Maddow reacts to report of Russian oligarch paying for Trump Jr.'s lavish wedding weekend

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Parents say that Mathnasium has not only improved their kids' grades, it's given them a new level of confidence in math and in school overall. Visit mathnasium.com to find a location near you. Thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Right off the top, we do have more on this very, very, very important news that is breaking tonight. The United States Supreme Court has, just this evening, blocked one of the most concerted efforts by President Donald Trump to sow chaos in the midterm elections, to essentially launch a federal takeover of America's midterm elections. Lower courts had blocked Trump's executive order from this spring that would have effectively instructed the U.S. Postal Service to block states from distributing and collecting mail-in ballots in the normal fashion. Lower courts had blocked that. Trump had appealed to the Supreme Court that the Supreme Court should overrule those lower courts and actually let his orders to the Postal Service go ahead. But tonight, the United States Supreme Court told him no. And the legality and the politics of these things seemed like they exist in two different universes. I mean, in this country, by very clear dictum in our constitution, our elections are run by the states. This is not a contested thing in American constitutional governance. Our elections are run by the states, not by the federal government, and certainly not by the president. That is why voting looks a little different state to state, depending on where you live. That said, in most states, one of the ways you can vote is you can request that a ballot should be mailed to you. And then you fill it out at home, you mail it back, and that is the way you officially cast your ballot. This is a very normal way to vote in the United States of America. This is a way Donald Trump most frequently votes in the United States of America. Voting by mail has become a very common way to vote in this country. About a third of the voting public votes by mail. Some states vote almost entirely by mail. But in late March, the president said he would, was going to pass this new order, issue this new executive ruling, executive order, that would essentially purely and only have the effect of making that typically very easy process exponentially harder. President Trump signed this executive order in late March in which he ordered the creation of a new state citizenship list. He said the U.S. Post Office, by his order, would refuse to deliver ballots to anyone whose information hadn't been properly submitted to this new list. Now, even putting the legality of Trump's executive order aside for a moment, state election officials in red states and blue states all over the country said it would essentially be impossible to implement this new rule, this big new complication for mail-in ballots before the election in November. I mean, just for starters, a handful of states have already sent out their mail ballots to voters. So what would they do if this rule went into effect? They'd have to ask voters to hand their ballot back and then get a new one some way under the new rules? By the end of this week, a dozen states would have sent out their ballots. Also, the online federal portal where states were supposed to upload all this voter information to Trump's federal government to confirm voters would be allowed by the post office to be sent their ballots, that online portal is still to this day not operational. We're 50 days out from the election. It is not hyperbole to say that enacting this rule change just weeks before the midterms would wreak total havoc on the elections, which perhaps was the point. And so it was 24 states plus D.C. that sued the Trump administration to stop this new rule. Basically, so people could vote by mail like normal this November. Along with other efforts to stop the rule, this case brought by the states had been working its way through the courts all the way up to the United States Supreme Court and we have been checking the Supreme Court website, you know, like it's the weather service after a tornado warning, right? We have been anxiously waiting the Supreme Court ruling given that the election is only 50 days away. Well, finally tonight, we got the ruling. The Supreme Court has issued a ruling tonight that blocks the executive order. It blocks Trump from implementing this executive order that would utterly screw up our election this fall. The ruling is unsigned, but reading between the lines, it appears to be basically a seven to two ruling where the justices who are in dissent, the two named dissenters here, are Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. This is big, big consequential news tonight in what is really a very big blow to the president's efforts to sow chaos and confusion in the midterm elections. It is therefore a big win for the American electorate, who will be casting their ballots, in most cases, as normal in this hugely important election in just a few weeks. Joining us now is California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who led the lawsuit over this policy. Mr. Attorney General, congratulations on this ruling tonight. Thank you for being