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Trump Documents Case The Indictment A Key Witness The Co-Defendants The Judge Where Documents Were Found Trump Investigations Tracker

and
A President, a Billionaire
Questions About Access and National
Security
Anthony Pratt, one of Australia’s wealthiest men, made his way
into Donald Trump’s inner circle with money and flattery. What
he heard there has become of interest to federal prosecutors.

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Anthony Pratt, center, forged a lucrative relationship with President Donald J. Trump during his four years
in office. Doug Mills/The New York Times

By Ben Protess , Jonathan Swan , Maggie Haberman and Alan Feuer

Oct. 22, 2023 Updated 5:07 p.m. ET

The 2020 presidential campaign was underway, and Anthony Pratt

was doubling down on Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Pratt, the chairman of a multinational paper and packaging
company and one of Australia’s richest men had already paid to ,

join Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. He had also spent top
dollar to ring in the new year there while rubbing elbows with the
president. And, eager to behold a Trump re-election celebration at
the club, he had offered to reach into his pocket once again as
Election Day approached.
“If Potus is having his election party at mar Lago I’ll book as many
rooms as available,” Mr. Pratt told an associate in a message
obtained by federal investigators and reviewed by The New York
Times. “Reasons he should,” Mr. Pratt continued, are that “1 it will
shore up the Florida electoral college 2 it will be good for business.”
Mr. Trump spent the night of the election at the White House
without the company of Mr. Pratt. But their relationship — forged
over Mr. Trump’s chaotic four years in office — was indeed
beneficial for both men and their businesses, new interviews and
documents reviewed by The Times show.
Their interactions were ultimately swept up in one of the two
federal criminal cases that the special counsel Jack Smith brought
against Mr. Trump. Prosecutors have interviewed Mr. Pratt in the
case in which Mr. Trump is charged with taking classified
documents with him from the White House when he left office and
obstructing efforts to retrieve them. Mr. Pratt is listed as a
potential witness who could testify against Mr. Trump at a trial
next year.
In his interviews with prosecutors, Mr. Pratt recounted how Mr.
Trump once revealed to him sensitive information about American
nuclear submarines, an episode that Mr. Trump denies. Another
witness told prosecutors about hearing uncorroborated reports
that Mr. Pratt spent $1 million for tickets to a Mar-a-Lago New
Year’s Eve gala — voluntarily paying the club a huge markup for
tickets that actually cost $50,000 or less, according to two people
with knowledge of the previously unreported testimony.
New details of how an American president and an Australian
billionaire bonded over their mutual self-interest help to document
the transactional ethos of the Trump presidency, and show how Mr.
Trump melded his White House with his personal business in a
way that, according to prosecutors, had ramifications for national
security.
Mr. Pratt was hardly the only favor seeker circling Mar-a-Lago,
which became the fulcrum of the president’s two overlapping
worlds, and a marketplace of sorts where favors, secrets and
opportunities to lobby the president over clubhouse burgers were
treated as currency. But Mr. Pratt, who rode in Mr. Trump’s
motorcade and attended a White House state dinner, played the
game better than most.
Mr. Trump, the current front-runner for the Republican
nomination, had almost no relationship with Mr. Pratt before the
2016 election. But after, Mr. Pratt used his money and flattery to get
on Mr. Trump’s radar: He lavished praise on him in public
appearances, bought newspaper ads that hyped Mr. Trump as a job
creator and became a member of Mar-a-Lago.

Mar-a-Lago became the fulcrum of the former president’s two overlapping worlds — politics and
business. Hilary Swift for The New York Times

The president took notice. When Mr. Pratt opened a new factory in
Ohio that promised hundreds of new jobs, Mr. Trump toured the
plant alongside the Australian prime minister.
Mr. Pratt, in turn, gained priceless publicity and proximity to the
power of the presidency, providing him entree into an
administration whose policies lowered his taxes and benefited his
business.
Behind closed doors, however, Mr. Pratt described Mr. Trump’s
business practices as being “like the mafia,” according to covert
recordings obtained by “60 Minutes Australia” and shared with
The Times.

