Russian Oligarch Secretly Funded Trump Son’s Wedding – The Tuesday AM Quickie 9/15/26
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Today you’ll read about a good Supreme Court decision protecting mail voting (!); Trump’s illegal deportations; and the DNC’s nationwide project to protect thousands of polling sites this November.
THE BIG NEWS
Russian Oligarch Secretly Funded Trump Son’s Island Wedding
Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin, paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s three-day wedding celebration across two “ultra-exclusive private islands” in the Bahamas to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, ProPublica reported. Kremlev “paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event.” Kremlev is the head of the corrupt International Boxing Association. He is also a bigot: not long ago he led a racist and misogynistic online harassment campaign against Algerian Olympic gold medalist boxer Imane Khelif, claiming repeatedly without proof that she was a man. The payments for Don Jr.’s wedding were made through a Dubai entity that the International Boxing Association uses for financial transactions.
It was all “just a small, little private affair,” according to Donald Trump, who did not attend his namesake’s wedding. But there was a “large contingent of Russians,” which guests thought was weird. “What are they doing here?” an anonymous attendee told ProPublica they were thinking at the time. One of them was former Russian defense contractor Alexander Lagutin; another was Elena Sobol, Kremlev’s “right hand” at the boxing association.
Many questions! Here’s one, per ProPublica:
National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?
“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”
Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently seeks to build ties with U.S. government officials and their family members. “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access,” said Triplett, who also worked for the FBI in Moscow.