The Russian oligarch who bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding

0:02Joshua Kaplan:WBUR Podcasts, Boston. Don almost bragged about the den's privacy. He said, you know, if you were on that list, you weren't talking.

0:16Joshua Kaplan:Behind the scenes of Donald Trump Jr.'s private island wedding and the Russian oligarch who helped pay for it.

0:33Joshua Kaplan:It's Tuesday, September 15th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WBUR. I'm Chris Bentley. Today on the show, cutting climate controls probably won't bring back the glory days of coal, but it could help some polluting plants stay in business. The economics is still going to favor more natural gas and renewables. However, during some times and in some places, coal can still be competitive for electricity generation, especially during peak demand times, such as during winter storms or increasingly during heat waves. Before we get to that story, though, California Congressman Robert Garcia says Democrats are now investigating how and why a Russian oligarch bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding.

1:17Joshua Kaplan:The president's son got married on a private island in the Bahamas in May, but it wasn't until this week when ProPublica published a story that the world found out some of it was paid for by Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin. Joshua Kaplan was one of the ProPublica reporters who broke that story, and he shared more about their investigation with Robin Young.

1:39Bryan Hubbell:And we have to say right at the top, Don Trump Jr. and his now-wife Bettina Anderson posted a response to your story on Instagram saying their dear friend, Umar, very generously hosted two incredible nights after our wedding, that after our wedding in caps, making a distinction between the ceremony and the celebrations. President Trump said it was an after party given in their honor. No big deal. You say what?

2:03Joshua Kaplan:This was we discovered that Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding was secretly funded by a Russian oligarch close to Putin. I don't want to get overly lost in this distinction, this distinction between the ceremony itself and the reception was not something that was being treated by Don or Bettina or the guests in all of their public statements about this as separate from the wedding until this became controversial.

2:32Bryan Hubbell:Well, and tick off some of the things that were paid for by Lamar Kremlin.

2:37Joshua Kaplan:Yeah, so this oligarch paid for a private island in the Bahamas. He rented it out for multiple nights where guests slept and where reception was held. He paid for this extravagant firework show. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses here paid for in secret. And Don Jr. first met this guy only really very recently. This is not a situation where Don Jr.'s college buddy just happens to be a very generous Russian oligarch.

3:09Bryan Hubbell:Well, take that up because a spokesperson for Don Trump Jr. said Kremlev was a personal friend. A spokesperson for his brother, Eric Trump, said Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has he ever heard his name. And the group of friends that were at the wedding, you report, were kind of mystified by who this group of Russians was that kind of kept apart from everyone. President Trump says he never heard of him. What do you make of that?

3:35Joshua Kaplan:Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of mysteries around this relationship still, frankly. We don't understand at this point what Kremlev's motive is in this, why he spent so much money seemingly successfully cultivating a relationship with the president's son.

3:51Bryan Hubbell:Well, and he has an incredible backstory. He had kind of a rough beginning as part of a gang that was affiliated with Putin at the time and then was drawn into Putin's orbit and ended up being the head of the International Boxing Association, financed by the Russian state -owned energy giant Gazprom. It no longer is. It's got other financing. But can you just give me more to that thumbnail?

4:15Joshua Kaplan:Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing to understand about Kremlin is the level of his connection with the Russian government. In the days right before the wedding, Kremlin was reportedly in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin there. A month before the wedding, he received the latest in a series of honors, state honors, that he's gotten from Putin himself. after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Ukrainian government sanctioned Kremlin personally. And the state has given him a lot of assets that have made this person who was a kind of no-name figure with a criminal record into a very, very wealthy man.

4:57Bryan Hubbell:You spoke with former high-level officials in the Boxing Association who said that Putin was using Umar and the sport for soft political power. I mean, it doesn't take a leap to then ask, What would he have wanted? What's the quid pro quo in paying for the wedding of somebody who he just met, but is also reportedly worth about$300 million himself? That's Don Trump Jr. What are some of the questions you have?

5:25Joshua Kaplan:I think there are very real national security stakes here. Russia, of course, Putin's government is widely regarded as one of the chief adversaries of the United States. They have long been accused of trying to influence American politics and American elections. And oligarchs like Kremlin often act in coordination with the Russian government. Now, I want to be clear here, we do not have evidence that this wedding was part of some elaborate plot by the Russian government. It's possible that Kremlev has some personal agenda. It's possible that he's just a really generous guy who makes fast friends.

