Former Trump lawyer Alina Habba has lost her $50 million contract with a pardoned billionaire’s family firm after the president blasted the arrangement as outrageous and said he did not want her paid.
Concord Partners terminated Alina Habba Mildon in a Nov. 4 letter that cited a “failure to perform duties,” ending a four-year general counsel package that had guaranteed her more than $50 million. The Florida-based firm was established by the daughter of Venezuelan banker Julio Herrera Velutini, who received a full presidential pardon earlier this year.
The split came days after President Trump denounced the deal at his Mar-a-Lago club on Halloween and made clear he wanted the payments stopped. The New York Post reported the firing and the president’s public rebuke of the arrangement.
Trump did not say much when reporters pressed him on the contract.
He told them:
"I thought it was totally obnoxious and outrageous, and it’s not acceptable,"
He added that he had delivered the message directly.
"I told her, and I said, ‘I don’t want her paid,’"
Trump also said he had someone speak to the people behind the deal. He had already urged aides and allies that the Herrera family should stop the payments and suggested Habba Mildon donate some of the money to his future presidential library or another Trump-related entity.
The president’s stance put immediate pressure on a lucrative private arrangement that had already drawn scrutiny because of its timing around a high-profile pardon.
Habba Mildon signed the Concord Partners agreement in late October 2025 while she was still serving as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey. The deal called for $10 million in annual payments plus additional bonuses across four years.
A federal appeals court later ruled she had been unlawfully serving in that New Jersey post, forcing her resignation in December 2025. On Jan. 1, 2026, she began work for Concord Partners while serving as a senior adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Two weeks later, on Jan. 15, 2026, Trump granted Julio Herrera Velutini a full and unconditional pardon. Herrera had reached a plea deal in August 2025, pleading guilty to a misdemeanor campaign finance violation after facing federal bribery charges tied to an alleged scheme involving Puerto Rico’s governor.
Habba Mildon had already rejected any claim that her private employment was connected to the clemency decision.
"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 declined to comment to the New York Times on the termination itself. The Times obtained the Nov. 4 letter from Concord Partners.
Even after the firing, Habba Mildon is positioned to keep substantial money already paid. She will reportedly retain an $8 million signing bonus and another $6.5 million received before the contract ended.
A person close to her said she was planning to pursue legal action over the termination. Concord Partners, for its part, hung the decision on her “failure to perform duties.”
A person close to the Herrera family offered a different explanation for the rupture. That person told the Times her priorities appeared to shift after she began dating Turkish investor Turhan Mildon. The two married in September.
Whatever the internal reason, the public sequence is plain. A former Trump personal lawyer secured a nine-figure private contract with a company backed by a newly pardoned billionaire’s family, the president called the pay package unacceptable, and the firm moved to end it.
Herrera’s path ran from serious federal exposure to a misdemeanor plea and then a full pardon. Habba Mildon’s path ran from Trump’s personal legal team into the Justice Department, an acting U.S. attorney role later ruled unlawful, a senior adviser post under Bondi, and a Concord general counsel seat that paid out millions before collapsing.
The contract’s start date and the pardon sat only two weeks apart. Habba Mildon insisted the Justice Department had vetted and received disclosure of the employment and that it had nothing to do with clemency. Trump still branded the compensation “obnoxious and outrageous” and said he did not want her paid.
Days after that Mar-a-Lago broadside, Concord Partners put the failure-to-perform language in writing and cut her loose. The firm’s letter did not need to litigate the politics. The president had already made the political judgment public.
Taxpayers and voters get to watch the incentives in real time: who gets hired, who gets paid, who gets pardoned, and who finally says the arrangement looks wrong. Trump drew that line in plain English. The contract did not survive it.
When a president calls a sweetheart pay deal unacceptable and the checks stop, accountability is doing the work the paperwork would not.
