The president who waved off a Russian businessman’s hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending on his eldest son’s wedding party has been telling a very different story behind closed doors.
President Donald Trump has complained privately to close aides that Donald Trump Jr. showed poor judgment by letting Umar Kremlev pay for the couple’s post-wedding party in the Bahamas, according to a report published Friday night, Oct. 23, 2026.
Kremlev is a businessman with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and he heads the International Boxing Association (IBA), which elected him its president in 2020.
In public, Trump has treated the episode as nothing at all. He told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, Sept. 18, “It’s totally allowed.” Trump said in the same remarks that he had asked about the arrangement and been told his son was paying the money back, and he waved the matter off as unimportant.
A Private Island and Fireworks
Trump Jr. married Bettina Anderson, a socialite from Palm Beach, Fla., in May in a small ceremony, and the celebration that followed ran three days. Reporting on the Russian money behind it surfaced only in 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. He skipped the wedding ceremony but turned up for the island festivities, which drew roughly 50 guests.
The Russian guests were part of a group whose presence puzzled other attendees. Eric Trump attended, as did Tiffany Trump and Ivanka Trump with her husband, Jared Kushner. Neither the groom 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 blamed government obligations for his absence. Days later, he announced plans to travel to New York City to watch the Knicks in the NBA Finals.
A Repayment With No Evidence
Kremlev said Tuesday, Oct. 6, at an IBA press conference in Istanbul, that Trump Jr. had reimbursed him for the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he considered the gesture pointless. “Frankly speaking, I do not understand why he decided to do so,” Kremlev said.
Nobody has publicly offered evidence of the repayment, and no indication exists of when or how it took place.
Bettina Trump has defended the spending as an “extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend,” saying she and her husband remain grateful for it. Her husband has played down the scale of the event on his “Triggered” podcast, describing a modest guest list of people close to the couple.
Curtis Wants Two Sons Subpoenaed
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to open an investigation into the use of presidential family relationships for private financial benefit, preferential treatment or access by domestic and foreign interests. He asked the committee to subpoena both Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden.
Curtis wrote that the country should not live under one standard for a Republican president’s family and another for a Democratic president’s, and 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.”
An Endangered Sheep in Mongolia
Trump Jr. and Kremlev spent two days together in late August in Mongolia’s Uvs province. There the president’s son shot an Altai argali, an endangered horned sheep.
On Telegram, Kremlev posted a record of his chartered jet flight from Kazakhstan. He traveled with Arthur Martirosov, a Russian businessman and a partner in Voskhod, a venture capital fund under U.S. sanctions. A local involved in the trip said that the two were cautious about being photographed together.
A spokesperson for Trump Jr. described the relationship as a personal friendship built on shared outdoor interests, not a business arrangement.
Holden Triplett served as counterintelligence director on the U.S. National Security Council during Trump’s first term. He said that once Russian security and intelligence services identify a relationship with someone of high value, they will try to weaponize it.
Scrutiny of Trump Jr.’s Russian contacts is not new. His Trump Tower meeting with a Russian attorney during the 2016 campaign became a central thread in investigations into whether his father’s campaign coordinated with Moscow.