WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday defended his son\u2019s recent wedding party being partially bankrolled by a Russian oligarch, but also said he\u2019d been told the money would be paid back.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s totally allowed. And a lot of people have parties and all,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, before adding, \u201cBut, as I understand it, he paid them back.\u201d He also said, \u201cI hear he paid them back\u201d without elaborating.<\/p>\n
ProPublica first reported this week that Umar Kremlev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, helped pay to rent a private island and for a fireworks show when Donald Trump Jr. and socialite Bettina Anderson were married in the Bahamas in May.<\/p>\n
In a subsequent post on her Instagram page signed by the couple, Bettina Trump wrote that Kremlev, head of the International Boxing Association, was a \u201cdear friend\u201d who \u201cvery generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the post, Bettina Trump said she and the president\u2019s son were married in a private ceremony \u201csurrounded ONLY by our family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, the president \u2014 who did not attend the wedding, saying at the time he was too busy \u2014 defended Kremlev\u2019s involvement as part of the festivities. Without providing details he said of his son, \u201ca person that he knows \u2014 I guess a friend of his \u2014 gave him a wedding party.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s very common,\u201d Trump said, adding, \u201cI\u2019ve given wedding parties to numerous people,\u201d while also seeming to suggest that there was no background check done for these kinds of gifts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith all of that being said, I understand that Don\u2019s paying him back,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
The president also divulged for the first time that he\u2019d previously heard about Kremlev\u2019s involvement, saying of his son, \u201cI asked about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018No, I\u2019m paying him back, Dad,\u201c\u2019 Trump said as he recalled their past conversation, which he noted had occurred \u201ca while ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I heard he\u2019s paying him,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n
ProPublica reported that the wedding was heavily funded by Kremlev, including that he \u201cfooted the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars\u201d in expenses like renting out one of two private islands where the three-day party was held.<\/p>\n
The gift came as Russia remains at war with Ukraine following its invasion more than four years ago, and as Trump has failed to broker a promised peace deal between both sides.<\/p>\n
Kremlev was recently honored with the Order of Friendship by Putin, according to the International Boxing Association. He also accompanied Putin to China as part of a Russian delegation, according to the Chinese state media cited by ProPublica.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump on Friday defended his son\u2019s recent wedding party being partially bankrolled by a Russian oligarch, but also said he\u2019d been told the money would be paid back. \u201cIt\u2019s totally allowed. And a lot of people have parties and all,\u201d Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, before adding, \u201cBut, as I …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":103197,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103204,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103187\/revisions\/103204"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}