ProPublica

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit investigative newsroom that began as an outline scribbled on the back of a business envelope and grew into one of the most decorated news organizations in the United States — and in September 2026 it published the investigation at the center of a Washington scandal over who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebrations. (Poynter; U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Democrats)

An envelope in November 2006

Before ProPublica had a name, an editor, or an operating budget, it had a moment: in November 2006, Marion and Herbert Sandler — who had just sold Golden West Financial for $25.5 billion — were looking to expand their philanthropy, and the struggling field of investigative journalism caught their interest. (Poynter) They were prepared to donate $10 million a year to support investigative reporting, and they were consulting everyone they knew in journalism for advice on what to do. (Poynter)

One of those consulted was Paul Steiger, then the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, who grabbed one of his wife’s business envelopes and sketched what would become ProPublica’s core structure: a web-based investigative newsroom that would make its stories freely available to other news organizations. (Poynter) The idea was a deliberate break from the existing investigative nonprofits — the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity — whose reports, when covered by newspapers, were often buried inside the paper; Steiger’s reasoning was that outlets given full rights to ProPublica’s stories would be incentivized to play them on the front page. (Poynter) As founding general manager Richard Tofel put it: “One story on page one was worth 10 stories on page 10.” (Poynter)

The organization was founded late in 2007, opened its doors in January 2008, and began publishing that June, with Steiger as founding editor-in-chief, CEO and president, Stephen Engelberg as founding managing editor, and Tofel as founding general manager. (ProPublica; Poynter) It launched with a newsroom of roughly 25 people — more than 1,100 applied for those initial jobs, many of them from the Los Angeles Times, which was in financial turmoil. (Poynter) Its mission, as it states it, is to produce investigative journalism in the public interest and “to prod reform” — to expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust, written in “an entirely nonpartisan and nonideological manner.” (ProPublica)

Free stories, impact over clicks

ProPublica’s record arrived quickly. In 2010 — its second full year of operation — it became the first online news organization ever awarded a Pulitzer Prize, for a 2009 chronicle of deaths at a New Orleans hospital in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, co-published with The New York Times Magazine. (ProPublica; Poynter) In 2011 it won its second Pulitzer — the first such prize ever awarded for articles not published in print — followed by a Peabody Award in 2013. (ProPublica) By 2025 it had won seven Pulitzer Prizes. (Poynter)

The other half of the ProPublica story is financial independence. From 2010 the organization moved to diversify its funding, and within a few years the Sandlers’ contribution had shrunk from 85% of its budget to 10%; even as the budget grew to approach $50 million in 2025, it ran an operating surplus every year. (Poynter) Engelberg, now editor-in-chief, describes the organization’s second major contribution to journalism as a measurement decision: ProPublica judges itself by impact — not clicks, pageviews, ad sales, or subscriptions. (Poynter) It began publishing reports on the real-world effects of its stories early in its history; a recent one highlighted a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that followed ProPublica’s reporting on undisclosed gifts to the justice. (Poynter)

The Kremlev wedding investigation

On September 14, 2026, ProPublica published “Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin,” reporting that Umar Kremlev — a wealthy Russian national with close ties to the Kremlin — “footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars” of wedding expenses. (U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Democrats) The reporting, built on financial records and interviews with people familiar with the event, found that Kremlev paid to rent one of the private islands used for the May 2026 celebrations — a rental that typically costs $100,000 per night — along with other expensive items such as a $70,000 fireworks show. (U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Democrats; The New Voice of Ukraine) The payments came from a Dubai-based entity affiliated with the International Boxing Association (IBA), which Kremlev heads. (The New Voice of Ukraine) Kremlev’s representatives told ProPublica that the IBA itself did not incur wedding costs, but did not address the payments from the Dubai entity. (The New Voice of Ukraine)

The celebrations themselves took place across two private Bahamian islands with roughly 50 guests; President Trump did not attend. (The New Voice of Ukraine) ProPublica described Kremlev as close to Vladimir Putin — he had recently traveled to China alongside other Russian figures during Putin’s visit, and had received Russia’s Order of Friendship from Putin shortly before the wedding celebrations. (The New Voice of Ukraine) After publication, Trump Jr. and his wife Bettina Trump confirmed Kremlev’s role in a statement on Instagram: “Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us,” they wrote, calling it “an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend” and stressing that the funded events took place after their wedding ceremony. (The New Voice of Ukraine) Kremlev’s press office told ProPublica the two had a “friendly relationship” and that Kremlev had never discussed politics with Trump Jr. or his other American acquaintances. (The New Voice of Ukraine) The House Oversight letter adds that Kremlev and Russian-speaking members of his entourage — including Alexander Lagutin, a Russian businessman with ties to the defense and energy industries, and Elena Sobol, Kremlev’s IBA subordinate — attended events around the wedding, and ties Kremlev to Healthy Fatherland, a Russian group run by his sister-in-law that is under Ukrainian sanctions over its alleged role in abducting and Russifying Ukrainian children in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. (U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Democrats)

The fallout was immediate. The same day the story published, Representative Robert Garcia — the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — opened an investigation, writing to Trump Jr. to demand the preservation of all records on his relationship with Kremlev and requesting seven categories of documents and written answers by September 28, 2026, citing national-security and public-corruption concerns. (U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Democrats) On September 18, President Trump told reporters his son intended to repay Kremlev: “As I understand it, he paid him back,” he said, later clarifying that his son had told him he was going to repay the money, while insisting such hospitality was “totally allowed.” (The New Voice of Ukraine) Four days later, Republican Senator John Curtis of Utah asked the Senate Judiciary Committee to subpoena Trump Jr. over the financing, writing to Chairman Chuck Grassley and top Democrat Dick Durbin that Congress should apply the same standards to presidential families regardless of party. (Bangkok Post) “A toaster is a wedding gift. A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else,” Curtis posted; the senator, who succeeded Mitt Romney in the Senate, also called for Hunter Biden to be subpoenaed under the same standard. (Bangkok Post)

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim the contents of ProPublica’s original September 14, 2026 article beyond what the three independent sources above attribute to it — the article itself could not be fetched this session. It does not state the investigation’s bylines, since no source read confirmed them. The seven-Pulitzer count is as of the 2025 Poynter piece, and staff and budget figures are likewise dated to 2025. The profile does not resolve the disagreement over when Kremlev first met Trump Jr. — September 2025 per the characterization of ProPublica’s reporting, “several years earlier” per Kremlev’s press office — and it reports both with attribution. It makes no claims about ProPublica’s current about-page details, since propublica.org could not be fetched.