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| Vladimir Putin confers with Umar Kremlev (Reuters) |
In our Tuesday post about Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev and his role in financing Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding party in the Bahamas, we noted the following: "The more you learn about Kremlev, the sketchier he sounds. And it's hard not to think Trump Jr. might someday regret getting involved with the Russian."
Now, investigative journalist and author Craig Unger is out with a Substack piece that provides more insight about Kremlev and his ties to Russian president Vladimir Putin
Unger, who has been a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and a fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security, is almost certainly America's No. 1 expert on ties between the Donald Trump family and Russia. He has written five best-selling books about the Republican Party's assault on U.S. democracy, with two of those works focusing directly on Donald Trump's connections to Russian mobsters and political figures, ties that date to the late 1980s. Unger's most recent book is Den of Spies: Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House (HarperCollins, 2024).
In the latest column at his American Kompromat page on Substack, Unger writes under the title "The Case of the Secret Benefactor." In a sub-header, Unger notes "The New York Times calls him a "Russian businessman."But Umar Kremlev is a twice-convicted, Kremlin-anointed oligarch whose entire fortune depends on his ties to Vladimir Putin."
Unger begins with a hypothetical that spotlights the absurdity of Kremlev's involvement with the Trump nuptials:
If your father was president of the United States, you were getting married and were down to your last $300 million, who would you get to finance your wedding party?
How about a twice-convicted (extortion and battery) Russian with deep ties to Vladimir Putin’s inner security circle?
On September 14, Propublica reported that Donald Trump, Jr celebrated his wedding to Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas in May with “scantily-clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps” performing in “a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands,” all bankrolled by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev who shelled out hundreds of thousands of dollars for the festivities.
Now, some of you might jump to the conclusion that this is more evidence that Trump is in bed with Russia (a relationship I’ve documented in two books (House of Trump, House of Putin and American Kompromat) as well as my 39-post Trump Russia Timeline on this Substack column.)
But President Trump himself has repeatedly denounced such conclusions as part of a “Russia Hoax.” And, in an Instagram post, bride Bettina Anderson assured the country that even though a wealthy Russian close to Putin did foot the bill, there was nothing nefarious going on. She wrote:
“It was never intended to be our wedding weekend. When our original wedding plans changed, we simply decided to get married before it and arrived at an already planned weekend as newlyweds. Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.”
Then, separately in the same post, on the political-motive point, Anderson writes:
“Friendship doesn’t require a political motive. Generosity doesn’t automatically come with an agenda. And sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.”
Unger suggests that seems to wrap things up in a nice, neat package. But then he says, "Not so fast":
So, there you have it.
Nothing to see—right
Well, in fact, Umar Kremlev, the “dear friend” of Bettina’s and Don, Jr.’s who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for their three-day party, happens to be a Russian oligarch who became close to President Vladimir Putin as he worked his way into Putin’s security-service patronage network.
Kremlev’s ties to the Kremlin date to his leadership of a notorious, government-backed biker gang called the Night Wolves, which reportedly brought him close to Alexei Rubezhnoi, who now leads Putin’s presidential security service. In 2017, Kremlev took over the Russian Boxing Federation, after Rubezhnoi personally intervened to put him at the helm. Later, he traveled with Putin’s entourage to China. He has since taken control of Russia’s biggest car dealership.
The bottom line? Kremlev long has been a part of Russia's intelligence network, and in that world, friendship often does come with a political motive Unger writes:
In the intelligence world, an unreciprocated high-value gift from someone like Kremlev isn’t so much a sign of friendship as it is a means of incurring a debt which sits as leverage for Kremlev, Rubezhoi or Vladimir Putin. Propublica cited Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles, explaining that the Kremlev’s “generosity” raised serious national security concerns. “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Montoya. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”
And exactly who is Umar Kremlev? Well, it turns out Umar Kremlev is not even his real name. According to Proekt, an exiled independent Russian investigative outlet that’s been designated an “undesirable organization” by the Kremlin, Kremlev was born Umar Nazarovich Lutfulloyev and changed his name in 2010 after being convicted of extortion. Kremlev’s press office told ProPublica that Kremlev has “a completely clean legal record,” but that claim was contradicted by the Proekt-documented convictions and Wikipedia’s citation of Russian court records. (For a more complete look at Kremlev/Lutfulloyev’s past, take a look at Mikhail Zygar’s post, The Oligarch Behind Don, Jr’s Wedding.)
