Trump Loves Sharing National Security Secrets With Random Strangers

Donald Trump allegedly shared sensitive nuclear information with a random member of his Mar-a-Lago club, who then went on to share that information with dozens of other people.

Trump allegedly told Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt in April 2021 that Australia should start buying its submarines from the U.S. Trump then told Pratt the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads a U.S. sub can carry, and how close it can supposedly get to a Russian sub without being detected, ABC News reported late Thursday, citing anonymous sources.

Pratt then told at least 45 other people—including six journalists, 11 employees at his company, 10 Australian officials, and three former Australian prime ministers—about Trump’s comments before he was approached by special counsel Jack Smith’s team.

Smith’s team was looking into whether Trump had mishandled national security secrets after leaving the White House. Pratt told investigators he didn’t know if Trump’s comments were true or just showing off, but investigators told him to stop sharing the numbers, “suggesting the information could be too sensitive to relay further,” ABC wrote.

Smith indicted Trump two years later for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. Of the 40 total charges against Trump, 32 are for willful retention of national defense information. He is accused of keeping an array of classified national security material after leaving the White House, despite being unauthorized to do so.

The incident with Pratt is far from the first time that Trump shared classified information with people unauthorized to hear it. In May 2017, Trump shared highly classified information with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador to the United States that the U.S. hasn’t shared with some of its closest allies. Current and former U.S. officials warned that Trump had jeopardized a crucial intelligence source on the Islamic State group.

Later that month, Trump told then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that the U.S. had positioned two nuclear submarines off the Korean peninsula. The locations of nuclear subs are meant to be kept secret, as a matter of national security. In fact, only the captains and crews know the sub’s exact location.

Then, in July 2017, CNN reported that the U.S. was forced to extract a spy embedded in the Russian government after concerns that Trump had shared classified information that could have exposed them.

Rather than learn his lesson, Trump met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit (also in July 2017). Trump confiscated the interpreter’s notes at the end of the meeting, an unusual move that led intelligence officials to believe he had shared more classified information.

Trump tweeted a video in December 2018 of the Al Asad Airbase in Iraq, exposing a SEAL team’s faces and location. The next year, he bragged about U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities to reporter Bob Woodward and tweeted photos that revealed the location of U.S. spy satellites.

And of course, it didn’t stop after he left office. One of the documents he allegedly kept detailed a plan to attack Iran. He is accused of waving the paper around in front of people.

Just days before he successfully booted Kevin McCarthy as House speaker, Representative Matt Gaetz dismissed the Republican impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden as a pointless stunt.

Gaetz made the comments last week during an invitation-only Zoom fundraiser, where he spoke alongside Representative Matt Rosendale, NBC reported Friday. Rosendale was one of seven other Republicans who voted with Gaetz to oust McCarthy.

“I don’t believe that we are endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden,” Gaetz said.

“They’re trying to engage in a, like, ‘forever war’ of impeachment,” he continued. “And like many of our forever wars, it will drag on forever and end in a bloody draw.”

House Republicans launched an impeachment inquiry into Biden in September. They have for months accused the president of wrongdoing via his connection to his son Hunter’s business dealings, but they have yet to provide any actual evidence.

“I just don’t get the sense that it’s for the sake of impeachment. I think it’s for the sake of having another bad thing to say about Joe Biden,” Gaetz said.

The comments are surprising coming from Gaetz, who has previously admitted that the impeachment inquiry is not supposed to end in an actual impeachment. He said in August that the point of the inquiry is simply to undermine Biden’s credibility in the 2024 presidential election. Gaetz seemed fairly on board with the Republican plan at the time.

His comments last week struck a different tone, and that may have something to do with the fact that he was gearing up to kick out the man who launched the impeachment inquiry. McCarthy allowed Representatives James Comer and Jim Jordan to lead pointless investigations into Biden’s supposed corruption. McCarthy then formally opened the inquiry and tapped both Comer and Jordan to lead it.

McCarthy was then historically removed from power when Gaetz—whom members of his own party have since denounced as desperate for attention—started the process to vacate the speaker.

Donald Trump is trying one more time to throw out the federal indictment against him for trying to overthrow the 2020 election, this time by claiming presidential immunity—an argument with very little merit.

Special counsel Jack Smith indicted Trump in August for his role in the January 6 insurrection and other attempts to overturn the presidential election. Trump faces one count each of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote.

