Martin Pengelly in Washington, Sarah Basford Canales and Daniel Hurst in Canberra
The Guardian Thu, 5 October 2023
Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Donald Trump allegedly discussed potentially sensitive information about US nuclear submarines with an Australian billionaire, Anthony Pratt, three months after leaving office, according to a new report.
Citing a source with knowledge of the Australian’s account to investigators for the special counsel Jack Smith, US news outlet ABC News reported an “excited” Trump allegedly discussed “the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads [US submarines] routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected”.
Smith has charged Trump with 40 criminal counts related to his retention of classified information after leaving office. The former president also faces 17 criminal counts regarding election subversion (four federal, from Smith, and 13 in Georgia) and 34 concerning hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
Despite such an extreme predicament – also including civil trials for fraud and defamation – he leads Republican presidential polling by wide margins and is the overwhelming favorite to face Joe Biden in the 2024 race for the White House.
According to the report, Smith did not include any information about Trump’s alleged April 2021 conversation with Pratt in his June indictment against Trump.
ABC said Trump spoke to Pratt, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in April 2021.
Pratt then allegedly shared the information about submarines “within minutes” of learning it, shocking a Trump employee who heard him.
Pratt, the ABC report alleged, went on to share the information with at least 45 people, including his own employees, journalists, foreign and Australian officials “and three former Australian prime ministers”.
It is not clear if what Trump told Pratt was accurate, ABC said. Nevertheless, investigators reportedly asked him to stop repeating what he heard.
Pratt, whose corrugated packaging firm, Pratt Industries, is US-based, reportedly told investigators he repeated what Trump told him because he wanted to show he was advocating for Australia in the US.
At the time, Australia was negotiating the purchase of nuclear submarines from the US. The deal was sealed this year.
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The report has reverberated in Australian politics, with the opposition’s foreign affairs spokesperson predicting that US and Australian national security officials would take the claims “very seriously”.
Simon Birmingham, who was a senior minister in Scott Morrison’s government when it negotiated the Aukus security partnership with the Biden administration, said he and other members of Australia’s national security committee (NSC) were expected to keep operational details secret “for the rest of our lives”.
Birmingham said he could not “prejudge exactly what took place in these discussions” between Trump and Pratt, but observed that US nuclear submarine technologies were “the most advanced in the world”.
“They are the the most treasured, if you like, prized asset of parts of the US defence establishment,” Birmingham told Sky News Australia.
“It’s why it was such a big breakthrough for Australia to be in a position to have them shared with us. But it’s also why I’m sure many in the United States will take very, very seriously the suggestion that these types of technologies and the capabilities associated with them could be subject to discussions outside of those confined spaces, such as, in our case, the Australian NSC.”
Trump and Pratt developed a relationship after Trump won power in 2016 and Pratt joined Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s members club in Florida.
In 2019, Trump attended the opening of a Pratt Industries plant in Wapakoneta, Ohio, also attended by Scott Morrison, then the Australian prime minister.
As reported by the Guardian, Trump and Pratt “exchange[d] lavish compliments as they amble[d] towards the gaggle of reporters. Presumably the box maker [was] explaining recycling to Trump as they [went]. Rubbish in, box out, cash in.”
Of Pratt, Trump said “this man is No 1 in Australia, they say”, adding in formal remarks: “We’re here to celebrate a great opening and a great gentleman … one of the most successful men in the world – perhaps Australia’s most successful man.”
Pratt told reporters Trump would win the 2020 election. He did not.
On Thursday, ABC said Pratt told investigators he now supported Joe Biden – because he was “someone who tends to just ‘side with the king’”.
Trump did not immediately comment, but a spokesperson for Trump later told ABC News: “President Trump did nothing wrong, has always insisted on truth and transparency, and acted in a proper manner, according to the law.”
The former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull told the Guardian that Pratt did not speak to him.
“Trump did ask me in early 2017 why we were buying French rather than US subs,” Turnbull said. “I explained it was important that they be a sovereign capability and we did not have the means at that stage to sustain and maintain nuclear powered submarines ourselves. Sovereignty was of the utmost importance to my government.”
The office of the former prime minister John Howard said he, too, did not have such a conversation with Pratt. Other former prime ministers were also contacted for comment.
The Australian government did not have an immediate response to the report. The offices of the prime minister and the foreign minister were contacted for comment.
Pratt has been asked for comment via his company, Visy Industries.
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