Ex-president lashes out at ‘fake news’ amid reports Pratt used wealth to cultivate close relationship between the pair

Donald Trump has described Anthony Pratt, one of Australia’s richest men, as a “red haired weirdo” as he lashed out at extraordinary reports about their personal conversations.

Earlier this month, reports suggested Trump had shared top-secret details of US nuclear submarines with Pratt, an Australian billionaire who runs the paper and packaging giant Visy.

In private conversation, Pratt claims Trump had told him in 2019 of ordering an airstrike on Iranian-linked militants in Iraq, before it hit the headlines, and said that Iraq’s president had called him to complain. Pratt says Trump responded: “I [Trump] said to him [Iraq’s leader], ‘OK, what are you going to do about it?’”

Pratt said Trump also told him about a phone call he made to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy asking for him to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Trump said: “You know that Ukraine phone call, that was nothing compared to what I usually do.”

Pratt also said Trump pushed the boundaries in his dealings as president and that “he knows exactly what to say and what not to say so that he avoids jail … but gets so close to it … that it looks like to everyone that he’s breaking the law”.

Pratt boasted of paying “about a million bucks” to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer, to attend his birthday party. Giuliani didn’t attend but the pair spoke regularly on the phone. The recordings suggest Pratt said: “Rudy is someone I hope will be useful one day.”

Pratt had made a payment to then Prince Charles of $182,000 in 2021, according to documents cited by the Nine papers, and said: “My superpower is that I am rich. So I am useful to him [Prince Charles], right?” He also said of Charles: “What I’m trying to do is network with people who can be useful. Prince Charles said when he introduced me to Camilla, ‘He’s [Pratt] been very useful.’ And I thought, that’s an insult. And then I thought, it is better than being irrelevant” and “I see him as an undervalued political stock. It is just that he is a laughing stock now. But when he is king, [they] won’t be laughing.”

Pratt made consulting payments to former Australian prime ministers Tony Abbott and Paul Keating. Abbott was hired after losing his seat in 2019 on a retainer of $8,000 a month, the Nine newspapers reported, and Keating was receiving $25,000 a month.