Trump News: Don Jr’s Mongolia Hunt With Kremlin Oligarch
In the latest trump news, the Financial Times has reported that Donald Trump Jr spent two days on a hunting trip in western Mongolia in late August with Umar Kremlev, a Russian businessman who heads the International Boxing Association and is described as a Kremlin-linked oligarch. The trip took the president’s eldest son several hundred kilometres from the Mongolian capital into a remote hunting camp, and the newspaper confirmed it through accounts from local guides and officials, flight records, social media posts and public documents. It is the second time in seven years that Trump Jr has made headlines for a hunting expedition in Mongolia.
According to United States federal documents, the American embassy in Ulaanbaatar spent $18,715 on hotel rooms for the Secret Service agents assigned to protect the president’s son, covering the period from August 23 to September 6. As a member of the president’s family, Trump Jr travels under Secret Service protection, and the cost is borne by American taxpayers. One participant in the trip told the Financial Times that while at the camp, Trump Jr and Kremlev tried to avoid being photographed together, a detail that suggests both men understood the sensitivity of the meeting. The trip also involved a second Russian businessman whose investment fund is subject to American sanctions.
Trump News: The August Trip to Western Mongolia
The sequence of events pieced together by the Financial Times begins in late August, when Trump Jr arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian capital. From there he travelled several hundred kilometres west to a hunting camp, where he joined Kremlev for two days, hunting in the surrounding countryside with a small group of local guides, drivers and cooks.
Kremlev’s own journey was carefully arranged. On August 27, he left a press conference held by the International Boxing Association in Kazakhstan and took a nighttime charter flight to Ulaanbaatar, from where he travelled on to Trump Jr’s hunting camp. He was accompanied by Russian businessman Artur Martirosov, a partner at the Voskhod venture capital fund, which is subject to United States sanctions. That means the president’s son spent time in a remote location not only with a Kremlin-linked oligarch but also with a business partner of a sanctioned fund.
After two days at the camp, the two men went their separate ways. Kremlev returned to Ulaanbaatar and then travelled to Yakutsk, in Russia’s far east, for a boxing match organised by the International Boxing Association. Trump Jr remained in Mongolia for another week and continued hunting in the Bayan-Ulgii aimag, a province in the far west of the country that borders Russia and China and is known for its mountains, eagles and big-game hunting. The trip came in the final weeks of the summer, as the president campaigned heavily ahead of the midterm elections and as his son’s role in the movement grew ever more prominent.
Who Is Umar Kremlev?
Umar Kremlev is the president of the International Boxing Association, the governing body for amateur and Olympic-style boxing, and one of the most powerful figures in the sport. He took control of the organisation when it was mired in financial difficulty and controversy, and he has since become a central figure in the politics of world boxing, including the long-running dispute between the association and the International Olympic Committee.
But Kremlev is known in Russia for more than boxing. He is described by the Financial Times as a Kremlin-linked oligarch, a businessman whose fortune and influence are closely connected to Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with business interests that have included the lottery, betting and car dealerships. The Washington Post reported in 2024 that Kremlev has a criminal record under a previous name and that he changed his name, a history that has been noted in coverage of his dealings with Western figures.
Kremlev’s connection to the Trump family did not begin in Mongolia. Last month, ProPublica reported that Kremlev spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on expenses for Donald Trump Jr’s wedding, including renting out a private island for the celebrations. He attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests. The bride, Bettina Anderson, told ABC News that it was unfortunate that something so personal and happy could be recast as something political or sinister simply because of who someone is or where they come from.
The wedding spending and the Mongolia trip, taken together, form a pattern journalists have been documenting for months: a relationship between the president’s eldest son and a Russian oligarch that appears to have developed recently and quickly, and that has involved significant sums of money and private travel.
The Secret Service Bill: $18,715 in Hotel Costs
One of the concrete facts established by the Financial Times reporting is the cost to American taxpayers of protecting Trump Jr during the trip: $18,715 for hotel rooms, according to United States federal documents, covering the Secret Service’s visit from August 23 to September 6. The figure is modest by the standards of presidential family travel, but it attaches a precise dollar amount to a private holiday, and that is the kind of number that tends to stick in the public mind.
