Questions About This Particular Report On The Information Security Administratio

Since we already have two posts on this report, why not three? And maybe I can clarify a thread on Bluesky that was gummed up by a few mansplainers who didn’t bother to read what I wrote.

We know that Trump subordinates the requirements of handling classified information to his needs. He shared Israeli-gathered intelligence with Russians in the Oval Office and tweeted out a classified photo of an Iranian missile base. We know he has been willing to carry on conversations at Mar-a-Lago that he shouldn’t have.

But I have questions about this latest report.

ABC is careful to put “allegedly” and other qualifiers in all the right places. The story is that Anthony Pratt, an Australian billionaire, claims (emphasis mine) that Trump told him about some of the specs of American nuclear-armed submarines. Pratt then went on to share that information with 45 additional people. Jack Smith has had Pratt in for questioning.

So the ABC report is presumably (and trivially) accurate: It reports that Pratt makes some claims and that he has talked to Jack Smith’s people. However, there are three main possibilities:

• Trump shared classified information inappropriately
• Trump was just bullshitting
• Pratt is lying or mistaken about the encounter

I am looking at the third possibility.

If Pratt told 45 people about this, you can bet that some of them told others.

I am part of a network of experts who are always looking for leaks of just this kind of information. Some of these experts build databases in parallel to classified government information. Some are curious. Some use the data for strategic thinking. But this is the kind of leak they are looking for. I tagged a few of them and got three answers back. None of them had heard this scuttlebutt. Nor had I.

I take that as undermining Pratt’s story. It’s not absolute evidence, but enough for me to question Pratt’s story. Presumably Smith and his people are capable of checking things out in more detail.

Update: It is now 11:44 Mountain Time, and I am quitting commenting. I see that a large number of commenters feel this story must be true. It could be! I am just stating doubts that arise from my experience. And yes, we know that Trump sees classified information as subordinate to his needs.

One more attempt at clarification: I am not arguing that any part of the ABC article is true or false. I am arguing that there is a small reason to believe that the claims that Pratt is making may not be entirely true and could be totally false.