here. for our audience tonight. Did I mess anything up in the way that I explained it? What else should people understand about your suit and about the ruling this evening? Well, thank you, Rachel. It's an honor to be with you. And you got it all right, as you always do. And what I really want to emphasize here is that the Trump administration lost at the federal trial court level. They lost at the appellate court level, And then they lost at the U.S. Supreme Court. And this is a critical stay that preserves the right to vote by mail, which is used in all 50 states, some more than others, including in California. And the right to vote is that fundamental right from which all other rights flow. And so this is a very important day for the rule of law, for democracy. And sometimes we've got to take this one all the way to the top, to the U.S. Supreme Court, to win. But we did win. We stayed in this fight very proud of our group of attorneys general from across the state, working hard, fighting hard to protect rights and freedoms, including your right to vote. So your final point is also one I want to emphasize, that now it is business as usual. There are many ways, many days to vote. You can vote by mail. You can cast your ballot in the mail and receive it through the mail. You can drop your ballot in a drop box. You can go in person and drop your ballot there, or vote in person with an in-person ballot. All the ways and days are now available to you. And Trump's attempt to interfere with and infringe upon your fundamental right to vote for whatever reasons, whether it's his tanking polls or his conspiracy theories that he's advancing, those have been put to an end in this election by this very important ruling. So we're grateful for it. It's what we sought. It's what it is, the right outcome and the right ruling. and we're grateful that we have this certainty as we approach the election just 50 days away. Let me underscore that point about certainty because one of the things that I've seen people saying, even in reaction to tonight's ruling is, well, even just having tried this executive order, having just had to have this fight over it, maybe Trump is counting on people still being confused or still feeling uncertain or unconfident about the process of mail-in voting and about whether or not their vote is going to count, maybe that itself will be suppressive in terms of people turning out. I just want to be clear, and I think I know the answer to this. This is a United States Supreme Court ruling, and this is the United States Supreme Court saying, no, you cannot mess with mail-in ballots the way you wanted to. This is the end of the line for Trump. There's no other way he can try to implement this executive order, correct? Correct. This is the highest court in the land announcing the law of the land for all of us in every single state. So this effort is done for this election. We will continue our efforts to block this type of what we believe is unlawful and unconstitutional interference with our elections for future elections after this November election. But for this November, the interference that Trump tried to visit upon our elections, our vote by mail election system through this unlawful executive order is, you know, put a knife through its heart or a stake through its heart. It's done. It's over. It cannot be resurrected. The final word has been dictated and declared by the highest court on the land. So there will be no interference in the U.S. Postal Service by Trump through this executive order. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, victorious tonight, led the lawsuit over this policy. I don't think anybody had any confidence in this Supreme Court to do what was legally very obviously the right thing here, but politically obviously difficult for the conservatives that Trump has appointed to that court. This is a really big, really consequential and historic win. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, thank you so much for being here. And again, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for having me. I want to bring into the conversation—thank you—I want to bring into the conversation now Democracy Docket founder Mark Elias, legendary Democratic Party voting rights lawyer and avenging angel. Mark, I think myself, my staff, a lot of MSNOW viewers tonight seeing this reporting, seeing these big headlines across the country about this ruling from the Supreme Court, first, breathed a sigh of relief, and then second, wanted to hear what you thought of it. So what is your reaction to this ruling tonight? What should we understand about what just happened? Yeah, so first of all, this was a great ruling, right? I mean, the Supreme Court slammed the door on these claims. It's important to note that, you know, this was 7-2, even if you take Justice Kavanaugh's sort of more tepid concurrence aside, it's still 6-3. So I think this is the end of the road for this effort. And for tonight, we should celebrate that. And I mean that. Like, you know, these are long, hard fights. And, you know, the attorney general of California deserves a lot of credit. My law firm and I had a big victory for the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C. on this same issue that actually extends this not just to the blue states, but