Some Republicans, led by Sen. John Curtis, are pushing for the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the business dealings of Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden.
Page A2From§Eachthe coffee break edition — 23 September 2026
Senator joins probe into Trump Jr.'s Russian-funded wedding, insists Hunter Biden get investigated too
As it ran on the front
The money moved first. In May, Donald Trump Jr. married Bettina Anderson on a private island in the Bahamas, and buried in the invoice was a name: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch who weeks earlier received the Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin, covering hundreds of thousands of dollars in wedding costs. ProPublica put the receipts on the record September 16. Democrats opened an investigation the same day. The day before that, September 15, Sen. Richard Blumenthal had already pressed the Trump administration about the arrangement during a hearing — a senator who has spent this war flying to Ukraine and back, asking why a Kremlin-adjacent oligarch was covering the tab for the president's son's island rental.
Then came the pitch. On September 17, one day after ProPublica's story, Trump stood before the Republican National Committee in Dallas and told the room the party's path to November ran through a $5,000 check: "If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000." The Washington Examiner had a name for it already: the Trump dividend, a cash offer to a base being asked to look past a private island funded by a man Putin had just decorated.…
…(cont) Six days after that speech, seven days after ProPublica's story, Sen. John Curtis became a Republican willing to say the wedding was worth a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into Trump Jr.'s business dealings. It took a Russian oligarch, an Order of Friendship, an island rental, and a $5,000 bonus pitched to a nervous base before one member of the president's own party found the wedding worth the paperwork.
But the ask he lands on arrives paired. Curtis wants Trump Jr.'s dealings investigated — and Hunter Biden's investigated alongside them, same committee, same push. Not a counterweight to the Russian money. A hedge against having asked about it at all, insurance that the hearing has somewhere else to look.
The oligarch keeps his receipts either way. The senator gets to say he did something. And the $5,000 check, whatever it's actually worth in November, still has to clear before anyone finds out.
“They didn't find the wedding money until the polling did — Curtis waits six days after the $5,000 speech to say the word "investigate," and even then he can't say it without saying "Hunter Biden" in the same breath. That's not oversight, that's insurance: you open a door on your own guy's Russian cash only after you've built a hallway leading somewhere else. The oligarch already has the receipts and the island; all Curtis is buying is a second name to say out loud.”
“Senator Curtis is just doing oversight right — investigate the money on both sides, that's fairness, not — look, this has nothing to do with the $5,000 dividend speech landing flat with the base, nothing, the timing's a coincidence. And sure, Hunter Biden's dealings are riding along in the same request as the Trump Jr. wedding money, but that's not deflection, that's just how the paperwork's organized. Did I just call it a coincidence? That's not what I meant to say.”
The receipts
Congressional Democrats have opened an investigation after ProPublica revealed on Monday that a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin bankrolled part of Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding in May. ProPublica reports that Umar Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars on wedding expenses, including the rental of a private island.…
· Democrats want to investigate Russian influence in Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding from the morgue, 15 Sep 2026
· The Trump dividend makes Republicans look desperate from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.