Incredible: Look Who Trump May Have Given Classified Info to Now
A former Mar-a-Lago employee has revealed that Donald Trump shared information on the classified documents he kept after leaving the presidency with anyone he felt like.
Brian Butler, who worked for Trump for 20 years, shared the explosive information with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Monday night. When Trump was indicted for keeping classified documents at his Florida resort, Butler was identified in the indictment as “Trump Employee 5.” Butler has not been charged.
At one point, Collins asked Butler if he ever saw Trump “carelessly throwing around national security information.” Butler said that the most egregious instance he saw was right after Trump met with Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt.
Pratt, a cardboard and recycling company CEO, is the third-richest man in Australia. The news program 60 Minutes Australia reported in October that it had obtained audio recordings of Pratt describing his “extraordinary dealings” with Trump. During one conversation, Trump allegedly told Pratt two highly classified details about U.S. nuclear submarines: how many nuclear warheads each sub carried and how close a vessel could get to a Russian sub before it was detected.
Pratt reportedly shared that information with about 45 other people. Although he has not been charged with wrongdoing in the case, he was interviewed twice by special counsel Jack Smith, who has led the probe into Trump’s actions.
Butler provided more details Monday on Pratt’s exchange with Trump, which occurred in the first half of 2021. “He finishes his meeting with the former president, gets in the car, and his chief of staff says, ‘How did the meeting go?’ Pratt … just says, ‘He told me—,’ and it would be U.S. military, classified information. What he told him about Russian submarines and U.S. submarines,” Butler said Monday night.
But Butler said that Pratt had raised “red flags” to him years before that meeting, because the billionaire was paying thousands, even millions of dollars to host events at Mar-a-Lago.
“Here’s a guy that’s just buying access,” Butler said.
Butler: Pratt finishes his meeting with Trump, gets in the car, and his chief of staff asks him about the meeting. Pratt starts talking about classified information on Russian submarines and U.S. submarines… here’s a guy that’s just buying access pic.twitter.com/RRE80Ueg6s
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 12, 2024
Pratt began cultivating access to Trump almost immediately upon the latter’s election in 2016. He paid at least $200,000 for a Mar-a-Lago membership and once spent $1 million to attend an event where Trump would be present. The event was charging $50,000 per person for entry. Pratt also paid for a full-page ad in the The Wall Street Journal praising Trump for creating manufacturing jobs in the Midwest.
Trump denied the allegations last year that he had shared classified information with Pratt. He insisted that he had only spoken with the “red-haired weirdo from Australia” about creating jobs in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
The former president has yet to comment on Butler’s allegations. According to the former employee, it wasn’t just Pratt who might have been able to access the classified documents. Photos in the indictment revealed Trump had stored documents in incredibly public places, including a bathroom and the Mar-a-Lago ballroom. Butler told Collins that “anybody” could have gotten a master key and accessed those and other areas of the resort property.