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World News

Donald Trump

By S.I.E.R.R.APublished 8 months ago 5 min read
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World News
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Reporting comes from ABC News and it's about the former president and how allegedly reckless he has been. Reckless, again, allegedly beyond keeping highly classified documents at his Florida club in plain view for all to see. Here's the lead paragraph of the story from ABC News. His website. Months after leaving the White House, former President Donald Trump allegedly discussed potentially sensitive information about U.S. nuclear submarines with a member of his Mar a Lago club, an Australian billionaire who then allegedly shared the information with scores of others, including more than a dozen foreign officials, several of his employees and a handful of journalists, according to sources familiar with the matter. The ABC story identifies the billionaire as Anthony Pratt and says the FBI and federal prosecutors have interviewed him at least twice this year. In those interviews. Again, according to ABC sources, Pratt told prosecutors he struck up a conversation with the former president during a meeting at Mar a Lago in April of 2021. Quoting from the report, Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump leaned toward Pratt as if to be discreet, then told Pratt two pieces of information about U.S. submarines, the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads they routinely carry, and exactly how close they supposedly can get to a Russian submarine without being detected, end quote. ABC further reported that in subsequent emails and conversations, Pratt described what he heard to at least 45 others, including six journalists, 11 of his companies, employees, ten Australian officials, and three former Australian prime ministers. Sources tell ABC that a Mar a Lago employee told investigators that Pratt began telling people within minutes of his conversation with the 45th president. The same sources say this employee told investigators he was, quote, bothered and quote, shocked unquote, to hear that the former president had provided such seemingly sensitive information to a non-U.S. citizen. Just before airtime, a Trump spokesperson put out a statement that reads, These illegal leaks are coming from sources which lack proper context and relevant information. The Department of Justice should investigate the criminal leaking instead of perpetrating their baseless witch hunts while knowing that President Trump did nothing wrong, has always insisted on truth and transparency, and acted properly according to the law. The New York Times has more on this as well tonight, Maggie Haberman on the byline. She's their senior political correspondent, our political analyst, and the author of Confidence Man The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. Also joining us, is former Defense Secretary William Cohen. CNN military analyst and retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. And rounding out the panel, CNN senior legal analyst Leonnig. So, Maggie, what more have you learned from your reporting? We confirmed what ABC reported, Anderson, which is that Trump had this conversation with Mr. Pratt, who was a member of Mar a Lago not long after leaving office. This was a conversation in which Trump supposedly revealed a couple of pieces of sensitive information. Now, you know, it's not clear exactly what Trump said. We know that you know, according to ABC, it was specifics about capabilities and about the distance that the submarines can go and how close they can get in certain cases. This is not it doesn't appear he showed a document to this gentleman, but I don't know for prosecutors that that matters, because our understanding is he is among the trial witnesses who prosecutors have listed as possible, people they will call. And what they would likely use him for is to establish a pattern of Trump being loose with sensitive information and the government's secrets. So he might be called he is among dozens of people who might be called. And this list stretches back through the White House years, because, Anderson, as you know and as we've reported, as CNN has reported, Trump has a history of allegedly talking about classified information or putting out classified information. There was an infamous Oval Office meeting with two Russian officials where he is said to have spilled some sensitive information that upset Israeli officials. He tweeted out a classified picture of an Iranian launch site, I think it was in 2019. You know, this is something he's done for a while. This is the kind of behavior that added to why President Biden cut off Trump's briefings, that ex-presidents get too sensitive information from classified briefings because according to the current president, you know what? What could happen other than that, Trump would slip up and say something. Secretary Cohen, what's your reaction to this report? It's not surprising. I know it's been validated completely. But let's just look at his history. As Maggie just pointed out, his history is he has very little concern about national security interests, especially if it affects our military and our civilian population. He's given away secrets in the past. He will do so in the future. In this case, he's being given the benefit of the doubt. How much more evidence do we need of his misbehavior in terms of attacking our institution? The military thinks those who give life and limb for service to the country are losers and suckers. You start in the intelligence community under the bus in Helsinki. Everything he has done has been to undermine respect for this country of ours. So we're watching the slow or even rapid dissolution of democracy under his hands. He's doing it day after day. This is just one more example of why we should never vote to allow him to get his hands on classified information in the future. He shouldn't be anywhere near the Oval Office ever. General, you know, the capabilities of America's nuclear subs, there, how proximity. Proximity they can get to an adversary subs. How valuable would information like that video be for an adversary or to people in the defense industry? Yeah, what I'd say, Anderson, is all the classified information is provided to those only with a need to know. And every president needs to know a lot of stuff to help them in decision-making. But that need to know also comes with a requirement not to disclose if he was truly talking about capabilities, as may be said, about the nuclear part or the sea bass part of our nuclear triad. I would suspect, and I don't know this for sure, that they are at the higher levels of security clearances either. Top secret is code word when you're talking about the nuclear force that puts the country and as the secretary said, it puts servicemembers in harm's way when he's giving up capabilities. And one other thing I'd add to that, if this allegiance didn't occur and it seems that it did, this is just one incident that's being reported. How many other times at Mar a Lago or one of his golf courses has he leaned into somebody and put other secrets in our citizens in danger because he's giving up other secrets? That's the thing that concerns me the most. I mean, the ABC report says that this billionaire, the Australian billionaire, went and talked to other people very quickly and that FBI, federal investigators have talked to him. Diligence that is not part of the special counsel's are not the charges that they brought. But the number two trend is going to spread it just like everybody else will when they have a rumor they've heard they have inside information. Look how important I am. I'm close to it.

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About the Creator

S.I.E.R.R.A

Follower of Christ. MaMa.

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