6:05But we don't know.

6:07Joshua Kaplan:You know, the fact is he is in he is in Putin's circle. He spent a lot of money quickly getting close with Donald Trump Jr. And we don't know why he did it. And the counterintelligence experts we talked to said that that's an urgent question now that Don Jr. put himself in a precarious position here.

6:25Bryan Hubbell:Well, did Jared Kushner do that as well? This is, of course, the president's son-in-law. He was at this three-day event. We know that he's been charged with one of the top Americans in trying to settle Russia's war against Ukraine. And you tell us that Umar Kremlev was also involved in the group Healthy Fatherland. Now, these are Russians who purport to be about healthy eating for kids, but Ukraine has accused them of being part of the kidnapping of Ukrainian children during this war. Talk about Jared Kushner being at this wedding with Putin's close associate, watching the$70 ,000 fireworks that this Russian paid for.

7:05Joshua Kaplan:Don has repeatedly talked about how small this was. He has repeatedly said that it was just family. Jared Kushner was there and some, quote, really close friends. And then you have Kremlov there, who not only met Don Jr. recently, but also speaks really quite limited English. And he didn't come alone. He came with a large group of Russians. And so in this intimate setting, and we still have a lot of questions about conversations that were had, of course, we're still reporting on this. You had this large group of Russians that confused other guests and often stood off by themselves speaking Russian.

7:42Bryan Hubbell:And there are hardly any pictures of them. There's the Kremlev's head appears in the back of one photograph. Look, we called up Richard Painter, professor at the University of Minnesota Law School, former White House ethics lawyer. We asked, is there anything illegal here? He said, no, the appearances are terrible, specifically because, as you alluded to, this compromises U.S. security. And also we mentioned that the Democrat Robert Garcia is saying that Democrats are going to investigate this. He expressed concern about possible foreign entanglement and foreign intelligence infiltration of the president's family.

8:19Bryan Hubbell:Have you spoken to security experts?

8:22Joshua Kaplan:Yes, we spoke to a lot of counterintelligence experts and other experts on national security and who personally dealt with Russia. And they're very alarmed with it by this. This is something that the Russian government and the U.S. government, too, frankly, I mean, this is how they operate abroad. It looks like this. You spend a lot of money. You build a relationship. And again, we don't know that that's what happened here. But these people who have been looking at these sort of influence operations, they said this raised all sorts of red flags. I mean, if Don Jr. was approaching this naively, they said this would be a situation in normal times where the FBI, if they learned about this, would reach out to warn him to say, you really don't want to get in this situation.

9:11Bryan Hubbell:Do you think President Trump was warned? A lot of people thought it was strange. He didn't go to his own son's wedding. He said he didn't have time.

9:18Joshua Kaplan:Yeah, I mean, I don't want to speculate on that. At this point, we don't know what the White House knew about this in advance.

9:25Bryan Hubbell:Were you surprised when you started to see the money that was spent by this Russian oligarch, this extraordinary fireworks show, there were dancers in stiletto heels, you tell us, were you surprised that anyone thought that this wouldn't come out?

9:41Joshua Kaplan:I mean, Don talked about that a bit. He said afterwards, he almost bragged about the event's privacy. He said, you know, if you were on that list, you weren't talking. and they released all these photos of the event, all these videos, and the Russians aren't in any of those photos. It took a lot of work, frankly, to find even that one, that group photo where Kremlev's, the top of his head is in the very back row. It took a lot of digging to get this far, and I think we still have a lot of unanswered questions that we want to keep digging into. I mean, frankly, if anyone listening to this has any information about this relationship or about Donald Trump Jr.

10:23Joshua Kaplan:and his businesses more broadly, we'd be very grateful to hear from you.

10:27Bryan Hubbell:Which is what you say in your reporting. Joshua Kaplan, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for ProPublica. Thank you.

10:32Joshua Kaplan:Thank you so much for having me.

10:37Joshua Kaplan:Coming up next, the Trump administration took another big step in its crusade against Biden-era regulations meant to slow the accumulation of planet-warming greenhouse gases. Good news for fossil fuels, and bad news for people concerned about climate change.

