Trump News: Alina Habba Fired From $50M Contract
The latest trump news is a firing that closes one of the strangest chapters of the second Trump administration. Alina Habba Mildon, one of President Donald Trump’s former lawyers, was fired last week by the family company that gave her a $50 million contract weeks before Trump granted a pardon to the family’s patriarch. Concord Partners, a Florida company founded by the daughter of Venezuelan banker Julio Herrera Velutini, terminated Habba Mildon’s contract in a letter dated November 4, citing a “failure to perform duties,” according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The firing came days after Trump publicly denounced the deal as outrageous and said he had told Habba Mildon that he did not want her to be paid.
The end of the contract does not mean the end of the money. Habba Mildon will keep about $14.5 million already paid to her under the arrangement, including an $8 million signing bonus and about $6.5 million in additional payments. The four-year agreement had promised her $10 million a year plus bonuses, a total of more than $50 million, for serving as general counsel to a company created by the family of a man who was, at the time she signed, facing federal charges. She signed the deal in late 2025 while serving as the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, and she began working for the company on January 1, 2026, while still holding a senior job at the Justice Department. Two weeks later, Trump granted Herrera a full presidential pardon.
The firing was first reported by The New York Times on Tuesday, November 10. Habba Mildon declined to comment to the Times on her firing, though a person close to her said she plans to take legal action. The episode has drawn the attention of congressional Democrats, who are investigating the circumstances of the pardon, and it has raised fresh questions about the intersection of Trump’s personal legal circle, his Justice Department, and the pardon power.
The $50 Million Deal — and the $14.5 Million She Keeps
The numbers at the centre of the story are extraordinary by any measure. The agreement between Habba Mildon and Concord Partners was a four-year deal worth more than $50 million, structured to pay her $10 million a year plus bonuses. It was the size of the deal, as much as its timing, that made it a political story when The New York Times first reported its terms in October.
Habba Mildon signed the agreement in late 2025, days after Concord Partners was registered in Florida. The company had been established by Isabela Herrera, the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan banker who was then facing federal charges. The deal made Habba Mildon the company’s general counsel, a role she began on January 1, 2026. Under the terms reported by the Times, she was to receive an $8 million signing bonus, $10 million a year in salary, and additional bonuses that would have taken the total value of the four-year arrangement past $50 million.
The firing ends that arrangement, but it does not claw back what has already been paid. According to the Times, Habba Mildon will keep about $14.5 million from the deal: the $8 million signing bonus and about $6.5 million in payments already made to her. A separate company update said her duties ended effective November 1, and that she would retain the $6.5 million previously paid to her. She will walk away with roughly $14.5 million for less than a year of work, while the company avoids paying the remaining tens of millions the contract had promised. The company’s stated reason for the firing was a “failure to perform duties,” but the correspondence did not identify particular assignments, missed deadlines or incidents behind the allegation, describing the failure only in general terms.
A Contract Signed While She Held a Justice Department Job
What made the deal remarkable was not only its size but the job Habba Mildon held when she signed it. At the time she agreed to become Concord Partners’ general counsel, she was serving as the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, the top federal prosecutor in the state. She had been appointed to that role by the Trump administration, and a federal judge had already ruled that her appointment was unlawful. By the time she started her employment with the Herrera family, a court had disqualified her from serving as United States attorney. She resigned on December 8 and was appointed a senior adviser to the attorney general the same day, and she was still in that role, serving as a special government employee, when she started at Concord Partners on January 1.
The sequence placed her at the centre of two worlds at once. On one side, she was a senior Justice Department official, advising the attorney general and working inside the department that had prosecuted Herrera. On the other, she was the general counsel of a company created by Herrera’s daughter, receiving millions of dollars from the family of a man whose federal case was still a live matter. She has consistently denied that her employment had any connection to the pardon, saying she was never paid for a pardon, never met with anyone at the White House or the Justice Department about a pardon, and never did any work for a pardon for anyone. The Justice Department has also said that Habba had not spoken to anyone about a pardon. But the appearance of the arrangement drew scrutiny from the start, because government ethics rules are designed to prevent officials from taking private payments from people with interests before their agencies, and the combination of a Justice Department job and a multimillion-dollar contract from the family of a federal defendant was, to critics, a textbook conflict of interest.