A Guide to the Various Trump Investigations

Confused about the inquiries and legal cases involving former President
Donald Trump? We’re here to help.

Key Cases and Inquiries: The former president faces several

investigations at both the state and the federal levels, into matters related
to his business and political careers. Here is a close look at each .

Case Tracker: Trump is at the center of four criminal investigations. Keep

track of the developments in each here .

What if Trump Is Convicted?: Will any of the proceedings hinder Trump’s

2024 presidential campaign? Can a convicted felon even run for office?
Here is what we know, and what we don’t know .

The private comments, captured while Mr. Trump was still

president, provide a rare glimpse into how a businessman on the
other side of Mr. Trump’s transactions actually viewed the New
York real estate developer’s tactics — with a mix of blunt
acknowledgment and admiration for someone so willing to test the
boundaries of the presidency.
On the recordings, Mr. Pratt recounts how Mr. Trump shared with
him in December 2019 what he describes as elements of a
conversation the president had with Iraq’s leader right after a U.S.
military strike there aimed at Iranian-backed forces. Days later, a
U.S. drone strike in Baghdad would kill Iran’s top security and
intelligence commander.
At one point, Mr. Pratt said, Mr. Trump discussed the phone call he
had with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine earlier that
year that had helped lead to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. “That
was nothing compared to what I usually do,” Mr. Trump said, in Mr.
Pratt’s recounting.
It is not clear whether Mr. Pratt shared these accounts with
prosecutors or whether prosecutors are aware of the recordings.
Mr. Pratt also describes on the recording how Mr. Trump asked his
wife, Melania, to strut around Mar-a-Lago in her bikini “so all the
other guys could get a look at what they were missing.”
In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Trump condemned
prosecutors and said the information was coming from “sources
which totally lack proper context and relevant information.”
In his own statement, Mr. Trump defended his relationship with Mr.
Pratt. “He’s a member of the most successful club in the country,
Mar-a-Lago, and from a friendly country in Australia, one of our
great allies,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t know him well but he seemed
like a nice person. He built a factory in Ohio and created American
jobs, which I’m in favor of.”
Representatives for Mr. Pratt did not respond to several requests
for comment.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, the great Anthony Pratt!’

Mr. Pratt, who had once pledged $1 billion to fight climate change
at the Clinton Global Initiative, was a relative latecomer to Mr.
Trump’s corner.
It was only after Mr. Trump won in 2016 that Mr. Pratt raced to
embrace him, congratulating the president-elect on Twitter. Mr.
Pratt’s spouse, Claudine Revere, an American whose company ran
catering at the Trump-operated skating rink in Central Park,
donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration. As a foreign citizen,
Mr. Pratt could not donate, but he attended the event and soon
dropped a reported $200,000 on a Mar-a-Lago membership.
At an event in May 2017 attended by Mr. Trump, Mr. Pratt pledged
to invest $2 billion to create manufacturing jobs, mainly in the
Midwest. He credited the move to Mr. Trump, who called it
“beautiful.”

Mr. Pratt joined Mr. Trump and Scott Morrison, the prime minister of Australia, on a tour of a new Pratt
Industries plant in Ohio in 2019. Doug Mills/The New York Times

“Everything that he does, he is making America greater,” Mr. Pratt

said of Mr. Trump on Fox News .