to Republican controlled states that might want to voluntarily. So it really is now a closed issue. But tomorrow morning we are going to wake up and the fight is going to continue. And here why Because Donald Trump never admits defeat Donald Trump never says you know what I was wrong and the courts have slammed the door on me and I go home Instead he escalates He escalates the rhetoric. He escalates the legal attacks. He escalates the abuse of power. And ultimately, Rachel, what we have seen, both in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when I represented President Biden and the DNC in beating Donald Trump and his allies more than 60 times in court, as we saw with the tragedy around the detention of migrants and the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, is we always see an escalation and eventually we may even see violence. And so we all need tomorrow to realize that this was one tactic that Donald Trump had to make it harder to vote and easier to cheat, but it won't be his last. You know, I was thinking, Mark, when I was just speaking with California Attorney General Rob Bonta about this, and he was talking about the definitive nature of this ruling. And as you say, it's this thing, this one thing that Trump has been trying to do, this is dead, stake through its heart. It was occurring to me, the only niggling worry that I had hearing him say that and hearing you reiterate it, is that even though the Supreme Court has put an end to this tactic that Trump was going to try to use the Postal Service to mess with mail-in voting all over the country, the fact that the Supreme Court has rejected him on this, has said he can't do what he wanted to do in that executive order, will presumably lay the rhetorical groundwork for him to say, well, see, when the election results come in, this is why we should reject them. Because I wasn't allowed to do this thing I wanted to do, which was the only way to have the kind of election that we have in this country. And since we can't have that rule, the election results, we should not respect them. We shouldn't believe that they're real. I'm assuming that rhetorically that is where he will take this. Oh, he'll definitely take it rhetorically there, but he'll go beyond that. I mean, look, yes, today he lost a big one in the Supreme Court on mail-in voting. Last week, they lost a big one on redistricting in Missouri. But, you know, do you think that they have stopped trying to rig maps? Do you think that they that Donald Trump is going to give up in trying to try to steal the 2026 midterm elections? know. You know, we also saw today a whistleblower come forward through Congress that said that they are basically trying to lie to state databases to try to, you know, gain access and try to kick people off the rolls. I mean, my law firm, we're litigating 30 cases against the Department of Justice in which they're trying to gain access to sensitive voter data. And right now, the Department of Justice is 0 for 23. We're undefeated. But yet here they are. Here they are, though, in a whistleblower report today, you know, combing through state databases in the terminals. Like, like this is not the end. I wish I look no one would be happier than I could spend the next 50 days not having to stay up late at night and wake up early morning fighting Donald Trump in court. But that's just not what's going to happen. We're going to see more legal actions. We're going to see more irresponsible efforts to undermine the elections. And yes, we will see the rhetoric set up a permission structure for him to ultimately claim that the elections were rigged and try to overturn the certification. And the way that we will defeat that as a country is, A, in the courts, and B, when every American in the country pays attention to their natural small d democratic antibodies and rejects that out of hand in the moment and says no every way that we can. I really believe that this is going to come down to both the courts and the people in terms of standing up for our democratic processes. Mark Elias, the founder of Democracy Docket and an excellent explainer on fast-moving nights like this. Thank you so much for being here, Mark. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Rachel. All right. We've got a lot more news to get to ahead tonight here. It's a big night. Stay with us. When my mom got sick, she felt powerless. Insurance denied her meds. Her doctors talked over her, and they couldn't agree on anything. She kept getting worse. And then you found solace for me. They gave me my own healthcare advocate. My advocate found better doctors, scheduled my appointments, and got my medications approved. For the first time, my whole care team was listening to each other and to me. I was going to pay for it all out of pocket. But then we learned that solace advocates are covered by Medicare and insurance nationwide. I used to feel helpless, too. Now I know my mom has an advocate. Solace advocates are healthcare experts with an average of 16 years of experience. Studies show 92% of patients say their advocate made a positive impact on their care. 