Kremlev's history becomes ugly when you consider his alleged actions toward Ukraine:
Through his sister-in-law, Kremlev is also closely associated with Healthy Fatherland, an organization described by Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate as being involved in the abduction, illegal deportation, and forced relocation of Ukrainian citizens, children included.
Given that Donald Trump, Jr. has enough clout with his father that he is said to have played a leading role in making J.D. Vance the vice president, it is somewhat shocking that he would allow one of Putin’s associates to openly play a key role in financing such a significant family occasion. Another factor in the mystery is that Trump Jr.’s reported net worth of $300 million suggests he should be able to pay for his own party.
Democrats in Congress already have signaled they are taking the Trump Jr. wedding-party story seriously. Unger writes:
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has asked for any communications with the White House regarding financing or attendance at Trump’s recent wedding parties.
In a speech from the Senate floor, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called it “naked corruption in plain view.”
“This was a Russian party organized and paid for by someone in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle,” Murphy said. “This has never happened before in the history of the United States of America. Never before has a foreign enemy of the United States paid for the family wedding of the president.”
Similarly, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, accused the Trump administration of “Putin-style corruption and authoritarianism” in a Monday social media post.
“When Russian oligarchs pay for American oligarchs’ weddings,” Raskin wrote, “it’s a very sweet and romantic gesture, but we know who’s really getting married. Let the oligarchs marry — the American people want a divorce from all of them.”
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The mainstream media, meanwhile, seems to be taking a "shrug the shoulders" approach to the story. A strong argument could be made that the Trump-Russia connection is the most important story of the modern age, with democracy and any hint of world stability hanging in the balance. With that in mind, it's hard to fathom why name-brand media outlets seem disinterested. Unger writes:
Much of the so-called “liberal” mainstream press doesn't seem to see much wrong with it. ABC News cited Bettina Anderson, the bride, as saying, “It’s unfortunate that something so personal and happy can be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from." The network offered no information on Kremlev’s name change or his criminal past.
Most strikingly, the nation’s three most powerful newspapers— The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal— all describe Kremlev as “a businessman” rather than an oligarch.
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The distinction is significant. “Businessman” is a softer, more neutral occupational term, and, by virtue of its neutrality, says nothing about the source or character of Kremlev’s wealth. A store owner is a businessman. So is a contractor, a merchant, an investor, a corporate executive or any number of other roles that don’t imply anything about where the money came from, its legitimacy, or its independence from the state. It’s the term you’d use if you had no evidence, or wanted to imply no evidence, that political power created or sustains the wealth.
The term “oligarch,” on the other hand, calls to mind Putin’s transformation of Russia into a mafia state in which multibillionaires are handed entire industries—steel, banking, or, in Kremlev’s case, a lottery, a betting monopoly and a national car dealership—on the condition that they serve the Kremlin’s interests and remain loyal. Oligarchs are allowed to become multi-billionaires reigning over one industry or another—so long as they serve Putin’s interests.
Kremlev is someone whose entire fortune was built through, and remains dependent on, his relationship with Alexei Rubezhnoi, Putin’s bodyguard. Calling him a "businessman" implies an autonomy his own history doesn't support; "oligarch" is the more accurate term precisely because his wealth has no origin independent of the Kremlin.
So, in the end, all three of the nation's most prestigious daily papers described the Kremlin-adjacent figure who bankrolled the Trump, Jr. wedding party with a softer, more innocuous term — at the exact moment when the term oligarch would have been more accurate.
That’s a striking pattern and worth asking about directly—especially since both The Times and The Wall Street Journal also omitted the salient facts that Kremlev had changed his name and had a criminal past. (The Washington Post story had one sentence saying that in 2024 it had reported that Kremlev has a criminal record under a previous name, in an article by Gus Garcia-Roberts and Les Carpenter.)
At this writing, the Times, Post, and Journal have not yet responded to my queries. But their initial coverage of the case of the secret benefactor should have made the Trump family very happy.
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