Nearly all congressional Republicans have been content to look the other way on the controversy surrounding the Russian oligarch who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding party. Sen. John Curtis of Utah, however, has taken the matter quite seriously.
“A Russian oligarch paid for a lavish wedding after-party for Donald Trump Jr., which to me just stinks. It’s corruption, I don’t like it,” Curtis said in a video posted to social media late last week. The Utah Republican added, “You’ll hear more from me later on. This is a big deal.”
Evidently, he meant it. The senator’s office issued a press statement on Tuesday morning that read in part:
U.S. Senator John Curtis (R-UT) sent a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D-IL) calling for an investigation into the use of presidential family relationships for private financial benefit, preferential treatment, or access by domestic and foreign interests.
As part of that investigation, the letter urges the Committee to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden to testify regarding their past business dealings, relationships with foreign individuals and entities, gifts or other benefits they have received, and any instances in which their relationship to the President was invoked or understood to provide value.
“A toaster is a wedding gift,” Curtis added in an online statement. “A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now. ‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now.”
The senator’s letter to the Judiciary Committee’s leaders will almost certainly go ignored — Grassley and his GOP brethren have gone to absurd lengths to ignore a long list of Trump-related — unless Democrats reclaim a majority in the chamber. What’s more, it remains to be seen whether Curtis will follow through once the White House weighs in and tries to bring the Utahn to heel.
But the fact that a sitting GOP senator from a red state wants the president’s son to be subpoenaed is both notable in its own right and a development that brings fresh attention to the underlying controversy.
And what a controversy it is. ProPublica reported last week that Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, had “secretly bankrolled” part of Trump Jr.’s recent wedding, footing the bill for “hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses” and even helping to plan the gathering.
“It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding,” ProPublica added. “The men appear to have met only recently.”
It was a tough story to shrug off for reasons that should’ve been obvious: A Putin-aligned Russian oligarch paid for the wedding party of the sitting American president’s oldest son, and it was an open question as to why that happened and what the Russian might want or expect in return.
The fact that one congressional Republican is asking the right questions is a start, but it’s hardly enough.
As for the groom’s father, Donald Trump Sr. addressed the story for the first time on Friday, insisting that the arrangement was “totally allowed.”
As part of the same exchange, Trump said of his oldest son, “As I understand it, he paid him back.” He then hedged a bit on the timing, adding, “I understand that Don’s paying them back.”
There are not yet any details as to whether that has happened, whether it will happen, how much Trump Jr. intends to repay the Russian oligarch, or why he would even bother if all of this was “totally allowed.”
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
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