Putin-Tied Oligarch Paid for Trump Jr.’s Wedding Celebrations, Reports Say

Donald Donald Trump Jr. and his wife acknowledged Monday that Umar Kremlev, a Russian businessman with ties to Vladimir Putin, paid for their post-wedding celebrations on a private island in the Bahamas in May, NBC News reported. ProPublica reported the arrangement, and PBS NewsHour interviewed ProPublica’s Justin Elliott about it on Monday.

According to ProPublica’s reporting as described by NBC, Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in wedding-related expenses for the couple and dozens of guests, including a fireworks show. Elliott told PBS that the exact total is unknown but “well into the six figures” went to wedding payments; about 50 guests attended two days of parties that Kremlev paid for. Elliott said the wedding ceremony, held the day before the island parties, included only family.

Trump Jr.’s wife wrote on Instagram that Kremlev “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us after our wedding,” and that the weekend was planned well in advance. “Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda,” she wrote, objecting to the gift being recast as political, according to NBC. Trump Jr.’s representatives called it a “very, very generous gift” and did not say why Kremlev would pay, PBS reported.

Kremlev has been president of the International Boxing Association since 2020, NBC reported. Putin presented him with the Order of Friendship in April, and shortly before the wedding he was part of a Russian delegation that traveled with Putin to Beijing. NBC noted that the Ukrainian government has sanctioned him; it did not mention U.S. sanctions. Trump Jr. and Kremlev appeared together at an association event in Turkey last September, where Trump Jr. called him a friend.

President Donald Trump did not attend. He told NBC News he has “no idea who Umar is” and called the matter “not a big deal,” describing the event as an afterparty in the couple’s honor. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, wrote on X that Kremlev “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the President’s son. What did he get in return? We need answers.”

Elliott said that Republican and Democratic former FBI counterintelligence officials told ProPublica they would have considered it a “five-alarm situation” had they known about it while in government. One concern, he said, is that someone paying for a wedding may later expect something in return. Kremlev’s spokesperson told ProPublica only that the two were friends who met a couple of years ago.

The reports raise questions that have not been answered. NBC noted that it is illegal for campaigns to accept help from foreign governments or foreign nationals, and recalled that special counsel Robert Mueller scrutinized a 2016 meeting between Trump Jr. and a Kremlin-linked lawyer but declined to bring charges because investigators could not prove he acted willfully. Trump Jr.’s attorney, Alan Futerfas, said in 2019 that the meeting was “just what Don said it was, and nothing more.”