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I thought he would have made more on his Trump sneakers
Rofl why are people still this stupid when it comes to Trump
I thought he would have made more on his Trump sneakers
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...rticle-giftingHow Trump Became ‘Grifter-in-Chief’: Let Us Count the Ways
Donald Trump and his family are setting a new standard for how to profit off a presidency.
Needless to say, President Donald Trump and his two eldest sons have no experience in the mining business, but ample interest in securing a fast buck — and they haven’t hesitated to routinely leverage government access and taxpayer dollars to advance their financial interests. So even transactions that might look like shrewd national security gambits become tainted with lucrative self-dealing that could potentially, lo and behold, undermine national security.
IT'S NOT CORRUPTION IF YOU DON'T HIDE IT
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheve...igence-ethics/In January, President Donald Trump announced a $40 billion investment pledge in U.S.-based data centers from his business partner Hussain Sajwani, unveiled another $500 billion in planned investments in private-sector AI infrastructure and signed an executive order rolling back Biden-era policies that took a more cautious approach to AI and directed “the development of an AI Action Plan to sustain and enhance America’s AI dominance.”
Dominari Holdings, Inc.—a publicly traded firm specializing in wealth management, investment banking, sales and trading, asset management and capital investment —announced last week that Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump had invested in the company and joined its advisory board, touting their “strategic insight” in the AI and data center sector (although without citing any specifics).
On Tuesday, Dominari Holdings launched American Data Centers Inc., an independent firm in which Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump also invested, with plans “to address the growing demand for high-performance computing infrastructure” to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cryptocurrency mining.
The brothers’ investments in the two companies give them a new avenue to potentially profit from government-backed industry growth.
Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Dominari Holdings president Kyle Wool did not immediately respond to inquiries.
nepotism is NBD, anymore
lol Nutlick
KERNEN: The perception is you're sitting at Commerce & able to control what Cantor is getting in fees w/ your sons running it. It looks like a conflict
LUTNICK: It's just not. I'm no longer involved in my own companies & this is just minor stuff anyway
nothing described is illegal, but the appearance of foreign influence used to be considered politically damning
https://www.propublica.org/article/d...-kremlev-putinOn May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas.
That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea.
“It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram.
That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin.
Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept.
He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated en y in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.
The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian.
“It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.”
Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.
National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?
“If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.”
Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently seeks to build ties with U.S. government officials and their family members. “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access,” said Triplett, who also worked for the FBI in Moscow.
In the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin, according to Chinese state media. The month before, Putin had bestowed him with a state honor, the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services.
It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded it himself, with Forbes recently estimating his net worth at roughly $300 million.
In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesman said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with” and that the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors.
A spokesperson for Trump Jr.’s brother Eric said of Kremlev: “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.”
In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.”
Trump Jr. exchanged vows with socialite Bettina Anderson on a private island that was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the 2006 James Bond movie “Casino Royale.” They had their first dance on a second private island nearby that can rent for around $100,000 a night, paid for by Kremlev. The company that put on the fireworks display charges around $70,000 for such shows.
Some longtime friends of Trump Jr. told associates they were disappointed not to be invited, though a few of his closest business partners — executives at the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and the venture capital firm 1789 Capital — did make the cut. President Trump himself skipped it. (“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small, little private affair,” the president told reporters beforehand. “I said, you know, this is not good timing for me.”) But many of the guests were immediate family of the bride and groom.
That made the large contingent of Russians all the more con uous. “What are they doing here?” one person recalled thinking. At least one of the Russian guests had been with Kremlev on his China trip: Alexander Lagutin, a businessperson who has served in senior roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA, Elena Sobol, attended the wedding too.
Since the wedding, the Trumps have released scores of photos and videos of the festivities. While they show many of the guests, the Russians have been absent from all of them. (The top of Kremlev’s head is visible in the back of one group photo posted on Instagram by a friend of the bride.) After the party was over, on his “Triggered” podcast, Trump Jr. emphasized the event’s privacy: “The people that were there — if you’re on that list, you weren’t talking.”
