Did Donald Trump pass secrets about our nuclear submarine fleet to a foreign national? ABC News made a big splash with that report last night, at least with its headline. However, the article doesn’t quite definitively deliver, and there may be a reason for that.

During the special counsel investigation into Trump’s classified material/obstruction case, FBI agents and Jack Smith’s prosecutors have interviewed Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt at least twice. Pratt’s name came up because he had apparently bragged to dozens of people that Trump had shared highly sensitive information in April 2021 about America’s submarines as a way to promote sales to Australia. Pratt has a membership at Mar-a-Lago, where the conversation allegedly took place.

But a couple of things don’t add up here:

According to Pratt’s account, as described by the sources, Pratt told Trump he believed Australia should start buying its submarines from the United States, to which an excited Trump — “leaning” 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.

In emails and conversations after meeting with Trump, Pratt described Trump’s remarks to at least 45 others, including six journalists, 11 of his company’s employees, 10 Australian officials, and three former Australian prime ministers, the sources told ABC News.

While Pratt told investigators he couldn’t tell if what Trump said about U.S. submarines was real or just bluster, investigators nevertheless asked Pratt not to repeat the numbers that Trump allegedly told him, suggesting the information could be too sensitive to relay further, ABC News was told.

It’s unclear if the information was accurate, but the episode was investigated by Smith’s team.

Let’s grant that disclosing the actual numbers to any uncleared personnel, and especially a foreign national, would violate the Espionage Act. As I have pointed out numerous times, such information would not have to be specifically classified in order to violate the law by disclosing it, but these surely would be classified at the highest possible levels. Either way, passing along any such information would violate 18 USC 793 in both letter and spirit.

And just for giggles, it might even qualify as a violation of the Logan Act, if anyone took that seriously. This conversation took place in the context of the Biden administration’s efforts to sell subs to Australia, a key foreign-policy effort at the time. Of course, no one ever gets prosecuted for Logan Act violations. Until now. We didn’t usually prosecute violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) as crimes either, until the need to pressure Paul Manafort into flipping on Trump happened.

That brings us to the first problem: no one knows if the information was accurate, according to ABC. Apparently Smith’s team didn’t bother to bring in someone with the appropriate clearance to determine the accuracy of the claims. That in itself is curious, given the resources at Smith’s command as special counsel.

It also leads us to the second problem: would Trump even know this information? Granted, presidents generally have plenary access to classified material, but these data are pretty esoteric, probably even within the US Navy. Perhaps this information was of particular interest to Trump, but he’s not been known as a details guy, especially as president. Trump has, however, a very long public streak as a person who engages in self-aggrandizement through exaggeration and flat-out lying at times. Pratt apparently brought up the submarine-contract negotiations with Trump, and Trump may have tried to impress Pratt with a blizzard of made-up “facts” about America’s submarine capabilities. It seems very unlikely that Trump had memorized these specific data from his time in office, and much more likely that he was pulling those figures from, well … somewhere else.

And now we come to the third problem, which is that Smith never charged Trump with any crimes associated with his conversations with Pratt. Is that because Smith is reluctant to charge Trump with crimes? Hardly. And it’s not as if the case would be difficult to make, either; a witness at Mar-a-Lago apparently heard Pratt relate the conversation to others at the club within minutes of speaking to Trump, and then the documentary evidence from Pratt’s emails would cement the charges.

If Smith isn’t charging Trump over the conversation with Pratt, we can assume it’s because no crime got committed. In fact, that’s what we should assume, especially with a prosecutor as aggressive as Smith.

The New York Times at least hints at some skepticism about the claim:

Even though Mr. Pratt has been interviewed by prosecutors, the people familiar with the matter said, it remained unclear whether Mr. Trump was merely blustering or exaggerating in his conversation with him.

Joe Hockey, a former Australian ambassador to the United States, sought to play down Mr. Trump’s disclosures to Mr. Pratt in a phone interview on Thursday.

“If that’s all that was discussed, we already know all that,” Mr. Hockey said. “We have had Australians serving with Americans on U.S. submarines for years, and we share the same technology and the same weapons as the U.S. Navy.”

So why is this leaking out now? Apparently, Smith’s team has Pratt on its witness list for the classified documents/obstruction trial:

According to another person familiar with the matter, Mr. Pratt is now among more than 80 people whom prosecutors have identified as possible witnesses who could testify against Mr. Trump at the classified documents trial, which is scheduled to start in May in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla.

I’d guess that Smith will have a very difficult time getting Pratt on the witness stand without an indictment over the conversation. Otherwise, this is irrelevant; the indictment is about classified material retention and obstruction of a grand-jury subpoena, not a lack of self-control in conversations. Both ABC and the NYT report from their sources that Pratt was never shown any classified documents. If Smith wants Pratt to testify, then he’d have to charge Trump over their conversation.

There is plenty of reason to view this with a high level of skepticism. Allow me to add one more point in that direction: who leaked this to the media? Perhaps Trump’s legal team could have done so after seeing the witness list, but there doesn’t appear to be much benefit to them in doing so. This looks more like a way to get this Pratt information out to the potential jury pool in case the trial court disallows his testimony.