President Donald Trump said he told his former personal attorney Alina Habba Mildon he didn’t want her paid after learning that the family of a Venezuelan banker had guaranteed her more than $50 million to serve as a company lawyer. Trump pardoned the banker, Julio Herrera Velutini, in January 2026 after he pleaded guilty to a federal campaign finance misdemeanor. Habba has denied doing any work to secure the pardon.
Trump was on his way into a Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on October 31st when a reporter began asking about the contract. The reporter had barely gotten the dollar figure out before the president cut in. “I thought it was terrible,” Trump said. He told reporters he had already made his objection known to Habba herself.
Trump said he understood that his former attorney could earn legal fees in private practice. What drew his objection was the amount the family had agreed to pay her and how he believed she had landed the deal. The president accused Habba of using her relationship with him to get the contract, adding that the fee was “far too much.”
“I thought it was totally obnoxious and outrageous, and it’s not acceptable. Not acceptable at all,” Trump said in video of the exchange. A reporter asked whether he expected Habba to donate to his future presidential library. The New York Times had reported two days earlier that Trump had privately told allies he wanted some of the money to go to the library. Asked specifically about a contribution from Habba, Trump answered, “No, not her.”
The company that hired Habba, Concord Partners, was days old when she was finalizing the deal to become its general counsel in October 2025. Isabela Herrera, the banker’s daughter, had registered the business in Florida. Times correspondent Tyler Pager, who broke the story, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that the contract called for $10 million a year for four years. Bonuses brought the guaranteed compensation above $50 million over the life of the agreement.
Habba held two different Justice Department jobs between signing the contract and starting work for the Herrera family. She was serving as acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey when she signed, according to Reuters. After a court disqualified her from that position, she resigned on December 8th and took a job that same day as a senior adviser to the attorney general. She was still in that post when she started at Concord on January 1st, 2026.
Watch Trump answer the question about Habba’s contract here:
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Herrera’s criminal case dated to 2022, when federal prosecutors accused him of trying to bribe Puerto Rico’s then-governor to replace a regulator who was investigating his bank. In August 2025, he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor campaign finance charge. He was awaiting sentencing when Trump granted him a full and unconditional pardon on January 15th, two weeks after Habba’s start date at Concord.
A White House official told the Times that Habba had no role in the pardon and that the administration’s review process involved the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department. Habba addressed the question herself in a public statement before Trump spoke at Mar-a-Lago. “I was never paid to secure a pardon,” she wrote. “I never met with anyone at the White House or DOJ about a pardon.”
Featured image credit: Public Domain, Official portrait of Alina Habba as interim District Attorney for the District of New Jersey (cropped)