Alina Habba Got a $50M Deal From a Billionaire's Family — Then He Got a Trump Pardon

Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-Italian billionaire banker charged with bribing Puerto Rico's governor, mounted an aggressive and expensive campaign to secure a presidential pardon after pleading guilty to a reduced misdemeanor charge in August 2025. His efforts included hiring former Trump personal attorney Christopher Kise and funneling $3.5 million through his daughter Isabela to a Trump-aligned super PAC — but the pardon didn't materialize.

The breakthrough came when the Herrera family hired Alina Habba, a close Trump ally then serving simultaneously as a senior Justice Department adviser overseeing U.S. attorneys. Isabela Herrera set up a Florida shell company called Concord Partners in late October 2025, and the family offered Habba $10 million per year for four years, plus bonuses — a guaranteed total exceeding $50 million. Habba formalized the deal days after the company was registered and began work on January 1. Weeks later, Trump granted Herrera a full and unconditional pardon, along with former Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez and a former FBI agent, all just before their scheduled sentencing.

Habba was operating as a "special government employee" at the time — a classification permitting up to 130 days of federal service with outside employment allowed under conflict-of-interest rules. She denies any involvement in the pardon, and the Justice Department says she spoke to no one about it. A White House official insists a formal review process involving the White House Counsel's Office was followed. Concord Partners has no public profile, and even some people within the Herrera business empire say they don't know what it does.

The timing has raised sharp questions inside legal and government circles. People familiar with Habba's contract said they believed she was brought in specifically to help with the pardon push and expressed astonishment at the compensation scale. The deal came at a personally turbulent moment for Habba: she had just been forced out as U.S. attorney in New Jersey after federal judges ruled her Trump-appointed tenure unlawful, and her second marriage was collapsing. Shortly after the pardon was issued, she began dating Turkish investor Turhan Mildon; they married last month in a ceremony attended by Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI Director Kash Patel, and White House Counsel Will Scharf.

The Herrera case is a prominent example of what has become a full-blown pardon industry in Trump's second term, with wealthy defendants paying hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to fixers, lobbyists, and well-connected lawyers promising access or influence. The Herrera family itself is centuries old — their family office, Banvelca, dates to 1781 — with estates and castles across Venezuela, Spain, the Canary Islands, and Germany.