Don Jr. and His Russian Oligarch Pal Really Do a Lot Together

Photo: Zak Bennett/Bloomberg/Getty Images When Donald Trump Jr. and his new bride, Bettina Anderson, came under fire last month for allowing a Kremlin-linked oligarch to partially fund their wedding weekend , they defended themselves by explaining that Umar Kremlev is a “dear friend” with whom Trump Jr. shares a love for hunting and boxing .

Just two bros who love to punch and shoot things, okay? Of course, that doesn’t actually change the fact that it’s at best deeply suspect for the son of the president of the United States to have a relationship with a man who has close ties to Vladimir Putin, and for that man to splash out hundreds of thousands of dollars on the president’s son’s wedding, particularly when the son himself is worth an estimated $300 million. (Trump Jr. is said to have paid back Kremlev after the controversy.) Anyway, it turns out that Trump Jr. and Kremlev’s close personal friendship does indeed involve hunting, because a few months after Trump Jr. and Anderson wed, the two men traveled to Mongolia to shoot some endangered species.

According to the Financial Times , in late August, Trump Jr. flew to the capital of Mongolia for a hunting trip in the Uvs province, where he spent a week stalking animals and killed an Altai argali, an endangered sheep. On the trip, he was accompanied by auction winners — that is, people who actually paid money to spend time with him — and Kremlev, who reportedly left a boxing conference “in Kazakhstan and flew overnight to Ulaanbaatar on a chartered jet ... then travelled west to Trump Jr.’s camp.” Another individual who was on the trip told the FT “that Trump Jr. and Kremlev were cautious about being photographed together,” as is typical of dear friends with nothing to hide.

Kremlev reportedly departed for Siberia after two days of hunting; Trump Jr. remained in Mongolia for another week, and in Bayan-Ölgii hunted “the less-endangered Altai ibex, a native species of wild goat.” (Also in tow during the first leg of the trip, per the FT , was “Arthur Martirosov, a Russian businessman who is a partner in Voskhod, a US-sanctioned venture capital fund.” Martirosov and Kremlev did not respond to the FT ’s requests for comment.) Besides having ties to the Kremlin — Kremlev was part of Putin’s delegation to China in May — the Russian businessman was previously convicted of battery and, wait for it, extortion, according to leaked criminal documents viewed by the FT .

Those convictions apparently occurred when his surname was still Lutfulloyev; in 2010, he changed it to Kremlev, which literally means “of the Kremlin.” In a statement, a spokesperson for the First Son said, “Don has made clear that he has a personal friendship, not a business relationship, with Umar.

Their friendship is largely based on their shared love for hunting, fishing, and the outdoors. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that they went hunting together earlier this year.” Weirdly, that doesn’t comfort security experts. “It really doesn’t matter if people have the most aboveboard intentions,” Holden Triplett, who served as a counterintelligence director during Trump’s first term, told the FT .

“The moment the Russian security and intelligence services figure out someone has a relationship with anyone of high value, they will try to weaponise that.” Don Jr. and Russian Oligarch Pal Really Do a Lot Together Your product is saved! You’ll receive emails when your saved products go on sale.

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