In 2009, Umar Kremlev did not yet exist.
He was in his late 20s, with a criminal record for extortion and battery, still going by his birth name, Umar Lutfulloyev, according to the Russian independent news outlet Proekt. But he was about to rapidly ascend in Russia to a position of wealth and influence, with the help of a powerful friend. (“Mr. Kremlev has a completely clean legal record,” his press office said.)
In 2010, he changed his name to Kremlev. He soon joined a Russian government-backed biker gang called the Night Wolves, eventually taking a leadership role, according to news reports. That is what first brought him close to Alexei Rubezhnoi, who now leads Putin’s presidential security service, Proekt reported. In 2017, Kremlev took over the Russian Boxing Federation, after Rubezhnoi personally intervened to put him at the helm.
In 2020, Kremlev became president of the IBA. The association was something akin to FIFA but for boxing and had long overseen the sport in the Olympics. But it had been beset by corruption allegations and was on the brink of insolvency. Kremlev brought money to the table from Gazprom, the state-owned company that operates as an arm of Putin’s government. Gazprom publicly became the IBA’s financial backer, filling its coffers with tens of millions of dollars.
Kremlev’s cozy relationship with the government has made him rich. Putin used the levers of the state to make Kremlev a dominant player in the Russian sports betting industry, according to Proekt, and one of his companies was chosen to operate the national lottery. After Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company in 2023, Kremlev became the owner of that too.In 2023, the International Olympic Committee stripped Kremlev’s IBA of its role organizing Olympic boxing. It has cited a host of governance issues and the group’s refusal to “transparently explain the sources of its financing or to explain its full financial dependency, at the time, on a single state-owned company.”
It was a major setback that deprived the IBA of a key source of its international influence. Kremlev has raged against the Olympic committee ever since and has said that his IBA predecessor, who he blames for the problems, “must be shot.”
Kremlev saw a potential ally in President Trump. After Trump’s second inauguration, in January 2025, Kremlev sent an open letter to the president asking him to look into the Olympic committee’s actions in advance of the 2028 Los Angeles Games. “We look forward with great optimism to the possibility of working together to make the Olympic movement great again,” he wrote.
In September 2025, the IBA brought in Trump Jr. for a panel discussion in Istanbul about boxing. With his then-girlfriend, Anderson, sitting offstage, he criticized transgender women competing in women’s sports and reminisced about watching Saturday night fights as a child. Trump Jr. shared the stage with Kremlev, the boxer Manny Pacquiao and Muhammad Ali’s daughter Rasheda. (Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said he was not paid for the appearance and was already in Turkey for an unrelated event.)
oversight is coming for a very special beneficiary of Donald J. Trump's personalist regime
GOP Senator John Curtis calls for investigation of Don Jr
"House Republicans will continue to hold Hunter Biden’s feet to the fire until we have his testimony...no one – not even the president’s son – is above the law.” - Tom Emmer, 1.17.24
"Don Jr is a private citizen and businessman so this unwarranted attack will go nowhere," Tom Emmer, 9.23.26
Don Jr. backed drone company congratulates Eric Trump backed drone company for getting a DOD contract
road trip to Mongolia with the dude who bankrolled his wedding
Donald Trump Jr. spent two days hunting in Mongolia in August with Russian businessman Umar Kremlyov, who has ties to Putinʼs inner circle.
This is reported by the Financial Times (FT), which spoke with local guides and officials, as well as analyzed flight data, social media posts, and open registers.
In late August, Trump Jr. flew to the Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, and from there traveled to the Uvs province in the west of the country. There, he stayed at a hunting camp with several guides, drivers, and cooks.
On August 27, Umar Kremlyov, president of the International Boxing Association (IBA), arrived in Mongolia. He was accompanied by Russian businessman Artur Martirosov, a partner in the “Voskhod” venture fund, which is under US sanctions.
