People familiar with contract services of former Trump attorney Alina Habba say she was granted a plush private job specifically to help a billionaire get a pardon.
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The New York Times reports prominent Venezuelan Julio Herrera Velutini was seeking clemency from President Donald Trump, and he got it not long after his daughter gave Trump ally Habba a very lucrative job.
“A billionaire banker from a prominent Venezuelan family, Herrera faced felony bribery charges in the United States and struck an unusually lenient plea deal in August 2025 for a misdemeanor campaign finance violation. But he felt that reduced charge was still a stain on his record,” said Times reporter Tyler Pager.
So, Herrera got his lawyer, Christopher M. Kise — the former Florida solicitor general who was on Trump’s personal legal team — to help arrange a plea for clemency. His 27-year-old daughter, Isabela Herrera, an American citizen, donated $3.5 million to a super PAC tied to Trump. But as of last fall, the pardon was nowhere to be found.
“Then the Herrera family hired Alina Habba, who had been one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers and at the time was an adviser at the Justice Department,” reports Pager. “They offered her $10 million a year for four years along with a range of bonuses. In total, including bonuses, she was guaranteed more than $50 million over four years, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times.”
Under the agreement, Habba would become general counsel at Concord Partners, a company that Herrera founded in late 2025 in Florida. But the Times reports the company has no public profile and its business remains unclear “even to some people associated with the Herrera business empire.”
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Habba finalized her deal days after the company was registered, but at the time she was also serving as a senior adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi — complete with a DOJ office and a security detail.
“She formally began her work for Concord Partners on Jan. 1. Weeks later, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Herrera a full and unconditional pardon,” reports Pager. “ … The sequence of events raises questions about how Mr. Herrera secured the pardon and who might have helped him. People familiar with Ms. Habba’s contract said they believed that she was brought in to help with Mr. Herrera’s push for a pardon and expressed surprise at the scale of the compensation.”
Habba told the Times that she denies any role in the pardon, and she says her employment with Herrera was disclosed to and approved by the Justice Department. She added that she was serving as a “special government employee” at the time she penned her contract, and that allows individuals to work for the federal government for up to 130days and maintain outside employment with conflict-of-interest restrictions.
In 2022, Herrera was charged for his role in a scheme to bribe Gov. Wanda Vázquez of Puerto Rico to dismiss a regulator who was investigating the bank. The Times reports Herrera’s lawyer, Kise, Vázquez and a former F.B.I. agent also pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. All three were pardoned by Mr. Trump at the same time, shortly before they were scheduled to be sentenced for the misdemeanor charges.
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