- Billionaire Anthony Pratt says he received phone calls from Donald Trump during his presidency.
- Pratt revealed in a secret recording that Trump often shared sensitive information with him.
- Some of their conversations have been a subject of interest for federal investigators.
Billionaire Australian Anthony Pratt said he received a call from Donald Trump to inform him that he had just bombed Iraq, in one of a series of cases in which the former president appears to have shared sensitive information with people outside the White House during his administration.
Pratt, chairman of global paper and packaging company Visy Industries, became an ardent supporter of Trump during his presidency. The billionaire businessman established a relationship with the former president and became a Mar-a-Lago Club member.
In late 2019, Pratt received a call from Trump shortly after he had ordered airstrikes in Iraq, according to a joint investigative report from “60 Minutes Australia”, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Age published on Sunday. The outlets obtained an undated secret recording of Pratt talking about some of his interactions with Trump.
“I haven’t even heard it, it hadn’t even been on the news yet and he said, ‘I just bombed Iraq today,'” Pratt says in the recording. The report, which was a joint investigation with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, did not disclose who Pratt was discussing the information with.
Pratt added that Trump also shared information about a private call with then-Iraqi President Barham Salih after the strikes.
“He said, ‘I just bombed Iraq today. And the President of Iraq called me up and said, ‘You just leveled my city,”” Pratt recalled Trump saying. According to Pratt, Trump responded to Salih, “OK what are you going to do about it?”
The recording doesn’t disclose which military operation in Iraq Trump and Pratt discussed. However, at about the time of their call, the US carried out a series of airstrikes on five facilities in Iraq and Syria that were tied to the Iranian-backed militia group Kata’ib Hezbollah in December 2019.
In the same episode of “60 Minutes Australia,” John Bolton, Trump’s former national security advisor, said the former president’s disclosure could have jeopardized the safety of any pilots or military personnel that may have still been on the ground.
“That’s why the announcement of military strikes often is delayed for some period of time so that we can be sure that those who carried it out are back safe home,” Bolton said.
Trump’s apparent habit of sharing sensitive government information with Pratt recently became a subject of interest for special counsel Jack Smith’s team in the Justice Department.
Federal prosecutors interviewed Pratt as part of their investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents. An indictment related to the case charged Trump with 40 criminal counts.
In the interviews, Pratt said the former president shared details about US nuclear submarines, along with claims about the number of warheads they could carry and how close they could get to a Russian submarine without detection, ABC News reported.
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
Pratt appeared to show some admiration for Trump in the covert recording, marveling, for example, at how the former president knows “exactly what to say and what not to say so that he avoids jail.” But he also points out that Trump habitually said “whatever the f—k he wants.”
“So he’s got this ability to say outrageous things,” Pratt said. “Non-stop.”
Source: I N S I D E R
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