Kevin’s Journal: Putin’s Homie Bankrolls Donald Trump Jr.’s Wedding
Everyone loves a celebrity wedding. The glitz, the glamor, the fashion. It’s always a huge affair and everyone stays tuned. This was no different for Donald Trump Jr.’s second wedding, but what is unusual is who parts of the post-wedding parties were funded by.
Trump Jr. was married to Bettina Anderson on May 26 and they had a great time with all of their friends, family — even Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, who also has ties to the Kremlin, was in attendance. I first learned about this information from AP News and this made me do a deep dive into how much Kremlev was truly involved in the party.
Kremlev paid for one of the private islands they rented for the reception, and the extravagant firework show. This cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars. He and his team helped plan the firework show, according to ProPublica. Kremlev is known as the head of the International Boxing Association (IBA), which is funded by a Russian state-owned energy company. Payments for the wedding came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai.
This is a lot of information to process, I know, but the point is that, at his 50-person wedding, Trump Jr. invited a Russian oligarch, and for an administration that already has too close of ties to Russia, this could be very bad for our future. This is clearly not only a major ethical dilemma but a constitutional violation. According to the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”
Of course at a wedding it is customary to bring a gift for the bride and groom, and maybe for billionaires, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars is normal for a gift, but paying for a part of the reception and an event at the wedding is not normal in the slightest. Trump Jr. is already a centimillionaire and definitely does not need these events to be paid for; it is curious what Kremlev’s motivations were behind these gifts. Did he truly just want to give a nice wedding gift or did he expect something in return for the gifts? Was he told to give these gifts by Putin himself or were the gifts all his idea?
“A Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin spent hundreds of thousands of dollars bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding,” stated Rep. Robert Garcia, D-C.A., ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “It’s baffling that the son of a President would even think about allowing a Russian oligarch to bankroll his wedding. Is this why President Trump skipped his son’s wedding? Oversight Democrats are investigating and demanding answers immediately.”
Garcia is planning to open an investigation into these actions and this could be just the start of the legal troubles surrounding these payments. I know these controversies seem to stack up and we can only remember half of them, but ones like this that are incredibly unconceivable seem to stick with us as the general public. If they go to trial this would be Trump Jr.’s first criminal trial, so it would be interesting to see how he handles being on trial.
