Two GOP senators on Tuesday offered support for Sen. John Curtis’s (R-Utah) surprise call earlier in the day for the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the president’s son over his business dealings and gifts he received from a Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin.
Curtis in a letter to leaders of the panel cited Donald Trump Jr.’s “lavish wedding afterparty” on “a private island” that Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev paid for, according to a report published last week by ProPublica.
The Utah senator noted that Kremlev, the head of the controversial International Boxing Association, “reportedly traveled to China as part of delegations accompanying [Russian President] Vladimir Putin shortly before giving” hundreds of thousands of dollars to finance the party.
Curtis called on the Judiciary Committee to subpoena Trump Jr. as well as another presidential son, Hunter Biden, over his relationships with foreign interests, including any financial benefit he may have gained.
In a major development late Tuesday, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said he would support the panel investigating Trump Jr.
“I’m with Sen. Curtis,” Cornyn said after a GOP leadership meeting. “I would support Sen. Curtis’s request.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), another member of the committee, said Trump Jr.’s acceptance of such generous gifts from a Russian oligarch raised serious questions.
He said he would “have no problem” with the Judiciary Committee investigating the matter after the election but declined to say whether he would support a subpoena of Trump Jr.
“After the election, if everybody’s still interested in it, then let’s do it,” Tillis said. “If I were Donald Trump Jr., I’d be offering this up immediately. Just lay it out there. How on earth did this happen? Because on its face, it looks pretty dumb.”
“If the House flips next year, you know there’s going to be an investigation one way or the other,” he added, referring to Democrats possibly seizing the House majority in 2027.
Curtis made news with his request given Democratic efforts to make “corruption” an issue in the election. They had struggled to find Republican voices to join them in condemning the Trump family’s controversial dealings but that changed on Tuesday with the Utah Republican’s call for a probe.
“Questions have arisen about the relationships of President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., with foreign business figures and the acceptance of significant gifts,” Curtis wrote in a letter to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the Judiciary Committee, and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee’s ranking member.
Senate Republican leaders were scrambling for a response to reporters on Tuesday, with key figures including Grassley and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) saying they didn’t know enough about the matter to comment.
Grassley told The Hill Tuesday afternoon that he hadn’t read Curtis’s letter and was juggling a request to hold committee hearings on the practices of social media companies.
The senior Iowa Republican bristled at any suggestion that an investigation might be more focused on Trump Jr. than Hunter Biden. And he said there are other demands for the committee’s time.
“I’ve got people that are concerned about not having a hearing on social media companies, and I got people coming in today to ask me that. That’s one of the problems I’m dealing with,” Grassley said.
Cornyn, however, suggested that Grassley may move forward with the issue after he conducts “due diligence” on reports of Trump Jr.’s acceptance of lavish gifts.
“I think the chairman got a letter. … I think he wants to do his due diligence,” he said.
Thune said he would let Grassley handle Curtis’s call to subpoena Trump Jr. and declined to comment on the optics of the president’s son accepting the gifts from Kremlev.
“I don’t have enough information about it,” he said. “I don’t really have any observations, further observations about it, but obviously that’s a decision Chairman Grassley would have to make.”
Former President Biden’s son weighed in Tuesday afternoon by offering to testify alongside Trump Jr. “any time, any place.”
“Sen. Curtis of Utah has suggested that Don Jr. and I should testify before Congress. I say bring it on,” Hunter Biden wrote on social media.
Durbin, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, immediately embraced Curtis’s call to investigate Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden, though he noted that the former president’s son has already given a sworn deposition to Congress about his past business dealings.
“For the committee to ignore this matter is to run the risk of being complicit in a cover-up. I will join in supporting Sen. Curtis’s request of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Durbin said.
Curtis expressed his disgust last week over ProPublica’s reporting that Kremlev paid to rent one of the private islands where Trump Jr. and his new wife Bettina held a lavish three-day wedding afterparty in the Bahamas and also footed the bill for a fireworks show.
Curtis said the gifts smacked of “corruption.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), who is retiring at the end of this term, said the expensive gifts look “really bad.”
“Anytime someone gives you a $250,000 gift and they have strong ties to the Kremlin, that’s wrong,” Cassidy told CBS News’s “Face the Nation” Sunday.
He argued that Trump Jr.’s proximity to the Russian president created terrible political optics for the White House.
Thune on Tuesday, however, declined to say whether he agreed with the view that “the appearance” of a Russian businessman tied to Putin giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to the president’s son looks “bad.”
“I don’t have enough information yet to know exactly what all the details and fact are. I understand there has been a request to get some of that information,” Thune said.
“Chairman Grassley and the relevant committee would have to make some determination about that,” he added.
