NYT, CNN, WaPo Must Cover Don Jr.'s Wedding as a Crisis

A Putin-linked Russian oligarch named Umar Kremlev secretly bankrolled hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses for Donald Trump Jr.'s Bahamas wedding in May — renting out a private island, paying for fireworks, and attending the intimate 50-person event with a large contingent of Russian guests who puzzled other attendees. Kremlev is financed by Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy giant. He is sanctioned by Ukraine. He received a state honor from Putin just weeks before the wedding. And Jared Kushner — who is currently leading U.S. negotiations with Russia over Ukraine — was also in attendance. A retired senior FBI counterintelligence official said plainly: "If I'm paying for your wedding, at some point, you're going to owe me something. This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story."

This is not a gossip story. It is a national security story. A member of Putin's inner circle spent a fortune to gain intimate access to the president's family — at the same moment his father is negotiating the end of a war with Russia. Trump Jr. reportedly played a central role in vetting his father's cabinet picks and was called his "most essential political adviser" by the Wall Street Journal.

We call on The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, NBC News, ABC News, and other mainstream outlets to cover Kremlev's funding of Trump Jr.'s wedding not as a celebrity item, but as the counterintelligence crisis it is. The public deserves reporting that treats Russian money flowing to the president's family as exactly the red flag every national security expert says it is.