Camp Mystic faces a criminal investigation that could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges in the deaths of 27 girls amid devastating flooding in Texas last year, court documents show.
In applications for search warrants executed last week, investigators sought to obtain the electronic communications of the camp's owners, saying they could provide evidence of manslaughter, negligent homicide, child abandonment or other crimes. No charges have been brought, and a representative of the camp did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
Brant Johnston, with the Texas Rangers, wrote in an affidavit that Camp Mystic had inadequate emergency plans, failed to conduct emergency drills or training, and in some cabins did not have enough adult counselors. Its owners neglected to take precautions by relocating children from low-lying cabins despite having monitored late-night flood warnings, Johnston wrote.
“Young campers cannot reasonably be expected to independently recognize a rapidly developing, life-threatening hazard or to organize and execute an evacuation absent direction from an adequate number of adult supervisors,” Johnston wrote.
He concluded: “Camp Mystic, LLC was aware of and consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death to the campers in their care.”
Twenty-five campers and two teenage counselors at the Christian all-girls camp were killed as the raging Guadalupe River surged beyond its banks before dawn on July 4, 2025. Camp Mystic owner Richard Eastland also died in the flood.
For decades, Camp Mystic was a summer staple and an institution for generations of families, who dropped off their girls at the sleepaway camp to ride horses, canoe, fish and attend Bible studies. The camp did not reopen this year, and it has filed for bankruptcy reorganization.
All told, the destructive flooding killed at least 136 people along a several-mile stretch of the river, raising questions about how things went so terribly wrong.
Attorneys for some of the victims' families welcomed the search warrants but said they should not have been necessary.
“For more than a year, families of the 27 angels killed at Camp Mystic have fought, begged, and pleaded with the Eastland family for accountability and answers,” Christina Yarnell and Brad Beckworth, attorneys for the family of victim Cile Steward, said in a written statement. “Instead, the Eastlands have held hostage the information and answers owed to parents who deserve, more than anyone, to know the details surrounding their daughters’ final moments.”
Steward's body still has not been found.
Johnston wrote in the warrant that he made several visits to Camp Mystic and that he and other investigators have conducted interviews with witnesses, flood victims and people associated with the camp. But several people, including members of the Eastland family and other top camp officials, refused interviews, Johnston wrote.
The Eastland family and other camp leaders have testified in courtrooms and in front of the state Legislature in the months since the flood, however, with camp director Edward Eastland offering a tearful apology.
FILE - A memorial for the victims of the 2025 Camp Mystic flood stands, July 17, 2026, in Hunt, Texas. (AP Photo/Joel Angel Juarez, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah is calling on the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Donald Trump Jr. used his proximity to the presidency for financial benefit, after his recent wedding party was partially bankrolled by a Russian oligarch.
In a letter sent Tuesday, Curtis called on the committee to subpoena Trump Jr. over his business dealings, relationships with foreign individuals and entities, gifts or other benefits he has received and any instances in which his relationship to President Donald Trump, a Republican, “was invoked or understood to provide value.” Curtis called for the same scrutiny of Hunter Biden, the son of former President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
“The country should not have to accept one standard for the family of a Republican president and another for the family of a Democratic president,” Curtis wrote in the letter addressed to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, chairman of the committee, and Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the panel.
The request by Curtis, a freshman senator who does not sit on the Judiciary committee, was a rare criticism of Trump's family as most Republican lawmakers have stayed clear of weighing in on the president's son. Grassley told reporters on Tuesday that he would have to gather more facts before deciding whether to investigate, while Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he did not “have an observation on that.”
Still, the letter comes as a few Republicans have shown a recent willingness to criticize Trump's policies after largely avoiding public breaks with Trump during much of his second term. The unpopular war in Iran, high gas prices and mounting concerns about the GOP’s prospects in November’s midterm elections have brought increased scrutiny of the president from within his own party.
At least two Republican members of the Judiciary panel said they would support an investigation. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, who is retiring, said he would have no problem with a probe of the wedding events, which he said showed “colossally bad judgment at best.”
Texas Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican who lost his seat in a primary earlier this year after Trump endorsed his opponent, said that Grassley wants to do “due diligence” but “I would support Sen. Curtis's request.”
A third Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, said of Curtis: “I’m glad he said what he said.”
“It doesn’t make any difference if you’re Republican or Democrat, if you’re Trump or you’re Biden,” Murkowski said.
ProPublica first reported last week that Umar Kremlev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, helped pay to rent a private island and for a fireworks show when Trump Jr. and socialite Bettina Anderson were married in the Bahamas in May.
In a subsequent post on her Instagram page signed by the couple, Bettina Trump wrote that Kremlev, head of the International Boxing Association, was a “dear friend” who “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding.”
The president, who did not attend his son's wedding, defended Kremlev's involvement but said the money would be paid back.
Grassley said he wasn't yet familiar with the facts of the case.
“I’m going to take these requests seriously and sit down with staff and see what we can do,” Grassley said, adding that “it takes time, and if you were going to ask me when we're going to have a hearing, there’s no way I could answer that today.”
Curtis, first elected to the Senate in 2024, vowed upon taking office not to shy away from disagreeing with Trump. He has publicly broken with the president several times since, including rejecting Trump’s calls to eliminate the Senate filibuster. In a July Wall Street Journal op-ed, Curtis wrote that “under no circumstance” would he support efforts to end or alter the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to advance most legislation in the 100-member chamber.
Curtis' criticism involving Trump’s son goes beyond those policy disagreements. Curtis last Friday called the gift “corruption” and vowed to say more in the coming days.
“A Russian oligarch paid for a lavish wedding after-party for Donald Trump Jr., which to me just stinks. It’s corruption. I don’t like it,” Curtis said in a video posted on social media.
On Tuesday, Curtis wrote on social media that Republicans “nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships” and that they “should not unplug it now.”
Any congressional committee can launch an investigation at any time. In 2017, Grassley launched a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, including a meeting that Trump Jr. held with Russians in 2016. The panel has also conducted multiple investigations of Hunter Biden.
Durbin said in a statement that Curtis had made a “good faith request.”
“For the Committee to ignore this matter is to run the risk of being complicit in a coverup. I will join in supporting Senator Curtis’ request,” Durbin said.
Hunter Biden defended himself in a post on X, saying that he has already given “more than seven hours of sworn testimony.”
“I’ll sit next to Don Jr. and testify any time, any place,” he said.
Grassley worked alongside House Republicans in 2023 and 2024 to investigate whether Hunter Biden used his father’s name and political position to benefit his business dealings with foreign interests. The Biden family dismissed the investigations as politically motivated and denied any wrongdoing.
The GOP effort culminated in a report accusing Joe Biden of participating in a conspiracy to use his public office to enrich his family. But the House never voted on articles of impeachment against him.
“‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now,” Curtis wrote.
Democrats have foreshadowed plans to investigate Trump and his family if they win control of Congress in November, with particular scrutiny on the family’s financial interests. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement that the revelations surrounding Trump Jr.'s wedding “may be the most serious allegation against you to date.”
Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Dick Durbin, D-Ill., right, with committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, speaks, during an oversight hearing to examine the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
FILE - Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, walks through the Capitol during votes in Washington, July 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert, File)
FILE - Donald Trump Jr., speaks with his wife Bettina, left, as they wait for President Donald Trump to deliver remarks to U.S. embassy staff at Deerfield Residence in Dublin, Sept. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