Secret Service protection for the president’s children is not optional: it is a legal requirement, and the cost follows wherever they go. But when the destination is a hunting camp in western Mongolia and the companion is a Kremlin-linked oligarch, the bill becomes part of the story rather than a footnote. The $18,715 covers hotel rooms only, not transport, overtime or logistics, so the full cost of the trip to the taxpayer is likely to have been higher, although no fuller accounting has been made public.
The figure also invites comparison with Trump Jr’s previous hunting trip to Mongolia, in 2019, which cost taxpayers far more. That expedition cost $76,859 in Secret Service expenses according to ProPublica’s reporting, a sum that covered eight days in the country. It is a reminder that the costs of protecting a president’s family on private travel can run into tens of thousands of dollars, and that the public has a legitimate interest in knowing where the money goes.
A Familiar Pattern: The 2019 Argali Hunt
The 2026 trip is not Trump Jr’s first hunting expedition in Mongolia. In the summer of 2019, during his father’s first term, Trump Jr travelled to western Mongolia to hunt an argali sheep, an endangered species regarded as a national treasure in Mongolia. The rams can only be hunted with special permission, and ProPublica reported that Trump Jr secured the necessary permit only after the hunt had taken place and he had left the region.
The 2019 trip was controversial for several reasons. The argali is an imperiled species, and the idea of the president’s son travelling halfway around the world to kill one for a trophy drew widespread criticism. The trip had been won at a charity auction held by the National Rifle Association in 2015, and it was sponsored by a Mongolian tourism company and organised by Jandos Kontorbai Ahat, a member of the Mongolian president’s political party whose company, Marmara Worldwide, sits on the board of the Mongolian hunting association. Ahat described the trophy hunting permit system in Mongolia as very political, and he declined to say how he had arranged the permit for Trump Jr.
The 2019 expedition also involved a second kill: Trump Jr shot a red deer, which also allegedly required a permit he had not obtained in advance. The public outcry that followed was substantial, and it led to action in Congress: lawmakers introduced the Prohibiting Threatened and Endangered Creature Trophies Act, known as the ProTECT Act, which would prohibit the import of trophies from threatened and endangered species.
Mongolia, Caught Between Two Giants
Mongolia itself is a central part of the story, even though it is rarely in the headlines. The country is landlocked between Russia and China, two of the world’s most powerful states, and it has pursued a foreign policy known as its third neighbour strategy, cultivating close relationships with countries beyond its two giant neighbours, above all the United States. Mongolia regards the United States as an important ally, and it relies on American support for its economy and its security.
The relationship has been built over decades, and it has included high-level government discussions, military cooperation and trade. Bills introduced in Congress would give duty-free treatment to Mongolian cashmere and other products, in an effort to extend commerce between the two countries and reduce Mongolia’s reliance on China. In 2019, the Mongolian president visited the White House, and during that visit he gave a horse to Barron Trump, the president’s youngest son. The president named the horse Victory, a traditional ceremonial gift that symbolised the friendship between the two countries.
Mongolia’s hunting industry is politically connected, its permits are, in the words of one organiser, very political, and its big-game hunting brings wealthy foreigners into contact with the country’s elite. The country’s position between Russia and China also gives the 2026 trip a geopolitical dimension the 2019 trip lacked: Mongolia’s western provinces border Russia, and the region where Trump Jr hunted is close to the Russian frontier.
What Happens Next
The Financial Times report is likely to generate further questions rather than to settle them. The first is whether the White House, the State Department or Trump Jr himself will respond to the reporting, and what they will say about the nature of the relationship with Kremlev. The second is whether lawmakers in Congress will take an interest, particularly given the sanctions angle: Martirosov’s Voskhod fund is subject to American sanctions, and the fact that the president’s son spent time with one of its partners in a remote hunting camp is the kind of detail that tends to attract congressional attention.
A third question concerns the broader pattern. The wedding expenses reported by ProPublica and the Mongolia trip reported by the Financial Times suggest a relationship that has developed quickly and that involves significant money and travel. For now, what is known is this: in late August, Donald Trump Jr flew to Mongolia and spent two days hunting with Umar Kremlev, a Kremlin-linked oligarch who heads world boxing, in the company of a partner in a sanctioned Russian investment fund. American taxpayers paid $18,715 for the hotel rooms of the Secret Service agents who protected him. The two men tried to avoid being photographed together. And the trip, like the one seven years earlier, has left a trail of documents, flight records and eyewitness accounts that journalists are still following.
Source: Financial Times