officials, and three former Australian prime ministers, the ABC report said.
Trump was quick to deny the claims saying “The ridiculous story put out today about me talking to a Mar-a-Lago member about US submarines is false and ridiculous,” he claimed in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Who is Anthony Pratt?
Anthony Pratt was born to Richard Pratt, a Jewish businessman whose family fled the Nazis in 1938 and settled in Australia.
He’s chairman of both Visy and Pratt Industries, two massive paper and packaging companies, which are the origin of his fortune and nickname the “cardboard king”.
Pratt has supported politicians from both sides of the aisle in Australia and the US, including Trump and Biden.
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