The Pardon at the Center of the Story
The pardon is the event that turned a lucrative contract into a national story. Julio Herrera Velutini, the Venezuelan banker whose daughter founded Concord Partners, had faced federal charges arising from an alleged 2022 scheme to bribe the governor of Puerto Rico. In August 2025, he reached a plea agreement that reduced his charges to a single misdemeanor campaign finance violation, a far lighter outcome than the felony bribery charges he had originally faced. Then, on January 15, 2026, two weeks after Habba Mildon began working for his daughter’s company, President Trump granted Herrera a full and unconditional pardon.
The timing of the pardon, coming so soon after Habba Mildon joined the family company, is what drew the attention of investigators and the press. Habba Mildon has denied any role in the pardon, and the Justice Department has said she did not discuss it with anyone. But the sequence — a $50 million contract for the president’s former lawyer, followed within weeks by a pardon for the family paying her — was enough to prompt congressional Democrats to open an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the pardon. The family’s $3.5 million political donation and the opaque structure of the contract have added to the questions, with critics asking whether the arrangement amounted to a payment for access, influence, or something more. Trump has used the pardon power aggressively in his second term, and the Herrera pardon was one of the most controversial of them.
Trump News Today: The President’s Public Break
The firing also marks the end of a public break between Trump and his former lawyer. When the Times first reported the terms of the contract in October, Trump moved quickly to distance himself from it. Speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on October 31, he called the arrangement “totally obnoxious and outrageous” and “not acceptable,” saying it was unacceptable for one of his former lawyers to secure a $50 million contract for herself while working at the Justice Department. He said he had told Habba Mildon that he did not want her to be paid, and he made clear that he regarded the deal as an embarrassment to his administration.
The president’s criticism was striking because Habba Mildon had been one of his closest legal advisers. She represented him in a series of high-profile cases before he returned to the White House, and she was one of the most visible members of his legal team. For Trump to denounce her contract in such blunt terms was a measure of how damaging he considered the story to be, and how quickly he wanted to put distance between himself and it. The firing, coming days after Trump’s criticism, has raised the question of whether the president’s words played a role in the company’s decision. The company’s letter cited a failure to perform duties, and its separate update did not attribute the decision to Trump’s comments. But the timing is hard to ignore: Trump denounced the deal on October 31, and within days the company had moved to end it.
The Investigations Now Under Way
The firing does not end the scrutiny of the episode. Congressional Democrats are investigating the circumstances of the pardon, and the questions they are asking go beyond the contract itself. They want to know who was involved in the decision to pardon Herrera, what role, if any, Habba Mildon played, and whether the family’s political donations or the contract with Habba Mildon had any bearing on the outcome. The investigation is part of a broader Democratic effort to examine the use of the pardon power in the second Trump administration, and the Herrera case, with its $50 million contract and its two-week timeline, is one of the most prominent examples. The investigation will also examine the ethics questions raised by the contract, including whether the department’s ethics rules were followed when she signed the deal while serving as acting United States attorney and started work for the company while still a senior adviser to the attorney general.
What Happens Next
The immediate next step is the legal action that a person close to Habba Mildon said she plans to take. She has not said publicly what form that action will take, or what claims she intends to bring against Concord Partners, but the most likely course is a challenge to the firing itself, arguing that the company’s claim of a failure to perform duties is unfounded and that she is owed the remaining value of the contract. If she sues, the case could bring more details of the arrangement into the open, including the terms of the contract, the work she did for the company, and the circumstances of her departure.
The congressional investigation will also continue, and it is likely to produce more information about the pardon and the contract in the months ahead. Democrats in Congress have made clear that they regard the episode as a serious matter, and they have the tools to pursue it, including subpoenas and hearings. For Trump, the episode is a reminder of the risks of the circle around him: Habba Mildon was one of his most trusted lawyers, and her contract became a political liability within weeks of being reported. His public denunciation of the deal may have limited the damage, but the firing, and the $14.5 million she will keep, ensure that the story will not disappear quickly. The latest trump news is that the contract is over, the firing is done, and the questions about the pardon, the money and the ethics of it all are only just beginning.
*Source: The New York Times*