Fox News devoted a grand total of one minute of airtime to Monday's bombshell report that a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the lavish Bahamas wedding of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. The coverage came entirely in a single segment framed around the response to the story from Trump Jr.’s wife, Bettina.

The “lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands” to celebrate Trump Jr.’s May wedding “was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin,” who attended the exclusive event, according to ProPublica. It further reported:

Kremlev 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. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions.

The September 14 article went on to detail the incredible nature of this naked corruption. “Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family,” the article stated. “For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term.”

Fox hosts and anchors once treated significantly more tangential ties between foreign businessmen and a president’s son as of vital importance. They flooded the airwaves with overwrought attacks on Hunter Biden when such claims could be used to damage Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy and then presidency. But such coverage has vanished since Trump returned to office and he and his family began profiting off the presidency on a massive scale.

Network star Sean Hannity, who accused the “Biden Crime Family” of masterminding “potentially the biggest bribery, money laundering scandal in American history,” had nothing to say about the ProPublica report during his Fox show on Monday. Nor did his “opinion side” colleagues Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, and Greg Gutfeld; or the co-hosts of Fox & Friends; or “news side” anchors Martha MacCallum, John Roberts, or Dana Perino.

Indeed, the only Fox News program to mention the story at all on Monday was Special Report, which offered a single superficial account from correspondent Lucas Tomlinson that leaned heavily on the response to the story from Bettina Trump.

“Lucas, another story, there was a report about Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding back in May, and questions about foreign influence as a Russian businessman with close ties to Vladimir Putin helped pay for the celebration in the Bahamas,” anchor Bret Baier said at the end of a package on AI.

He then asked Tomlinson, “Has there been a response from the White House or the newlyweds?”

Tomlinson replied:

There has, Bret. In a new post on Instagram, Bettina Trump says the party was planned well in advance of the wedding and was never intended to be a wedding weekend. She thanked her friend Umar Kremlev, who made a fortune in Russian-backed gambling and commercial businesses. He's sanctioned by Ukraine, and he reportedly spent hundreds of billion — millions of dollars — hundreds of thousands of dollars on the two-night wedding celebration in the Bahamas. And Bettina put out, quote, “Friendship doesn't require a political motive. Generosity doesn't automatically come with an agenda, and sometimes a wedding gift is simply a wedding gift.” And the White House referred us to this post, Bret.

“OK, Lucas Tomlinson at the White House,” Baier concluded.

And that was it from Baier, who once said the press had an obligation to scrutinize the Trump family’s business dealings but whose program has largely looked away from the myriad financial conflicts that emerged over the course of the president’s second term.

Update (9/16/26): Special Report provided an additional 2 minutes of coverage on Tuesday about a Russian oligarch bankrolling Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding. Bret Baier asked correspondent Aishah Hasnie for an update on the story and later noted in a panel segment that “there would have been a lot of coverage of this” if it involved the son of a Democratic president. After Axios reporter Stef Kight said that “we are not hearing anything from Republicans” about a “very similar situation,” Baier commented: “Well, we want to cover it, cover it all.”

No other Fox show mentioned the story on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters