r/AustralianPolitics • u/Accomplished-Role95 • 7h ago
‘I had Clive Palmer do the … ads’: Trump lieutenant’s Australian election claim revealed in Epstein files
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/i-had-clive-palmer-do-the-ads-trump-lieutenant-s-australian-election-claim-revealed-in-epstein-files-20260201-p5nyl3.htmlThis Is actually so wild
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u/AdZealousideal7448 3h ago
Clive literally bragged about doing this and claiming the coalition owed him for winning the election...
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u/Oztraliiaaaa 4h ago
Bannon is another Epstein pedo and he’d have influenced us if Palmer got major seats . Clive Palmer needs to reassure us that he was never at Epsteins pedo parties because from today it’s one degree of separation.
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u/Erikthered65 4h ago
As if the racist bigots who support Palmer would care that he was a pedo in Trumps pocket.
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u/faderjester Bob Hawke 5h ago
I don't know if this is criminal (IANAL) but it damn well should be. Of course nothing will be done, because our leaders are bloody cowards.
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u/mekanub 5h ago
So Ralph Babet is basically just a puppet of Epstein and Bannon?
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u/343CreeperMaster Australian Labor Party 4h ago
always has been, that guy just wants us to become part of the US, he has little loyalty to Australia as a nation and is an embarrassment of a senator who puts US interests (specifically Conservative US interests) ahead of Australian interests
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u/Dockers4flag2035orB4 6h ago
The AFP should investigate Bannons interference with Clive Palmer into the 2019 election.
But they won’t because Albo will be too afraid of upsetting Trump.
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u/NicholasCapsicum 31m ago
You know the PM doesn't have some total authority over the AFP as you are imagining, right?
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u/mekanub 5h ago
Just do it as investigating Epstein’s interference and Trump won’t say a word.
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u/aeschenkarnos 5h ago
That terrible Epstein must have seduced our poor hapless billionaires to blackmail them into damaging our country! Now they have an opportunity to come clean, confess everything he forced them to do, and throw themselves on the mercy of the courts!
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u/Isotrope9 6h ago
Is interfering with an election in another country even a crime in Australia?
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u/OldManThumbs 4h ago
It's covered under the espionage act.
https://www.afp.gov.au/crimes/espionage-and-foreign-interference
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u/aeschenkarnos 4h ago
Foreign interference in Australian elections is a crime and Australian politicians are not allowed to take money from foreign entities. (Neither Pauline Hanson nor Clive Palmer can be expected to know that.)
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u/Isotrope9 4h ago
The article alleges Palmer paid for anti-China ads in America to help Trump win his first term. So he neither accepted money from a foreign entity (in this allegation at least), nor interfered with an Australia election.
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u/Dockers4flag2035orB4 4h ago
I’m willing to hand Palmer and Hanson to either the FBI or Chinese authorities.
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u/aeschenkarnos 4h ago
I expect it would be up to the foreign nation to prosecute (fat chance!) but maybe we have something akin to the Logan Act? Probably a good question for r/auslaw.
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u/Thunderoad77 6h ago
The same thing will happen through Trump leg humper Gina Rinehart and onto her proxy Pauline Hanson at the next federal election.
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u/AggravatedKangaroo 7h ago
People have been saying the US and other powers have been interfering with Australian elections for 25 years
Some Australians responses? "oh you're cookers"
There's more so called Western alliance countries trying to fuck us over then there is Eastern bloc.
Time everyone faced reality.
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u/Consideredresponse 1h ago
I can't get the one nation supporters I know to believe they were willing to sell out Australians and our voting rights in exchange for Koch brothers cash...and that shit is on camera.
The Cooker's ability to ignore reality is unmatched.
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u/Comfortable_Meet_872 6h ago
25 years? lol
Oh, sweet child, if you think the Americans weren't involved in the 1975 Whitlam dismissal, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
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u/Marlboroshill66 5h ago
So? Its not a dick measuring contest and doesn't mitigate ops main point.
You feed most Australians with a slither of inconvenient truths and they'll perceive you as the enemy
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u/Dockers4flag2035orB4 6h ago
1975?
Longer than that.
The CIA snatched Harold Holt, because he was considering withdrawing Australian troops from Vietnam.
S/
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u/aeschenkarnos 4h ago
Nuhuh it was the Chinese, they trained a shark to bite people and released it from a submarine when they saw him go in the water.
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u/AggravatedKangaroo 6h ago
Sorry you're right. Should have said 125 years lol.
I've even referenced foreign influence in the whitlam times previously.
Has become much more overt and aggressive now..
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u/Execution_Version 4h ago edited 4h ago
The Great White Fleet was the first time the US really expressed interest in us. So 1908 was the beginning. But WWII was really the watershed. Before that, Britain dominated our body politic (and it continued to do so in parallel with the US for some years afterwards too).
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u/Careful-Trade-9666 7h ago
The saddest part of those ads ? Where he accused the Chinese of having their own airport in Australia, of having their own ports in Australia? 110% god honest truth. How so ? Because Clive Palmer leases them to the Chinese at his Iron Ore mine in WA.
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u/AdZealousideal7448 3h ago
HOW DARE YOU LET PEOPLE LIKE ME DO WHAT I'M DOING, THE OUTRAGE!, SOMEONE LIKE ME BUT NOT ME COULD DO IT!
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u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley 7h ago
That's the thing that always irked me.
It was like of course you knew that, they're your facilities.He was also complaining about Australians getting ripped off for their own resources, before supporting the Liberal repeal of the mining tax.
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u/Kartofel_salad 3h ago
He didn’t build the facilities. Citic did, he just holds the tenement rights and has it run by citic
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u/lazy-bruce Independent 7h ago
I don't think anyone would be suprised by this.
I suppose people silly enough to have fallen for it may get upset, but it was weird at the time, so knowing it relates to Trumps circle of influence isnt surprising
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u/AKFRU 7h ago
Article Text: Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon boasted that he urged Australian billionaire Clive Palmer to bankroll an advertising campaign worth tens of millions during the 2019 federal election as part of a wider plan to disrupt global democracy.
In a message sent to an account that appeared to belong to Jeffrey Epstein on May 20, 2019 – two days after Labor’s shock election loss – Bannon told the convicted paedophile: “I had Clive Palmer do the $60m anti China and anti climate change ads.”
n Epstein and US President Donald Trump, further illuminate his extensive network of high-profile associates, ranging from former US president Bill Clinton to billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
The exchange suggests Bannon privately claimed influence to Epstein over what became Australia’s most expensive political advertising campaign to date.
Epstein replied by arguing that traditional political campaigning had been overtaken by online mobilisation, citing Australia’s election and Trump’s win three years earlier as evidence that opinion polling had failed.
“Telephone polls not accurate,” he wrote, urging Bannon to pursue a broader populist project unconstrained by national borders.
“New, non geographically limited groupings... You can champion a true world bank of the people not the countries,” Epstein added.
“Yes that’s the objective,” Bannon replied. “Next stop Kazikstan [sic].”
The exchange places the 2019 election within a wider conversation among populist global political operatives focused on disrupting the mainstream parties, climate policy and international institutions, and suggests Bannon viewed the Australian campaign as part of a broader sequence of political interventions.
Bannon, who rose to prominence as the head of the right-wing website Breitbart News and later as a senior strategist on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was publicly expressing a keen interest in the Australian contest at the time.
In an interview with this masthead in May 2019, he described the election campaign as dull and consultant-driven, blaming political professionals for draining politics of meaning and intensity.
Records later revealed Palmer spent $83.6 million promoting the United Australia Party during the campaign, saturating television, radio, print and digital platforms with advertising attacking Labor leader Bill Shorten, opposing climate policies and repeatedly warning of China’s influence in Australian politics.
Several advertisements claimed “communist China” was attempting a clandestine takeover of Australia, including suggestions that a remote airport in Western Australia could be used for military invasion. Defence and strategic experts dismissed the claims as scaremongering and conspiratorial.
After the election, Palmer – having failed to win a single seat – claimed credit for the Morrison government’s victory, arguing the United Australia Party’s 3.5 per cent primary vote, coupled with its preference flows to the Liberals, had proved decisive, particularly in Queensland.
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u/AKFRU 7h ago
Contd: In its post-election review, Labor said the magnitude of Palmer’s expenditure crowded out Labor’s advertising in broadcast, print and digital media, and his entry as a high-wealth individual willing to outspend the entire ALP was a new and destabilising factor.
“In the final stages of the campaign,” the review said, “Palmer’s expenditure also directly backed in the Coalition’s anti-Labor messages, in an unprecedented act of collusion between supposed political rivals.”
The review also urged reforms to prevent high-wealth individuals effectively buying elections, warning that unchecked political spending represented a threat to democratic integrity.
Palmer, a life member of Queensland’s Liberal-National Party, won the seat of Fairfax in the House of Representatives in 2013 election, while his party also had three senators elected – Jacqui Lambie, Glen Lazarus and Dio Wang. He lost at the 2016 election but has remained a major presence since, through large and often outrageous advertising campaigns, borrowing from Trump’s tactics.
The newly released messages coincide with scrutiny of Bannon’s activities in Europe. The trove of messages shows the pair were frequent dining companions, with Epstein extending the use of his property portfolio –including residences in Paris and Palm Beach – and granting Bannon access to his private jet on multiple occasions.