By the end of Mr. Trump’s first year in office, his presidency was
bearing fruit for Mr. Pratt. The Australian Financial Review
estimated that Mr. Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cut helped increase
Mr. Pratt’s personal wealth by more than $2 billion.
At the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party that year, Mr. Trump was
captured on video feting Mr. Pratt, a recording that Mr. Pratt then
emailed to Mr. Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue. At the
time, Mr. Pratt and Mr. Perdue were also discussing the U.S. food
supply, an issue vital to the packaging industry.
The seesaw of good will continued in the spring of 2018, when Mr.
Pratt took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal linking Mr.
Trump to the creation of manufacturing jobs. (In an interview with
The Australian newspaper Mr. Pratt said he had told Mr. Trump ,

that he was building his “next big operation” in Pennsylvania,

which he noted was “a big swing state.”)
When the two men crossed paths at a dinner in Mar-a-Lago soon
after the ad appeared, Mr. Trump remarked, “Anthony, great to see
you and thanks for the ad!” according to an account in The
Australian Financial Review .

Mr. Trump then announced to the dining room, “Ladies and

gentlemen, the great Anthony Pratt!”
The room erupted in applause.

Finding POTUS
Once Mr. Pratt had access to Mr. Trump, he only wanted more.
“Is POTUS going to be at MarLago again this season and if so do
you know when,” he wrote to a Mar-a-Lago employee in May 2018,
according to records that were turned over to the special counsel’s
office and reviewed by The Times.
Mr. Pratt then returned to Mar-a-Lago for New Year’s Eve for a
second straight year, inviting a number of guests and clients.
A witness in the federal documents case told prosecutors that Mr.
Pratt spent $1 million to attend the party, well in excess of the
normal charge, according to people with knowledge of the
testimony. The witness did not have firsthand knowledge of the
claim, and it is unclear if prosecutors ever verified it. Mr. Trump’s
company, the Trump Organization, did not respond to requests for
comment.
Mr. Trump was a no-show for the 2018 New Year’s Eve party. With
the government shut down, he remained in Washington.
Mr. Pratt soon pivoted to the next big holiday.
“What are the odds the President will be at MarLago for Easter?”
Mr. Pratt asked the Mar-a-Lago employee in early 2019. Mr. Pratt
was in luck that time.
Later that year, Mr. Pratt attended a state dinner at the White
House for the Australian prime minister .

Mr. Pratt and his wife, Claudine Revere, attended a state dinner at the White House in 2019. Alastair
Pike/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By spring 2020, Mr. Pratt set his sights on the possibility of an

election night party.
Months before the election, Mr. Pratt contacted the Mar-a-Lago
employee to say that “the us federal presidential election is on
Tuesday November 3,” and “Will mar Lago be open the weekend
before?”
He offered to book as many rooms as possible at the club, where he
liked to entertain clients.
Mr. Pratt followed up, asking, “can u find out if election night will
be at mar Lago if so I’ll come with guests.”
While hopes ended up being dashed, he
Mr. Pratt’s election night
often sounds almost giddy in the secretly recorded conversations
at his proximity to the leader of the free world and his entourage.
He also speaks admiringly about how Mr. Trump learned from his
mentor, the lawyer and fixer Roy Cohn, how to walk up to the line
of illegality without crossing it.

“He’s got incredible balls,” Mr. Pratt says. “Trump says, ‘Would you
go and tell that guy over there to steal for me?’ And so he can say,
‘I never told the guy to steal.’ And things like that is how Trump
gets away with it.”
Mr. Pratt also boasts in these private conversations about his
relationship with Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is under indictment in
Georgia on charges of conspiring with Mr. Trump and others to
subvert the 2020 election results.
Mr. Pratt claims on one recording that he paid Mr. Giuliani around
$1 million to come to his birthday party as a celebrity guest. The
pandemic prevented Mr. Giuliani from attending, but Mr. Pratt
says on the recording that “now he rings me once a week.”

