My colleagues and I had been digging for days. We’d heard a rumor that a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin named Umar Kremlev had attended Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding this past May in the Bahamas. But to confirm that, we needed visual proof.

First, we scoured everything the Trumps had released from the event, held on a pair of private islands. On social media and in the pages of tabloids such as Page Six and Hello! magazine, official photos from the weekend showed an intimate chapel ceremony alongside lavish beach parties. Several photos depicted guests, including Jared Kushner and Eric Trump, and we scanned them all for signs of Kremlev. Still, nothing had turned up yet.

We then turned to Kremlev’s social media profiles on the off chance that he’d posted about the wedding. Incredibly, on Telegram, Kremlev had posted videos over the same weekend as Trump Jr.’s wedding that appeared to be from someplace tropical. In one, a single detail caught our attention: As Kremlev speaks in Russian to the camera, the frame gives a partial view of an outdoor patio setting. It wasn’t palm trees or crystal water we noticed, but the wicker furniture.

The chair and its affixed cushion in Kremlev’s post matched what we’d seen in photos of the private islands elsewhere online, such as the promotional image below:

But of course, we couldn’t hang such a big claim — that this Russian oligarch had attended the president’s son’s intimate wedding weekend — on a wicker chair analysis. The Trump family appeared to be curating the wedding’s visual footprint, and not much seemed to exist outside of its control.

So when my colleagues Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and I finally found a photo that confirmed what we’d been looking for, we were floored. The proof had been hiding in an Instagram gallery posted months earlier by a swimsuit model and friend of the bride, nestled among glamour shots and lifestyle photos.

The sunset group shot on a white sand beach shows wedding guests, barefoot and smiling against a backdrop of palms. One guest throws up a shaka. Front and center is the........

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