The president’s public shrug over his eldest son’s Russian-funded wedding party turned out to be only half of what he had to say about it.
President Donald Trump has complained privately to close aides that Donald Trump Jr. showed poor judgment by letting Umar Kremlev, a Russian businessman with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, pay for his post-wedding party in the Bahamas, reports said over the weekend of Oct. 24, 2026.
In public, Trump has treated the episode as nothing at all. “It’s totally allowed,” he told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Sept. 18. His own inquiry into the arrangement, he said, had produced an answer: his son was paying the money back. The whole thing, in his telling, hardly mattered.
Fireworks on a Rented Island
Trump Jr. married Bettina Anderson, a socialite from Palm Beach, Fla., in a small ceremony in May. The Russian money behind the three-day celebration that followed stayed out of view until September. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses went on Kremlev’s tab, among them a fireworks display and the rental of one of the two private islands that hosted the party.
Kremlev skipped the ceremony but joined the island festivities, which drew roughly 50 guests. He arrived as part of a group of Russians whose presence puzzled other attendees.
Among the family members on hand were Eric Trump, Tiffany Trump, and Ivanka Trump with her husband, Jared Kushner. Neither Trump Jr. nor his wife, now Bettina Trump, posted photos showing Kremlev or the other Russian guests.
The president did not attend, and neither did his youngest son, Barron Trump. A Truth Social post from Trump pointed to government obligations. Days later, he announced plans to travel to New York City for the Knicks in the NBA Finals.
The Repayment No One Can Show
Kremlev said in October that Trump Jr. had reimbursed him for the hundreds of thousands, a gesture he considered pointless. “Frankly speaking, I do not understand why he decided to do so,” he said.
Kremlev, who was elected president of the International Boxing Association in 2020, still heads it. Nobody has publicly produced evidence of the repayment, and the timing and method of it remain unclear.
A friend’s wedding present is how Bettina Trump characterized the spending in her defense of it, adding that she and her husband appreciate it. Trump Jr. played down the scale of the event on his “Triggered” podcast, describing a modest guest list of people close to the couple.
Curtis Wants Both Sons Subpoenaed
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, has asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the use of presidential family relationships for private financial benefit, along with preferential treatment or access by domestic and foreign interests. Subpoenas should go to Trump Jr. as well as Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, he told the committee.
In his letter, Curtis argued against one standard for a Republican president’s family and another for a Democratic president’s, writing that oversight should not switch off when the White House changes hands.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the committee’s ranking member, backed the request and called it “a gutsy move.” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the committee’s chairman, said he would “take his request seriously” but that “it takes time.”
Too Cautious to Be Photographed Together
Trump Jr. and Kremlev spent two days together in late August in Mongolia’s Uvs province, where Trump Jr. shot an Altai argali, an endangered horned sheep. Kremlev documented his chartered jet flight from Kazakhstan on Telegram.
Arthur Martirosov, a Russian businessman and a partner in Voskhod, a venture capital fund under U.S. sanctions, traveled with Kremlev. Trump Jr. and Kremlev were cautious about being photographed together, according to a local involved in the trip.
A spokesperson for Trump Jr. described what the two share as a personal friendship, not a business relationship, grounded in a shared enthusiasm for hunting, fishing and the outdoors.
Russian security and intelligence services, once they identify a relationship with someone of high value, will try to weaponize it, said Holden Triplett, who served as counterintelligence director on the U.S. National Security Council during Trump’s first term.
Scrutiny of Trump Jr.’s Russian contacts is not new. Investigators probing whether his father’s campaign coordinated with Moscow made his 2016 campaign meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian attorney a central thread of that inquiry.
