Habba's $50 Million Deal With Pardoned Venezuelan Billionaire's Family Draws Scrutiny

What happened

Former Trump attorney Alina Habba secured a contract guaranteed at more than $50 million over four years as general counsel of Concord Partners, a Florida-based company created in October 2025 by Isabela Herrera, the 27-year-old daughter of Venezuelan banking billionaire Julio Herrera Velutini, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2026. The deal, reported by Tyler Pager, pays Habba $10 million a year plus bonuses. Habba signed the contract within days of Concord Partners' registration, while she was still serving as acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey and as a special government employee senior adviser to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, with an office inside the Justice Department. She formally joined the company on Jan. 1, 2026, after a panel of federal judges ruled her New Jersey appointment unlawful.

Two weeks after Habba joined the firm, President Trump granted Herrera Velutini a "full and unconditional pardon" on Jan. 15, 2026 for a misdemeanor campaign finance violation, issuing an amended clemency order five days later specifically covering the offense. Herrera Velutini had been charged in August 2022 in an alleged scheme to bribe then-Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vazquez to remove a financial regulator investigating his bank. Under a plea deal negotiated by attorney Christopher Kise, a former Florida solicitor general who has also represented Trump, he pleaded guilty in August 2025 to a single misdemeanor campaign finance charge. The Times also reported that Isabela Herrera donated $3.5 million to a Trump-aligned super PAC around the time of the clemency push.

Habba denied any connection between her employment and the pardon. "Any insinuation that my employment, all of which has been vetted and disclosed to the D.O.J., had anything to do with securing a pardon is false and defamatory," she wrote on X, adding that the Times "already credited another capable attorney," a reference to Kise. A Justice Department spokesperson said Habba did not discuss clemency with anyone at the department, and a White House official said she played no part in the decision and that the standard pardon review process, run through the White House Counsel's Office and the DOJ, was followed. The Daily Beast carried the report with the contract figure and the pardon timeline in full.

The story carries additional context reported by the Times: Habba married Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon, 29, in September at Manhattan's Waldorf Astoria, at a wedding attended by Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel and White House counsel Will Scharf. The Times previously reported Mildon's ties to the Maduro regime through contracts with Alex Saab, and that U.S. officials had considered sanctioning him. The Trump administration captured Nicolás Maduro in a January raid on his Caracas residence; he faces narcoterrorism charges in New York. Daily Mail coverage of the story gave prominent play to the wedding and the Mildon connection alongside the core Times findings.

Why it matters

The timeline sits at the center of the story's significance: Habba signed her contract with the pardoned billionaire's family while still a serving federal prosecutor and DOJ adviser, joined the company on Jan. 1, and the pardon followed on Jan. 15. Critics of the arrangement are likely to argue the sequence raises questions about access and influence surrounding clemency decisions, while Habba, the DOJ and the White House maintain that she had no role in the pardon and that her employment was vetted and disclosed. The case also touches on the use of presidential pardon power in a foreign bribery-adjacent matter, the movement of officials between government and private employment, and the reported financial ties of a figure close to the administration to individuals connected to the Maduro regime, which the administration itself has targeted militarily and criminally.

How it is being covered

According to ground.news, the story is carried by 12 outlets with a left/centre/right split of 56/33/11 percent, and factuality is rated high for 5 of 9 rated sources. Coverage skews away from right-leaning outlets, and ground.news flags an "Only 11% Right" coverage note, though it does not classify the gap as a formal blindspot. The Daily Beast frames the story around the $50 million deal and the pardon timeline, while the Daily Mail centers its report on the Times findings and Habba's marriage to Mildon.

What to watch

Watch for any congressional or DOJ inspector general inquiry into whether Habba's employment and the clemency decision were reviewed under conflict-of-interest rules, and whether the Justice Department elaborates on what "vetted and disclosed" meant in practice. Watch also for follow-up reporting on the $3.5 million super PAC donation and its timing relative to the clemency push, on the terms of Herrera Velutini's amended pardon order, and on any sanctions action involving Mildon, whose Maduro-linked ties U.S. officials previously weighed penalizing. Legal challenges or ethics complaints connected to Habba's tenure as acting U.S. attorney, already the subject of the federal judges' ruling, could also intersect with the new reporting.

By the numbers

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