Trump responds to claim from Australian billionaire that he divulged critical secrets

Former President Donald Trump vehemently denied claims made by Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt that he shared sensitive state secrets in a new chapter to the federal cases the 2024 GOP front-runner faces.

“The failing New York Times story, leaked by Deranged Jack Smith and the Biden ‘Political Opponent Abuser’ DOJ, about a red haired weirdo from Australia, named Anthony Pratt, is Fake News,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I never spoke to him about Submarines, but I did speak to him about creating jobs in Ohio and Pennsylvania…”

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Pratt has faced questioning by special counsel Jack Smith in one of two federal investigations against the former president. Smith has charged Trump with allegedly taking classified documents with him from the White House after leaving office and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.

Trump allegedly told the Australian businessman in late 2019 that he bombed Iraq before the strike became public knowledge, as well as described, post-presidency two years later, a number of nuclear warheads that U.S. submarines move around with and how close they can supposedly get to a Russian submarine without detection, sources told ABC News earlier this month.

In Pratt’s interviews with Smith, he allegedly divulged the submarine discussion they had, a conversation that Trump denies ever happened. And another witness told prosecutors that Pratt spent $1 million for tickets to a Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve gala and volunteered to pay the club a sizable markup for the tickets that actually run about $50,000 per entry, two people familiar with the matter told the New York Times.

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Trump’s gag order was put on hold late last week while a Washington judge weighs his appeal. With Sunday night’s attack on Smith and Pratt, the decision seemed to lighten the president’s apprehension of making statements publicly targeting prosecutors, court staff, and their families or posting about witnesses and their testimony.

The government has charged Trump with seven counts, including retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, and the latest revelation of his purported discussions with Pratt showcases the possible conversations Trump had regarding U.S. national security.