“Rudy is someone that hope will be useful one day,” Mr. Pratt said of Rudolph W.
I

Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer. Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

“Rudy is someone that I hope will be useful one day,” Mr. Pratt
says. A spokesman for Mr. Giuliani did not respond to requests for
comment.
In a draft version of a speech Mr. Pratt gave to a Jewish group in
the fall of 2019, he bluntly planned to reveal becoming a member of
Mar-a-Lago to get a “seat at the table where the president relaxes
socially, and mingles with his guests.”
The draft speech, provided to The Times by “60 Minutes Australia,”
tracks closely with the remarks delivered by Mr. Pratt but contains
several crossed-out lines that describe a transactional relationship
with Mr. Trump. It is not clear whether Mr. Pratt himself wrote the
speech or if he crossed out the lines.
Membership at Mar-a-Lago, one crossed-out line of the draft states,
“definitely turned out to be a strategic investment — and a very
good investment.”
Another crossed-out line: “President Trump is a very reciprocal
man.”

The Trump bazaar: Coffee and nuclear secrets

On one of the recordings, Mr. Pratt recounts a drive in Mr. Trump’s
presidential motorcade, in December 2019, when the president
regaled him and Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina
Republican, about the airstrike he had ordered in Iraq a short time
before. He also says Mr. Trump told him about a private phone call
he had with the Iraqi leader.
“He said, ‘I just bombed Iraq today and the president of Iraq called
me up and said, you just leveled my city,’” Mr. Pratt recalls on the
audio recording. “And he said, ‘I said to him, OK, what are you
going to do about it?’”
In an interview, Mr. Graham said he had no recollection of the
conversation. And it is unclear whether the conversation with an
Iraqi leader, as described by Mr. Trump in Mr. Pratt’s account,
actually happened.

Boxes of documents piled in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lago.

Prosecutors have interviewed Mr. Pratt in the case in which
Mr. Trump is charged with taking classified documents with
him from the White House when he left office and
obstructing efforts to retrieve them. U.S. Justice Department

Three months after Mr. Trump left the presidency, Mr. Pratt joined
Mr. Trump in his office at Mar-a-Lago for a chat, during which the
Australian businessman suggested that Australia should purchase
submarines from the United States.
That prompted Mr. Trump to lean in, as if aware he was sharing a
confidence, in Mr. Pratt’s account to investigators. According to Mr.
Pratt, Mr. Trump described the number of nuclear warheads that
U.S. submarines typically travel with, and their stealthy proximity
to Russian waters.

In November 2021, Mr. Pratt flew to Florida to have coffee at Mar-

-Lago and meet with Mr. Trump, records show. It is unclear what
they discussed, or they have met since. if

Susan Beachy contributed research.

Ben Protess is an investigative reporter covering the federal government, law
enforcement and various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his
allies. More about Ben Protess

Jonathan Swan is a political reporter who focuses on campaigns and Congress. As a

reporter for Axios, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President
Donald J. Trump, and the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman
Award for “overall excellence in White House coverage” in 2022. More about Jonathan
Swan
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of “Confidence
Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” She was part of a team
that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their
connections to Russia. More about Maggie Haberman
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the
criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President
Donald J. Trump. More about Alan Feuer
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 23, 2023 of the New York edition with the headline: Case Inspects
Trump’s Link To Billionaire . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper Subscribe |

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Our Coverage of the Trump Documents Case

The Justice Department has federal criminal charges against former President
filed
Donald Trump over his mishandling of classified documents.

The Indictment: Federal prosecutors said that Trump put national security secrets
at risk by mishandling classified documents and schemed to block the
government from reclaiming the material. Here’s a look at the evidence .

The Co-Defendants: While Trump plays the leading role in the case, the narrative
as laid out by prosecutors relies heavily on supporting characters like Carlos De
Oliveira and Walt Nauta .

Obstruction: The Mueller report raised questions about whether Trump had
obstructed the inquiry into the ties between the former president’s 2016
campaign and Russia. With prosecutors adding new charges in the documents
case, the subject is back .

The Judge: Judge Aileen Cannon , a Trump appointee who showed favor to the
former president earlier in the investigation, has scant experience running
criminal trials. Can she prove her critics wrong ?
The Cannon has set the trial’s start date for May 20, 2024 taking a middle
Trial: ,

position between the government’s request to go to trial in December and Trump’s

desire to push the proceeding until after the 2024 election.

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