Trump allegedly shared top-secret submarine info with a billionaire who has ties to Josh Shapiro

Call this a good news-weird news week for Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The good news: Shapiro was featured in three huge newspaper ads this week with Australian billionaire Anthony Pratt, who announced last month that he is investing $500 million in Pennsylvania operations for his company that makes corrugated boxes from recycled materials.

The weird news: Pratt was all over national news two weeks ago with reports that former President Donald Trump allegedly shared with him highly sensitive American submarine fleet information in 2021, which Pratt then passed on to more than three dozen people.

The ads took up three-quarters of a page in Sunday’s New York Times and in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. There was also a full page in Monday’s Inquirer.

Say you’re the new-ish governor of a big swing state with some not-so-secret White House ambitions in 2028. That sort of national attention on economy building goes a long way.

Pratt has a history of doing this with big splashy ads, showing how chummy he was with a Trump administration official in 2017 and with the governor of Kentucky last year.

For a guy who clearly craves attention, he and Pratt Industries ran silent when Clout came calling. A company spokesperson did not respond to our requests for comment.

Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder said the governor and the billionaire spoke about “critical investments” to create jobs in the state.

And submarines didn’t come up once.

“The entirety of their time together was spent discussing matters above sea level,” Bonder told Clout.

ABC News first reported Oct. 5 that federal prosecutors have interviewed Pratt, a member of Trump’s tony Mar-a-Lago private club in Palm Beach, Fla., about a conversation he had there with the former president in April 2021 about the capabilities of America’s submarines — including how many nuclear missiles they can carry and how close they can get to Russian submarines without being detected.

ABC said Pratt shared those details with at least 45 other people.

Philadelphia Register of Wills Tracey Gordon, who has just 11 weeks left in that post, was hit Tuesday with a fifth lawsuit from a former employee accusing her of firing him for refusing to help fund her failed reelection campaign.

Pat Parkinson, a Northeast Philly Democratic ward leader, said in his lawsuit filed in federal court that Gordon “continually and relentlessly badgered” him for campaign donations in 2021 and 2022 while he was an administrative deputy in her office.

The lawsuit said Parkinson didn’t want to be associated with Gordon’s campaign because he considered her “ruthless, corrupt, unethical, incompetent” and said she “acted in an illegal manner.”

The suit, which names her office and the city as codefendants, said Gordon also demanded that Parkinson arrange a March 2022 meeting with Bob Brady, chair of the Democratic City Committee, where she argued with Brady about political support.

Gordon and Brady have a long history of political clashes.

Parkinson said Gordon’s angry reaction after that meeting prompted him to go out on leave for stress and that she fired him three weeks later, even though he still had sick days and vacation time available.

Gordon did not respond when Clout called. A spokesperson for the city’s Law Department declined to comment.

Four other former Register of Wills employees, including Malik Boyd, Gordon’s former communications director, have filed similar lawsuits that are now pending in federal court.

Gordon was defeated in May’s four-candidate Democratic primary by John Sabatina Sr., another Northeast Philly ward leader.

U.S. Rep. Scott Perry, the York County Republican who tried to toss all of Pennsylvania’s presidential votes in 2020, faces a financial dilemma as four Democrats seek to challenge his bid next year for a seventh term.

First, Perry cleared just under $1,900 in fundraising from July to September, after his expenditures were subtracted from his contributions, according to a campaign finance report filed Sunday.

Second, Perry spent half of the money he raised — nearly $166,000 — during those three months … on fundraising for his campaign.

“The vast majority of Congressman Perry’s fundraising expenditures were direct mail costs associated with increasing his fundraising reach,” Perry campaign spokesperson Matt Beynon told Clout.

Add to that, Perry spent $75,000 on legal fees in August and September, related to the federal probe of his involvement in Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

Perry ended the quarter with $541,000 in the bank but also $106,000 in debt to his lawyers for that probe.

And he faces at least two Democrats who are fundraising at a fast clip.

Janelle Stelson, a longtime central Pennsylvania television news anchor who entered the Democratic primary for the 10th District seat earlier this month, said she raised more than $100,000 after announcing her campaign. Her first campaign finance report is due in January.

Mike O’Brien, a retired U.S. Marine Corps lieutenant colonel who announced his run in the Democratic primary on Sept. 6, raised nearly $155,000 and had nearly $137,000 in the bank at the end of September.

Shamaine Daniels, a Harrisburg City Council member who lost to Perry in the 2022 general election, had $15,500 in the bank at the end of September.

Rick Coplen, who lost last year’s Democratic primary to Daniels, had $5,309 in the bank at the end of September.

Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.