Alina Habba

Introduction

Alina Habba, President Trump’s former personal attorney and onetime acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, signed a four-year contract worth more than $50 million to serve as general counsel of Concord Partners — a Florida company created in late October 2025 by the daughter of Venezuelan banker Julio Herrera Velutini while he was seeking a pardon from Trump. Habba officially joined the firm on Jan. 1, 2026, while keeping a senior-adviser role at the Justice Department; Trump pardoned Herrera Velutini two weeks later. The New York Times’s account of the arrangement, built on interviews and documents, set off a public rebuke from Trump himself, who in November 2026 called the deal “totally obnoxious and outrageous” and said it is “not acceptable.” No charge or finding of wrongdoing attaches to Habba, who says the work was vetted and disclosed to the Justice Department and had nothing to do with the pardon.

Background Information

Habba rose to prominence as Trump’s personal lawyer in 2021, representing him in the New York civil fraud case and in the defamation suit brought by the writer E. Jean Carroll. She parlayed that into a short stint as counselor to the president before taking the top job at the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office; a court ruled her appointment there unlawful, and she left the post in December 2025. She stayed inside the Justice Department as a senior adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi, with an office at the department.

On Sept. 26, 2026, she married Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon in a Waldorf Astoria ceremony one source pegged at roughly $10 million, with FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche and White House counsel Will Scharf among the guests. Mildon’s introduction to Habba and other Trump-world figures came through Richard Grenell, the former Kennedy Center chief — a relationship that imploded weeks later when Habba, at an Oct. 9 Oval Office meeting, accused Grenell of failing to deposit $5.6 million her husband had earmarked for the institution, part of a $17.6 million wire Axios later reported came from Congo’s finance ministry. Trump handed the matter to Scharf to investigate; Grenell denies the claims.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Under scrutiny, unadjudicated. No charge, lawsuit or finding of wrongdoing attaches to Habba over the Concord Partners contract. She says the employment was “vetted and disclosed to the DOJ” and that any link to the pardon is “false and defamatory”; the Justice Department told the Times she never discussed clemency there, and the White House says she played no part in the pardon decision. The criticism aimed at her concerns the arrangement’s size and timing — not a legal determination.

Per the Times, the company that became her employer was set up in late October 2025 by Isabela Herrera, the 27-year-old daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, a 54-year-old Venezuelan banking tycoon who was then seeking a pardon. Concord Partners — a firm whose purpose even people familiar with the family’s business interests were unsure of, per the Times — registered just days before Habba signed on as general counsel, and she was still serving as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey when she signed. The contract guaranteed her $10 million a year for four years, plus bonuses — more than $50 million in all. Her joining was officially effective Jan. 1, 2026, after her departure from the New Jersey post.

The pardon timing frames the scrutiny. Trump pardoned Herrera Velutini on Jan. 15, 2026 — two weeks into Habba’s Concord tenure — and issued an amended clemency order five days later specifically covering the banker’s misdemeanor offense. Herrera Velutini had been accused in 2022 of taking part in a scheme to persuade Puerto Rico’s then-governor, Wanda Vázquez, to remove a financial regulator investigating his bank; his attorney Christopher Kise, who has also represented Trump, negotiated an August 2025 deal that reduced his exposure to a guilty plea on a single misdemeanor campaign-finance violation, and the banker pressed to have his record wiped clean entirely. Before the family began working to bring Habba into its orbit, Isabela Herrera donated $3.5 million to a Trump-aligned super PAC, per the Times.

Habba has denied any connection between her job and the pardon. “Any insinuation that my employment — all of which has been vetted and disclosed to the DOJ — had anything to do with securing a pardon is false,” she told the Times, insisting the timing was pure happenstance; in an X post she called the suggestion “false and defamatory” and pointed to Kise as the lawyer who deserved credit for the misdemeanor deal. The Justice Department told the Times she had not discussed clemency with anyone there, and a White House official said flatly: “Alina Habba had nothing to do with this presidential pardon.”

Trump’s own reaction, reported by the Times in late October, was fury at the deal’s scale: he “erupted” when he learned of it, told aides and allies that some of the money ought to find its way to his future presidential library or another Trump-linked entity, and told at least one ally that the Herrera family should not pay out the rest of the contract — a message that reached the family. He also called Habba to discuss it. At a Mar-a-Lago Halloween party on Nov. 1, 2026, he made the criticism public and personal: the reported contract was “totally obnoxious and outrageous,” he said. “I thought it was terrible… it’s one thing for a person to get paid legal fees or whatever. She’s a lawyer… it’s not acceptable. Not acceptable at all.” He said he did not necessarily expect Habba herself to pay up, but added: “it’s unacceptable what she did.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

The rebuke marked what the New York Post called “a stunning fall from favor” for one of Trump’s most steadfast loyalists — a lawyer who spent years defending him personally and was rewarded with senior roles in his administration, now publicly dressed down by the president over her own payday. Trump told reporters he had told Habba directly that he didn’t want her to be paid under the deal. Whether any money moves — to the library or anywhere else — remains unknown: Habba did not respond to the Times’s questions about her conversation with Trump or any commitment, and the Herrera family did not respond to questions about whether her employment would change. The contract reporting also landed amid unflattering revelations about her husband’s business ties — the Times has reported that U.S. officials considered imposing sanctions on Mildon over his connections to Venezuela’s Maduro regime, which he disputes.

Current Status

No charges or legal proceedings against Habba have emerged from the reporting, and the White House maintains she played no role in the pardon decision. Her Concord Partners contract remains in place as far as any public record shows — the Times reports it is unclear whether the family could terminate it early, and neither side has said whether it will continue. The parallel Scharf review of her $5.6 million accusation against Grenell remains the couple’s other open thread in Trump-world, with Mildon’s lawyers having produced a text in which Grenell allegedly promised access to the president — an allegation Grenell denies. Trump, for his part, has moved from private fury to public condemnation — and has floated redirecting her pay himself.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Habba’s arc — from Trump’s courtroom attack dog to counselor to the president to acting U.S. attorney — was built on unquestioned loyalty, and the $50 million Concord deal is the first episode in which the president himself has cast her as the problem rather than the defender. The Times’s reporting placed her, mid-career and newly married into an internationally entangled fortune, at the center of a pardon-adjacent pay arrangement involving a super PAC donation, a two-week gap between her hire and the pardon, and a president demanding a share of the money. Whatever ends the arrangement — Trump’s pressure, the family’s discomfort, or neither — the episode has already cost her the asset her career was built on: the appearance of standing first in Trump’s favor.

Sources

• “NY Post: Trump rips Alina Habba’s $50M deal with pardoned Venezuelan banker’s family” source
• “New York Times: Trump Erupted After Learning of Alina Habba’s $50 Million Deal” source
• “The Daily Beast: Trump’s ex-lawyer Alina Habba struck $50M deal with pardoned Venezuelan billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini” source