According to the FTʼs interlocutor, Kremlyov and Trump Jr. tried not to be photographed together. At the same time, the Russian published a video on his Telegram account about preparing for the hunt, which shows two organizers of Trump Jr.ʼs trip.https://babel.ua/en/news/131289-ft-t...close-to-putin
relitigating Hunter Biden 10 years later, trying to smear FBI agents whose testimony was disappointing to right wing conspiracists
plus wild legal shenanigans
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-...fbi-officials/Witt said it was assigned to him through the FBI's chain of command in July, after FBI Director Kash Patel gave the case to the Kansas City field office.
Witt said the case initially focused on a separate matter that also involved Floris — a 2020 investigation into alleged Chinese election interference out of the FBI's Albany field office that Republican lawmakers have criticized the handling of. President Trump touched on that issue during a primetime address on election integrity shortly before Witt was handed the case.
Witt called the assignment unusual, and acknowledged that he may have complained to colleagues about it at the time, calling it a "huge distraction" and saying: "I had concerns that this would be viewed as political."
Donovan goes back to Patel. He directed you to investigate Floris?
Witt: Directive in July given to Kansas City, I was assigned through chain of command
Donovan: Is that normally how investigations play out?
Witt: I've not had a tasking from a director in my career...agrees this was "unusual"
direct targeting of individuals by the FBI director sure looks like weaponization
Safer: You investigate drug dealers and human traffickers. You know how important history, credibility is…Before you came into court to accuse these public servants, wasn’t it important to do a little research on their background?
Witt: I was instructed to investigate this specific issue
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/1...e-hunter-bidenWitt acknowledged that Patel launched the probe one day after a speech Trump gave in July complaining about alleged interference in U.S. elections by American intelligence and law enforcement officials.
“It was announced the night before and I was tasked with this the next morning,” Witt said. “President Trump had a national address and two of the items that he announced, we were tasked with in Kansas City.”
Witt said officials probed Floris as well as “multiple” other people including “several” public integrity section attorneys and intelligence officials.
Floris’ attorney Margaret Donovan asked if the case was brought in a rush.
“At times we were being pushed,” Witt said without adopting Donovan’s word. “Initially, there were check-ins from high level executives, to include [the] deputy director and Director Patel himself.”
Donovan asked Witt if he’d ever referred to the case as a “witch hunt.” He said he couldn’t recall doing so, but some of his colleagues may have said something similar.
“I think people generally viewed it as that around the office,” Witt said. He also said he’d “grumbled” to others that it was a “distraction” from his existing public corruption cases in Missouri.
Witt said they started by looking at potential charges related to the Albany IIR recall. But eventually the focus shifted to Floris and Benavides' Congressional testimony about the Hunter Biden laptop
too funny, the material lie the government is alleging is saying "I don't know" in response to a hypothetical question about a hypothetical laptop, from an article the defendant didn't read
https://bsky.app/profile/annabower.b.../3myx7ekuw6t2oDonovan: So your position is that if someone says "I don't know" in response to a question about an article they didn't read, that would be a false statement?
Witt: We believe her response "I don't know" is a false statement.
Donovan moves on to the hypothetical. Would you agree she's answering in response to a hypothetical posed to her?
Witt: Yes
Donovan: When she says "I don't have any knowledge of said laptop," it's referring to a hypothetical laptop in a hypothetical question?
Witt: Yes
Donovan: But the government's position is that her statement is false?
Witt: The false statement is where she says "I don't have any knowledge of said laptop."
Donovan: And "said laptop" refers to a *hypothetical* laptop that you just testified about?
Witt: Yes
Donovan: We talked about some pressure to push this case from the director and deputy directors of the FBI.
Witt: I would say some were closely monitoring situation...Deputy directors visited Kansas City in person...We had at least 2 meetings with Director Patel.
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