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So fill them with perfect sleep night after night. Save up to $800 on Serta Perfect Sleeper X mattresses and adjustable base sets. See how the Q4 support system helps relieve aches and back pain. Limited time offer. Visit Serta.com to find a retailer near you. Perfect sleeper. Perfect sleep. Night after night. The next No Kings Day is going to be next month, about a month from now, October 17th, Saturday, October 17th. And this one is called No Kings, Vote Early. Since Donald Trump has been back in the White House, the earlier No Kings protests against him have been some of the largest protests ever in the history of the United States. The No Kings protests have been decentralized. They have included some individual, very large demonstrations like the ones you see here, but also thousands of simultaneous protests of all different sizes all over the country. It's become a sort of Trump-era national holiday. Happy No Kings Day. Oh, happy No Kings Day to you and to all who celebrate. This year, October 17th, organizers say it's going to be a little bit different than the previous No Kings days, because this next No Kings, October 17th, the midterm elections effectively will have started. And when you've got people standing up for democracy, they've got to fight for democracy by democratic means. And that means using your constitutional right to assemble, using your constitutional right to speak, your constitutional right to seek redress of your grievances from the government. But at the sort of apex of all of it, when it's election time, if you are fighting for your democracy using democratic means, it means you've got to use your right to vote. And so next month for this next No Kings in October, yeah, we're expecting to see more big marches and rallies and protests all over the country, but midterm voting will be well underway in many places in the country by then. And so we are also expecting that this No Kings Day, October 17th, it's also going to include people organizing walks to the polls and block parties and a pretty relentless focus all over the country on creating mass voter turnout for the elections, making sure every eligible voter is registered, every eligible voter knows their options for how they can vote, making sure every eligible voter has a plan for how they are going to vote, preferably how to vote early, and then making sure that every eligible voter actually gets their ballot cast. So again, this is next month, Saturday, October 17th. If past No Kings protests are anything to go by, and if anti-Trump voter enthusiasm, as measured in, you know, polls and special elections and voter turnout so far this year, if those things are anything to go by, I think we should expect that the October 17th No Kings Day is likely to be big. You know, when President Trump went to Ireland this weekend, And I'm sure he was delighted at some level to get away from all of us, right, to get away from his constituents being so wildly repulsed by him that not only does he have record low approval ratings, it just remains a historical fact that not just one, but several of the largest protests in the history of this country have been protests against him. It must be nice to get away from that feeling for a president like Donald Trump to fly, as he did this weekend, into Ireland. But you know what happened? As President Donald Trump flew into Ireland this weekend, this was the welcome that he got. A massive earthwork message to him for him to see as he flew in in the sand on Dublin Bay. No kings, even in Ireland. No kings, Trump. And you can tell it's the Irish version because look at the dot on the I. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, need I say more? After that, no kings welcomed him from the air. An estimated 10,000 Irish men and women turned out to protest against Trump as he arrived in Dublin. That Dublin part of his visit was when he had his meeting with the Irish prime minister and he sort of, Trump sort of burped out a whole new American foreign policy about Northern Ireland and Irish unification, a policy that apparently just occurred to him on the spot at that very moment. He literally said, I mean, how can it be bad? Are you asking rhetorically or literally? With 10,000 protesters in the streets against him in Dublin while he was oopsing his way into that, the president then flew off to the other side of Ireland, to County Clare and the airport in Shannon, where thousands of people were also waiting for him. Then they put him in a helicopter and flew him off to a village called Dunbeg to go watch the Irish Open golf tournament, but when he arrived in Doonbeg, he found that people were there in that little town protesting against him as well. The Irish Independent reported on all the cars passing through the little village of Doonbeg, honking in support of the protesters. After Doonbeg, after his visit to the golf thing, he then went back to the airport in Shannon, and the protesters therefore also went back to the Shannon airport to bid him good riddance. They bid him 100,000 unwelcomes. I'll tell you, one little challenge is behind the scenes for those of us in the news business. Covering anti-Trump protests in Ireland is a little bit like doing man on the street interviews after a particularly nasty and contested Philadelphia Eagles loss. right? It's like fascinating content and there's a lot there, but you can't put 98% of all the tape on TV because of