11:00Joshua Kaplan:That's coming up after the break. The Environmental Protection Agency finalized its repeal of the 2024 carbon pollution standards this week, giving power plants a free pass to spew climate pollution. In fact, Administrator Lee Zeldman went so far as to say the agency should not be regulating climate pollution from power plants at all, even though about a quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions come from the power sector. There's a lot of back and forth with environmental regulations, but if this shift survives expected legal challenges, it could have a lasting impact, making it harder for future administrations to get back into regulating emissions from power plants.

11:44Joshua Kaplan:For its part, the EPA says the move will save the energy industry over$300 billion and, quote, American businesses will be given certainty for the future. On the other hand, Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, a Democrat, called it a polluter's first agenda. Brian Hubble researches federal policy on the economy and public health. He also worked at the EPA for 28 years, and he told Robin Young more about the move's likely impact.

12:12Bryan Hubbell:And help us understand, this was apparently a two-pronged decision. The EPA repealed a Biden error rule that power plants had to eliminate most planet warming pollution by, I think, 2039 or shut down. And then it also argued that greenhouse gases from power plants don't endanger health or the environment and therefore can't be regulated under the Clean Air Act. That second approach, your research specific to this, says what about gases endangering health, the environment, the economy?

12:42Joshua Kaplan:Right. So for many years, EPA has calculated the health and climate impacts associated with its regulations. And now what EPA is choosing to do is to hide the full impacts of its deregulatory approaches from the American public, choosing instead to only report cost savings for electricity generation and claiming that there are no climate impacts and that the health benefits of regulation are too uncertain to be calculated. And we are saying that's absolutely wrong. What we need to do is be able to provide the full equation, the costs and the benefits, so that the American people can see what impacts are.

13:16Bryan Hubbell:Earlier this year in February, the EPA already argued that there's no legal avenue to even regulate things like greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. That ended all emissions standards for cars and trucks at that time. Is this new rollback kind of that same thing except for power plants?

13:36Joshua Kaplan:Yeah, it's the same idea that they're saying that there is no significant contribution of cars or power plants to the overall global warming. They're saying that it's a global problem, and when you look at the global problem, the impacts of the emissions in the U.S. are too small to have a real impact, which is on its face very ridiculous. Because if you look at two things together, they're enormous, and they well exceed the emissions from many other countries, just our transportation and our power plants.

14:04Bryan Hubbell:I want to talk about their defense, which is that it's going to remove more than$300 billion in costs for the power sector, this recent ruling, allowing utilities to make what they say, the Trump administration, the EPA says, will be the best decisions for their ratepayers rather than be forced to close aging or inefficient plants. Look at that through the lens of coal. Coal seems to be a crippled industry for other reasons. We know that black lung in coal miners is soaring. Is this an industry that can be resurrected? Yeah.

14:39Joshua Kaplan:So the Trump administration has done a number of things over the last year and a half to try to prop up coal. It includes executive orders. It includes emergency orders through the Department of Energy and also providing hundreds of million dollars in subsidies to modernize, build and recommission retired coal-fired plants. So the current EPA action, coupled with these other actions of the administration, will help plant operators justify staying operational longer, delaying retirements and continuing emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollution. So the economics is still going to favor more natural gas and renewables.

15:11Joshua Kaplan:However, during some times and in some places, coal can still be competitive for electricity generation, especially during peak demand times, such as during winter storms or increasingly during heat waves, right? So I think that the operators of these coal plants are seeing this as something that allows them to remain flexible as the energy landscape is evolving.

15:31Bryan Hubbell:And what impact will that have on the environment?

15:34Joshua Kaplan:When we've done our assessments of this, we're talking about literally billions of tons of extra emissions of CO2. And that's going to have literally trillions of dollars of damages that are associated with extreme heat and with droughts and flooding. These are all things that are going to happen at a greater rate over time because of these additional CO2 emissions. And on top of that, there's all the very short-term effects that occur right away in terms of air pollution. And that's going to mean additional ozone and particle pollution that's in the atmosphere. And that's going to lead to, again, thousands of premature deaths, hospitalizations, emergency visits for asthma.