President Trump on Saturday night sharply criticized his former personal attorney, Alina Habba, over her reported $50 million contract with the family of a Venezuelan banker whom he later pardoned, describing the arrangement as “totally obnoxious and outrageous.”
“I thought it was terrible,” Trump told reporters as he arrived at a Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. He joked that he had come dressed as himself.
The president said he had told Habba that he did not want her to accept payment.
“You know, it’s one thing for a person to get paid legal fees or whatever. She’s a lawyer,” Trump said. “I thought it was totally obnoxious and outrageous, and it’s not acceptable. Not acceptable at all.”
The family of Julio Herrera Velutini guaranteed Habba more than $50 million over four years for serving as general counsel of Concord Partners, a family company registered only days before she joined it, The New York Times reported last week.
Herrera, a billionaire banker, had previously faced federal bribery charges. By August 2025, however, the case had been reduced to a guilty plea on a single misdemeanor campaign finance violation.
According to the Times, Habba’s compensation included a $10 million annual retainer as well as bonuses. The 42-year-old attorney helped arrange the position while she was still employed by the Justice Department.
Habba had been working at Concord Partners for only two weeks when Trump pardoned her boss’s father.
Habba has maintained that the timing was entirely coincidental.
“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,” Habba told the Times.
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The White House has also denied that the employment arrangement was connected to the pardon, the newspaper reported.
The Times reported that Trump “erupted” after learning about the contract and later told aides and allies that some of the money should go toward his future presidential library or another organization linked to him.
On Saturday, Trump said he did not necessarily expect Habba to pay the money herself. But he continued to condemn the arrangement, saying, “it’s unacceptable what she did.”
The criticism represents a striking reversal for a woman who until recently ranked among Trump’s most outspoken loyalists. Habba became widely known as Trump’s personal attorney in 2021 before serving briefly as counselor to the president. She later became the top federal prosecutor at the New Jersey US Attorney’s Office, a position she left last December.
The reported contract comes after several eventful weeks for Habba. She married Turkish billionaire Turhan Mildon on Sept. 26 in a ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria. One source estimated the wedding cost at approximately $10 million. FBI Director Kash Patel, Attorney General Todd Blanche and boxer Mike Tyson were among the guests.
Less than two weeks later, during an Oct. 9 meeting in the Oval Office, Habba accused Ric Grenell, the former executive director of the Kennedy Center, of failing to deposit $5.6 million that her new husband had designated for the institution. The money was allegedly part of a $17.6 million wire transfer Mildon sent in May 2025 to Texas Armament & Technology, a defense software company.
Trump subsequently referred the dispute to White House Counsel Will Scharf.
Mildon’s attorneys later produced a text message that they said showed Grenell promising Mildon access to the president. Axios subsequently reported that the $17.6 million had come not from Mildon, but from the finance ministry of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Grenell has denied wrongdoing and reportedly denied sending the message.
“Absurd. I’ve never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center and I’ve never received any payment from him at all,” Grenell wrote on X.