all the amazing swearing. Like we can only show you like 2% of what we've got because yeah we not allowed But now the Irish government is left to clean up not only the physical mess from his visit but also the aftermath the political aftermath of whatever that was that Trump just blurted out about Northern Ireland. I mean, honestly, was that a new American policy? Did he even know what he was weighing in on? Or was he just saying something he thought sounded good because he thought that was the right answer? Sure. I support the Irish, what did you call it? Unification? How can it be bad? Here at home, people all over the country are contending not just with the persistently high gas and diesel prices we've been dealing with for more than six months now since Trump started his inexplicable war with Iran. We're now into not just elevated prices at the gas station. We're now into what feels like a price spike at the pump and one that we're not sure is going to come down. Saudi Arabia used to get its oil out to market through the body of water to its east, the Persian Gulf, via the Strait of Hormuz. But Trump's war with Iran obviously screwed that up. That said, Saudi Arabia could also get its oil out to market through the body of water to its west, the Red Sea. But now Trump's war with Iran has screwed that up, too, because Iran's allies on the Red Sea, the Houthi rebels, have effectively pinched off the strait that's at the south end of the Red Sea to Saudi oil shipments, too. So the sort of southeastern end of the Persian Gulf pinched off because of the Iran war. Southern end of the Red Sea also pinched off because of the Iran war. That said, Saudi Arabia could previously get at least some of its oil to market via its big east-west pipeline, an overland route that allowed it to bypass some of those shipping pinch points that have been pinched off because of Trump's war with Iran. But now Trump's war with Iran has screwed that up too, because Iran also has allies in Iraq, the Iran-allied Shiite militias, and they appear to have pretty much blown that pipeline up. so can't use the Persian Gulf, can't use the Red Sea, can't use the other way to the Red Sea and that's just Saudi Arabia, right? But if Middle East oil kind of full stop mostly can't get to market anymore, that's different and worse than even the price spikes that we have seen because of the Hormuz situation specifically and that means that the horror show that we are seeing at the pump right now, yes, it feels like a spike, but it may be one that doesn't go away. The headline tonight in the Wall Street Journal is this. Oil executives say the great fuel crisis is here. Quote, American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now they say it is here. Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can't be tapped much further. Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the strait, stranding at least two and a half million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market. Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth said at an energy conference in Austin on Friday that it's hard to predict where oil prices will now go, but it is difficult to envision prices coming back down quickly. He said, quote, I wish I could tell you that I saw some reason why things would ease, but it's difficult right now to see that happen. So yeah, the prices at the gas station right now are horrific, but they may not come down. And if this really is the great fuel crisis and it is upon us and it is not going away, that's a really big deal for the global economy and for the American economy and for the American public and our day-to-day lives. And to that crisis, the response from President Trump thus far has been to, number one, write social media messages in all capital letters telling oil companies that prices at the pump should be lower. Oil prices down now. It's not a dog. It doesn't sit when you tell it to. he's also started his other big idea, second big idea, in addition to yelling on truth social, if that doesn't work, don't worry, he's also started his other idea, which is berating Ukraine. Ukraine? Yes. Okay. Why is he? Well, Ukraine, you might recall, was invaded by Russia four and a half years ago. Ukraine's been in a war with Russia ever since. Nominally, the United States of America is supposed to be on Ukraine's side in this war. But President Donald Trump is now yelling at Ukraine, telling them that they must stop shooting back at Russia. And telling Americans that Ukraine shooting back at Russia is why it's so expensive to fill up your tank these days. Nothing to do with Trump's war in Iran. What war in Iran must be Ukraine's fault. This weekend, there was a big security conference in Ukraine. Lots of European and American officials and former leaders attended. Because of the war, the airspace over Ukraine, obviously, is all closed. So if you want to get in or out of Ukraine for something like one of these big meetings, you can't fly in. And you really have one main choice. You take the train. Ukraine runs diplomatic trains from Poland over the border into Ukraine and then overland to Kiev. And that's how foreign dignitaries get in and out of the capital city of Ukraine. Last week, for example, that's how Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff got in and out of Ukraine on their visit to Kiev. They took the train from Poland like everybody must. Well, this weekend, Vladimir Putin bombed one of those trains. An explosive drone hit a train at a station right on the border between Poland and Ukraine. It hit that train just moments after another train had left that station carrying Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, and a bunch of other European politicians and diplomats. Former U.S. CIA director General David Petraeus was sitting in the next train over from the train in that station that was hit by the exploding drone. but Trump's response to Putin doing that this weekend was nothing. I mean, his only contribution to the chat right now is to tell Ukraine to stop shooting back at Russia in this war and to try to get Americans to blame Ukraine for what you're paying at the pump. Because what war in Iran and also poor Russia? Why is he like this toward Russia? I mean, you tell me. ProPublica broke the news this morning that for some reason, a Russian oligarch who is close to Vladimir Putin and who appears to be on the payroll of the Kremlin, for some reason he ended up paying for the after party for Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding this spring on a private island in the Bahamas. Donald Trump didn't even go to his son's wedding, but a random Russian oligarch who reportedly barely speaks English, somehow did. Quote, the oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered big ticket items like the fireworks show. The Trump family is very wealthy. More and more wealthy every day that Trump is president as they pick up this country by the ankles and shake us down for our lunch money. But the Trump family nevertheless still decided that they wouldn't pay for the president's eldest son's wedding. They instead would find a way to get a Kremlin guy who that very week had been in China with Vladimir Putin, they would find a way for him to fly in basically from China, from his visit with Putin, to pay the bill for the wedding party of the adult son of the serving president of the United States. Why do you think Trump is the way he is toward Russia? One of the reporters from ProPublica who broke that unbelievable story is going to join us here tonight. But stay with us. We've got a lot to get to. Stay with us. Parents, have you heard your kids say, I'm not a math kid? Well, with Mathnasium, every kid can be a math kid. They customize their math instructions so kids who are struggling are able to catch up and get ahead. And advanced kids are challenged to reach higher. Mathnasium makes math fun, so kids learn to love it. Parents say that Mathnasium has not only improved their kids' grades, it's given them a new level of confidence in math and in school overall. Visit mathnasium.com to find a location near you. The CERTA Labor Day sales event is here. It's the unofficial end of summer, which means shorter days and longer nights. So fill them with perfect sleep night after night. Save up to $800 on Serta Perfect Sleeper X mattresses and adjustable base sets. See how the Q4 support system helps relieve aches and back pain. Limited time offer. Visit Serta.com to find a retailer near you. Perfect sleeper. Perfect sleep. Night after night. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. One thing I've learned is that you buy a house, but you make it a home. For decades, Angie's helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your project at Angie.com. It was in May. If you read the style section of The New York Times, you might have seen the description. Guests gathered on a small private island in the Bahamas on Saturday for an intimate wedding celebration for Donald Trump Jr., the president's eldest son, and his wife, Bettina Anderson, a Palm Beach socialite and influencer. Now, whether or not you read exciting breaking news like that at the time it comes out, I'm willing to bet you have not given Don Jr.'s wedding a single thought since that news broke in May. That said, today, the news outlet ProPublica is out with a meticulous and revelatory report about it with this remarkable headline, one for the ages. This will someday be featured in a textbook on the golden Trump era of blatant corruption and foreign influence in the United States of America in the 2020s. Look at this headline. Donald Trump Jr.'s Bahamas wedding was secretly bankrolled by Russian oligarch close to Putin. And the headline is just the beginning. This oligarch close to Putin, quote, 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. Oh, the Russian oligarch helped plan the president's son wedding weekend. Oh. It's not clear why Umar Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.'s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. In a statement, Kremlev's press office said, Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr. have a friendly relationship. They first met, quote, a couple of years ago. All right, so who is this guy? According to ProPublica's reporting, In the days leading up to the wedding, Mr. Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Vladimir 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 Mr. Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services. Putin also used the levers of the state to make Kremlev a dominant player in the Russian sports betting industry. One of his companies was chosen to operate the Russian National Lottery. after Putin nationalized Russia's largest car dealership company in 2023. Umar Kremlev became the owner of that, too. Boy, he sure does benefit from a lot of Kremlin largesse, huh? Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom. Huh. The wedding payments came from an entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for its financial transactions. In response to ProPublica's reporting, Don Jr. and his wife put out a statement suggesting that there was no scandal here because their dear friend Umar didn't pay for the wedding itself. They just had him pay for the weekend after the wedding. But here's something notable about that wedding weekend, which ProPublica teases out. So the happy couple have repeatedly talked about the small, intimate, close friends-only nature of this celebration. Don Jr. said on his podcast, quote, it was really small, like just really close friends. ProPublica reports that, quote, some longtime friends of Trump Jr. told associates they were disappointed not to be invited. So not even all of his close friends got to be there. The guest list numbered about 50, and many of the guests were immediate family of the bride or groom. And that, ProPublica reports, made the large contingent of Russians all the more conspicuous. This oligarch in question was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves speaking Russian. One person recalled thinking, quote, what are they doing here? but hey you might be saying so what if the sitting american president's eldest son has a bunch of new russian friends who want to pay for his wedding party with money that may or may not have come from the russian government's gas company isn't it nice to have generous friends don't we all wish we had an umar what's so wrong with this kind of love Anne Applebaum, a preeminent chronicler of autocracy and corruption and how they are inextricably intertwined, just told my colleague Chris Hayes this about it just last hour. I think if a person who was traveling with Putin to China a couple of weeks ago and who has been sanctioned by the Ukrainians for involvement in abduction of children in occupied territory and who's changed his name a couple of times in order to escape past accusations of extortion and bribery, gives you an unexpectedly generous wedding gift, you should ask, why is he doing it and what does he expect in exchange? Joining us now is Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Brett Murphy, who reported this story with his ProPublica colleagues Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Meyer-Jesky. Mr. Murphy, thank you so much for being here. Congratulations on this reporting. Thanks, Rachel. And as you guys say in the piece, it is based on records and on interviews with dozens of current and former International Boxing Association officials and contractors and some wedding attendees and other people in Trump juniors and this guy Kremlev circles. I obviously don't want you to talk at all about any of the sources that you don't describe otherwise in your piece. But can you just talk a little bit about how you came to this story, about how the sort of trail started here that led you to this amazing revelation? Yeah, it was really weird. And it still is weird that these two people who didn't seem to have much of a shared history were describing themselves as close friends. It was strange, as you said. It was an intimate, small wedding. We're talking 50 or so people in the Exumas, in the Bahamas, on a pair of private islands. Close friends of the family didn't get the invite. So why was there a large group of Russians who weren't speaking much English? Why were they there? And then more pressing, what was the purpose of these payments? They covered huge ticket items all weekend for them to throw these parties. And what we wanted to know is how did they know each other? How long did this relationship go back? What was the origins here? The family and Kremlev said that they had met through hunting. They were hunting buddies from a couple of years ago. But it still left a lot of unanswered questions about what the exact contours of this relationship were. They had shared a stage previously during an International Boxing Association event last September in Istanbul. But other than that, there was no public relationship that we could really identify here. So it was strange from the beginning, and it took us a lot of time talking with people in kind of both worlds, in the international boxing world, in junior circles to try to figure this whole thing out. And we could only kind of approximate the relationship, but what was never in doubt was these payments for the wedding. It was quite odd. And given the oddness there, when you spoke with intelligence experts and counterintelligence experts about the reason something like this might raise red flags, people who worry about corruption and spying and all those sorts of things, foreign influence, what did they tell you about what this looks like? Yeah, I mean, the context from them was, you know, this was the signature scandal of the last Trump administration, right? So they raised a lot of questions about what Kremlin was doing, what degree of coordination he might have