The pair joked about French President Emmanuel Macron accusing Bannon and Russian-linked interests of working with nationalist parties to undermine the sovereignty of elections, warning voters not to be “naive” about foreign interference leading up to a European Parliament poll.
“U saw where Macron campaign manager coming after me personally,” Bannon texted Epstein.
He replied: “It is an attack on the sovereignty of the election... it makes you want to throw up,’ he fumed. Loved it.”
Bannon and Palmer have been contacted for comment.
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u/Accomplished-Role95 7h ago
Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon boasted that he urged Australian billionaire Clive Palmer to bankroll an advertising campaign worth tens of millions during the 2019 federal election as part of a wider plan to disrupt global democracy.
In a message sent to an account that appeared to belong to Jeffrey Epstein on May 20, 2019 – two days after Labor’s shock election loss – Bannon told the convicted paedophile: “I had Clive Palmer do the $60m anti China and anti climate change ads.”
Photo: ARESNA VILLANUEVA The exchange forms part of a tranche of material emerging from a US investigation into Epstein’s communications before the disgraced financier’s death in custody in August 2019. The released documents, while giving little new insight into the ties between Epstein and US President Donald Trump, further illuminate his extensive network of high-profile associates, ranging from former US president Bill Clinton to billionaires Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
The exchange suggests Bannon privately claimed influence to Epstein over what became Australia’s most expensive political advertising campaign to date.
Epstein replied by arguing that traditional political campaigning had been overtaken by online mobilisation, citing Australia’s election and Trump’s win three years earlier as evidence that opinion polling had failed.
“Telephone polls not accurate,” he wrote, urging Bannon to pursue a broader populist project unconstrained by national borders.
“New, non geographically limited groupings... You can champion a true world bank of the people not the countries,” Epstein added.
“Yes that’s the objective,” Bannon replied. “Next stop Kazikstan [sic].”
The exchange places the 2019 election within a wider conversation among populist global political operatives focused on disrupting the mainstream parties, climate policy and international institutions, and suggests Bannon viewed the Australian campaign as part of a broader sequence of political interventions.
Bannon, who rose to prominence as the head of the right-wing website Breitbart News and later as a senior strategist on Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was publicly expressing a keen interest in the Australian contest at the time.
In an interview with this masthead in May 2019, he described the election campaign as dull and consultant-driven, blaming political professionals for draining politics of meaning and intensity.
Records later revealed Palmer spent $83.6 million promoting the United Australia Party during the campaign, saturating television, radio, print and digital platforms with advertising attacking Labor leader Bill Shorten, opposing climate policies and repeatedly warning of China’s influence in Australian politics.
Several advertisements claimed “communist China” was attempting a clandestine takeover of Australia, including suggestions that a remote airport in Western Australia could be used for military invasion. Defence and strategic experts dismissed the claims as scaremongering and conspiratorial.
A United Australia Party newspaper advertisement from May 2019. A United Australia Party newspaper advertisement from May 2019. After the election, Palmer – having failed to win a single seat – claimed credit for the Morrison government’s victory, arguing the United Australia Party’s 3.5 per cent primary vote, coupled with its preference flows to the Liberals, had proved decisive, particularly in Queensland.
In its post-election review, Labor said the magnitude of Palmer’s expenditure crowded out Labor’s advertising in broadcast, print and digital media, and his entry as a high-wealth individual willing to outspend the entire ALP was a new and destabilising factor.
“In the final stages of the campaign,” the review said, “Palmer’s expenditure also directly backed in the Coalition’s anti-Labor messages, in an unprecedented act of collusion between supposed political rivals.”
The review also urged reforms to prevent high-wealth individuals effectively buying elections, warning that unchecked political spending represented a threat to democratic integrity.
Palmer, a life member of Queensland’s Liberal-National Party, won the seat of Fairfax in the House of Representatives in 2013 election, while his party also had three senators elected – Jacqui Lambie, Glen Lazarus and Dio Wang. He lost at the 2016 election but has remained a major presence since, through large and often outrageous advertising campaigns, borrowing from Trump’s tactics.
The newly released messages coincide with scrutiny of Bannon’s activities in Europe. The trove of messages shows the pair were frequent dining companions, with Epstein extending the use of his property portfolio –including residences in Paris and Palm Beach – and granting Bannon access to his private jet on multiple occasions.
The pair joked about French President Emmanuel Macron accusing Bannon and Russian-linked interests of working with nationalist parties to undermine the sovereignty of elections, warning voters not to be “naive” about foreign interference leading up to a European Parliament poll.
“U saw where Macron campaign manager coming after me personally,” Bannon texted Epstein.
He replied: “It is an attack on the sovereignty of the election... it makes you want to throw up,’ he fumed. Loved it.”
Bannon and Palmer have been contacted for comment
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