Trump has repeatedly denied the charges and insisted he did nothing wrong. He echoed that claim Thursday when he filed a motion to dismiss the charges.

“The incumbent administration has charged President Trump for acts that lie … at the heart of his official responsibilities as President,” the filing said. “The prosecution does not, and cannot, argue that President Trump’s efforts to ensure election integrity, and to advocate for the same, were outside the scope of his duties.”

Trump also tried to discredit one of prosecutors’ main arguments, which is that Trump knew he had lost the election and still tried to overturn it. Trump’s lawyers have argued that Trump truly believed he had won and was simply following his lawyers’ advice.

“The President’s motivations are not for the prosecution or this Court to decide,” the filing said. “Rather, where, as here, the President’s actions are within the ambit of his office, he is absolutely immune from prosecution.”

Trump is unlikely to be successful, especially as his entire legal team has all but admitted to the crimes. His lawyer Alina Habba undermined his defense by admitting that “everybody was made aware that he lost the election,” and his lawyer John Lauro also publicly confessed that Trump asked then–Vice President Mike Pence to delay certifying the nation’s votes (which is illegal).

Trump himself may have even undermined his own defense. In a September interview with NBC, he said that he was the one who made the final decisions regarding the 2020 election, not his lawyers.

So given all of the evidence coming out of Trump’s own camp, it’s hard to see how he can successfully argue that he was carrying out his presidential duties in good faith.

The judge presiding over Donald Trump’s business fraud case in New York has made it much, much harder for the former president to squirrel away cash.

New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron ruled last week that Trump committed business fraud and ordered that all his New York business certificates be canceled. This makes it nearly impossible to do business in New York and could effectively kill the Trump Organization as it exists today.

Engoron has now ruled, in a document filed late Wednesday, that Trump and his co-defendants must tell a court-appointed monitor, retired federal Judge Barbara Jones, if they transfer any assets of their companies.

Trump, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, longtime Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, and Trump Organization executive Jeffrey McConney must also tell Jones if they apply for a new business certificate or transfer any business rights, properties, or benefits to someone else.

Engoron has delivered loss after loss to Trump since issuing the partial summary judgment last week. He fined Trump’s lawyers $7,500 each for repeating arguments he had previously dismissed, and also issued a partial gag order barring involved parties from discussing court staff, after Trump tried to bully a court clerk and shared her personal information.

Trump appears to be spiraling. He has repeatedly accused Engoron of being a Democratic political operative who is acting out of bias. Trump has also leveled vicious attacks at New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who sued him for fraud in the first place.

James accused Trump of dramatically inflating his net worth, by as much as $3.6 billion in one year, by lying about the value of various real estate assets. Trump claimed his Trump Tower apartment in Manhattan was three times its actual size and worth $327 million, even though no New York City apartment has ever sold for that much.

Trump also valued Mar-a-Lago at $739 million. In reality, it’s worth about a tenth of that amount. His valuation was based on the property’s potential for residential development, but the terms of its deed prevent the land from ever being used that way.

Republican candidate for New Jersey State Assembly Joseph Viso Jr. confessed to once smearing feces on a children’s day care center—but he says Barack Obama is to blame.

Viso, an electrician with a lengthy rap sheet, took a page out of a toddler’s handbook when, in an escalating feud with a day care center located adjacent to his electrical company, he smeared poop on the business’s doors.

When asked about the incident, which occurred in 2009, Viso said he was angry because he believed that employees of the day care, called Children’s Studio, were getting his employees’ cars ticketed anytime they parked near the business. “Those people harassed my men every day,” Viso told the New Jersey Globe.  

The police report of the incident noted that Viso Electric, his electrical company, would often blast music with offensive lyrics next to the playground of the day care center.

While Viso admitted the act was wrong, he also tried to explain his strange behavior in an oddly political and completely inane way.

“I was a young man. It was a horrible time, and I made a mistake,” he said. “Obama came into office the year before.”

Viso was about 38 years old at the time of the poop-smearing incident.

After the incident, Viso pleaded guilty to criminal mischief charges and was fined $250. Viso has a lengthy record of criminal convictions on federal and state gun and drug charges, including possessing enough methylone to make five million “Molly” or ecstasy tablets in 2016, and possessing a sawed-off shotgun in proximity to a school in 2014.