had with the Kremlin. As you said earlier, he's very close with Putin through his ties to the security services. And they pointed out, these experts we consulted with pointed out that often the Kremlin is working in coordination with these oligarchs. They know exactly who they're meeting with and when, and they discuss what their plans might be. So the experts we talked about said exactly that. They don't know the details, obviously, of what happened in Moscow, what degree of coordination there was. But they were extremely concerned not only about the optics, but what Kremlev's actual motivations might be. I think one of our experts told us that you don't just pay a lot of money for nothing. And this were huge expenses, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And they may want something in return. And it was unclear to them. And if they were advising Junior on this, they would have told them to stay far away from anyone seeking to build or cultivate a relationship like this from Moscow. Wow. I mean, even if you weren't the president's son, you'd think that somebody would advise you not to do this. But as the president's son, it's just it's unthinkable. But that's our life now. A pro publica reporter, Brett Murphy, really is very elegant, meticulous reporting that you and your colleagues did here. Thank you so much for helping us understand it. Thanks. Thank you, Rachel. All right. We'll be right back. Stay with us. Hey, heads up. They're going to try to shut down the Kennedy Center tomorrow, Tuesday. As you know, Trump is obsessed with trying to name the Kennedy Center in Washington after himself. He, in fact, put his name on it. And then in May, a judge ordered that his name be taken off of it. He has installed a whole new board for the Kennedy Center led by himself that's still trying to do it despite the judge's order. Well, now they've come up with this new plan. They've written a new report saying the Kennedy Center is in financial ruin. and the only way to save it is to put Trump's name back on the building, because that will somehow save it. Reporting from the Washington Post, quote, Senate officials argue that publicly recognizing Trump could secure his help raising enough money to keep the institution afloat. The report, quote, makes clear that Trump's support hinges on him getting public credit for his involvement. It says Trump is unlikely to provide fundamental oversight of that project or lead a financial rescue without appropriate recognition of his role. Got it. So put the boss's name on the building or else. Tomorrow, the Kennedy Center board, led by Trump with all of his appointees, they're going to take a vote on whether to close the Kennedy Center as part of this ongoing standoff. Because obviously, it must be closed if Trump can't be allowed to name it and therefore save it. They're going to try to do that tomorrow, but here's something else to keep an eye on tomorrow. Just before that vote is set to take place, there is a court hearing in the lawsuit that's been brought to defend the Kennedy Center by Congresswoman Joyce Beatty. She's been trying to stop Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center from the very beginning. At that hearing tomorrow, Trump officials are going to have to defend these latest shenanigans to the same judge who ordered Trump's name taken off the building in May. The real decision about the fate of the Kennedy Center may wind up happening in that courtroom before that vote is allowed or not to take place. The court hearing and the board meeting are set to happen within the span of a few hours tomorrow. You're going to want to watch that space very carefully in tomorrow's news. Stay with us. It is going to be a celebration of the First Amendment because everybody needs a civics lesson every now and then. My parents, who are 85, my dad, a Marine veteran, and my mom, who is 82 and legally blind, are going to come hold a support the farmers sign that they need fuel and fertilizer. You are not allowed to make me cry on the streaming. You are not allowed. Sorry. You're not allowed. You're not allowed to. Like, I'm losing it. This is too much. This is like, that's so great. See, I don't just cry during the TV show. I cry during the day while prepping the TV show. That was me today talking with an awesome MSNOW viewer named Jennifer who lives in Western Kentucky. That was us speaking live today online as part of our new app, as part of the new MSNOW membership. She was telling me about this No Kings event she's about to host in her little town in western Kentucky. First No Kings event ever to be held in her town. I got a little spilkous. It was very cool. But I wanted you also to know that I do this kind of thing every Monday now at noon Eastern. It's called Ask Maddo Anything. It's part of our new MSNOW membership, along with all our stories and the ability to watch our shows live on your phone or on your tablet or on your computer. You can sign up at MSNOW membership, or you can just download the MSNOW app and it'll walk you through how to do it. After you do that, you can then come ask me a question. Ask Matto anything Mondays at noon Eastern. It is super fun. Have you ever considered surrounding your house with a moat to keep it safe? 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