Just When I Thought We Were Done with Alina Habba, She’s Back in the News for a Doozy of a Reason

One of the late, unlamented Whitey Bulger's most notorious crimes was the seizure of a South Boston liquor store. From CBS News:[Stephen] Rakes and his wife spent $100,000 to open Stippo's Liquor Store on the rotary on Old Colony Ave. in 1984. But a short time later, according to Rakes, Bulger, Stephen Flemmi and Kevin Weeks threatened to kill him if he didn't turn over the store to them. According to investigators, Bulger wanted to use the store as the new headquarters for his criminal enterprise. Rakes said Bulger put $67,000 in cash on his table in exchange for the store. "They gave me a bag of money and said we own the store and started laughing," he told WBZ-TV's Karen Anderson in April 2012. "I'm pretty angry still about what happened close to thirty years ago, and I want to make sure Bulger gets justice. I'll be satisfied when he's in jail and never coming out." In 2003, a judge ordered Bulger to pay Rakes $28 million. Rakes wanted the government to go after what he believes is Bulger's hidden fortune.(Rakes never saw full restitution. He was poisoned in 2013, in what prosecutors said was an unrelated episode. A 72-year old man named William Camuti, who owed Rakes a substantial amount of money, was convicted of lacing Rakes' coffee with cyanide and sentenced to life.)The technique never changes. In its most recent iteration, it comes, not in a Southie liquor store, but from Mar-a-Lago, complete with rubbery shrimp. Let us explain.Alina Habba became famous as the official parking-lot spokeswoman for the defense during E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit. The president then tried to muscle Habba into being a U.S. attorney in New Jersey. A federal appeals court removed her from the post, but she seems to have landed on her feet. From The New York Times: Julio Herrera Velutini really wanted a pardon. A billionaire banker from a prominent Venezuelan family, Mr. 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. So Mr. Herrera deployed his lawyer, Christopher M. Kise, the former Florida solicitor general who was on President Trump’s personal legal team, to help with a plea for clemency. His 27-year-old daughter, Isabela Herrera, who is an American citizen, donated $3.5 million to a super PAC tied to Mr. Trump. But as of last fall, the pardon remained elusive.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. 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.Sweet deal, considering that Trump had been convicted at trial and that Habba was booted from a cushy seat on the federal nickel. Unfortunately, it seemed to engage the president's most primal appetite—namely, "Money? Me some too, yes?" From The New York Times:At a Halloween party on Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Mr. Trump tore into Mrs. Mildon when asked about the contract, calling it “not acceptable.” “I thought it was terrible,” he told reporters. “I told her, and I said, ‘I don’t want her paid.’ I thought we had somebody speak to the people that did it, and she used her relationship to do that. And it was far too much.”When Mr. Trump first learned about Mrs. Mildon’s arrangement from an article in The New York Times, he erupted and told aides and allies that Mrs. Mildon should donate a portion of the money to his future presidential library or another Trump-related entity. Mr. Trump said Saturday that he did not necessarily expect Mrs. Mildon to make a donation to the library, but suggested that someone should. “I expect maybe the people,” he said of the Herrera family. “I don’t know if anybody wants to make it. But it’s unacceptable what she did.”(Mildon is Habba's married name. She married Turhan Mildon, a Turkish billionaire. Habba apparently stormed the Oval Office claiming that then-Kennedy Center president Ric Grenell failed to deposit a large donation that Mr. Mildon had sent to buy influen ... er ... help refurbish the Center.)Mrs. Mildon, who had served earlier as a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump and then briefly as U.S. attorney in New Jersey, signed a four-year contract, and it is unclear whether the family could terminate it early.Which way are you betting?