Donald Trump pardoned Venezuelan-Italian banker Julio Herrera Velutini on 15 January 2026. Two weeks earlier, on 1 January, Alina Habba, Trump's former personal lawyer and a senior Justice Department adviser, had started as general counsel of Concord Partners, a Florida company the banker's daughter set up in late October 2025. Her contract paid $10 million a year for four years plus bonuses and, including those bonuses, guaranteed her more than $50 million, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times.
The family made the deal while Herrera Velutini was still seeking a pardon after pleading guilty in August 2025 to a misdemeanour campaign finance count. His daughter, Isabela Herrera, had already given $3.5 million to MAGA Inc., the pro-Trump super PAC, and pledged $2.5 million toward Trump's White House ballroom, paying $835,000 of it on 14 October 2025 according to records obtained by The Washington Post.
People familiar with Habba's contract believed she was brought in to help the pardon effort and were surprised by its size, the Times reported. Habba said her employment was vetted by and disclosed to the Justice Department and that any suggestion it had anything to do with securing a pardon is false. The department said she never discussed a pardon with anyone, and a White House official said she had no role and pointed to a review by the White House Counsel's Office and the department.
The case
Prosecutors in the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section charged Herrera Velutini in 2022 with conspiracy, federal programs bribery and honest services wire fraud, alongside former Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vázquez Garced and former FBI agent Mark Rossini. They alleged that Vázquez took $300,000 in campaign contributions from Herrera Velutini in return for agreeing to remove George Joyner, the commissioner whose office was examining Herrera Velutini's bank, Bancrédito. The bank is now in liquidation.
Christopher Kise, formerly a member of Trump's personal legal team, negotiated a plea deal in May 2025 that a senior Trump appointee authorised over the objections of career prosecutors, the Times reported in January. The felony counts were dropped, Herrera Velutini pleaded guilty that August to one misdemeanour, and he still faced up to a year in prison at a sentencing set for late January 2026.
The pardon warrant covers United States v. Vazquez-Garced, case 3:22-CR-342. A corrected grant dated 20 January named the misdemeanour charges that the first had left out. Prosecutors moved to dismiss and close the case, and Herrera Velutini's representatives announced on 29 January that it had been closed.
The money
Isabela Herrera made her first MAGA Inc. contribution, $2.5 million, while her father faced the felony counts in December 2024, and gave $1 million more in July 2025. A White House official said the donations had nothing to do with the pardon. Her ballroom pledge came a month after the plea.
Bancrédito Holding Corp. hired Ballard Partners in November 2025 and paid it $630,000 by the end of December to lobby White House officials on banking regulation, with Ballard working as a subcontractor to Kise. Kise himself lobbied for the pardon, according to the Times.
Campaign Legal Center alleges that the MAGA Inc. money was Herrera Velutini's. In a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission on 17 February 2026, the group said he routed $3.5 million through his daughter because foreign nationals are barred from contributing to US political committees. It described her as a young independent financial consultant of apparently modest means whose only earlier federal contribution was $20, to Pete Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign.
Habba
Habba has represented Trump since 2021. She led his defence at E. Jean Carroll's second defamation trial, which ended with an $83.3 million verdict against him on 26 January 2024, and appeared for him in the New York civil fraud trial. Save America, his political action committee, paid her firm more than $486,000 in July 2022. Trump named her counsellor to the president in December 2024.
Habba was sworn in as interim US attorney for New Jersey on 28 March 2025. A federal judge ruled in August 2025 that she was serving without lawful authority, and Bondi kept her in the job under a "special attorney" designation. After the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the disqualification, Habba resigned on 8 December 2025 and became Bondi's senior adviser for US attorneys. She held special government employee status, which permits limited federal service alongside private work.
The Times describes Habba as a senior adviser to Bondi overseeing US attorneys when she finalised the Concord deal days after the company's registration, with a Justice Department office and a US Marshals protective detail. Her public title at that point was acting US attorney for New Jersey, and her appointment as senior adviser was announced on 8 December.
Habba and the Tate brothers
Habba told Andrew Tate she was "a big fan" when the two appeared on Benny Johnson's podcast in January 2025, while Romanian prosecutors were pursuing accusations that Tate and his brother Tristan had trafficked women and forced them to make pornographic videos. Trump had named her counsellor to the president a month earlier. On the Epoch Times programme American Thought Leaders on 13 March 2025, Habba called the allegations against Tate "stomach-churning" and said the courts should decide them. She was sworn in as New Jersey's interim US attorney 15 days later.
Ric Grenell, Trump's special envoy, raised the brothers' case with Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Hurezeanu said, and US officials asked Romania by phone to return the brothers' passports and let them travel while proceedings continued, the Financial Times reported. Romania lifted the travel restrictions that month and the brothers flew to Florida by private jet. Trump said he knew nothing about the case.
US Marshals arrested both brothers in Miami on 18 July 2026 on a sealed warrant tied to a request from British prosecutors to extradite them. The Crown Prosecution Service's new charges against Andrew Tate include seven further counts of rape, three counts of trafficking women for rape, which the charges call arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation, and 19 counts over child rape media, prosecuted as indecent images of a child, and extreme pornography. Tristan Tate faces two counts of rape and three of trafficking for rape, and the UK cases now name seven alleged victims. The brothers deny the charges. Their lawyer, Joseph McBride, said the charges were meant to derail defamation suits the brothers are bringing in the US. Secretary of State Marco Rubio holds the final decision on extradition.
Concord Partners
Concord Partners has no public profile, and its business is unclear even to some people inside the Herrera business empire, according to the Times. Its base pay to Habba totals $40 million over four years, and bonuses bring the guaranteed total above $50 million. Isabela Herrera took over leadership of Banvelca, one of the Herrera Velutini family's oldest holding companies, in July 2026.
The law
Under 18 USC 203(c), a special government employee such as Habba is barred from paid representation in a matter involving specific parties only where she took part in it personally and substantially in her government role. The Justice Department's approval of her Concord job would record the duties she disclosed, the date and whether Herrera Velutini's pending clemency request was considered.
Trump made the final decision under a process a White House spokeswoman says runs through the White House Counsel, the Justice Department and the president. Habba's messages to Trump, White House officials and department staff from November 2025 to January 2026 would confirm or contradict the department's statement that she never discussed a pardon.
The federal bribery statute, 18 USC 201, bars a public official from corruptly seeking or accepting anything of value in return for being influenced in an official act. Habba had no power to grant a pardon, so a case against her would depend on evidence that she carried value to someone who did. Concord's work records would show what Habba did for a guarantee of more than $50 million.
House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a staff report on 21 August 2026 alleging a pay-to-play clemency system across cases unconnected to Habba; as the minority party they have no subpoena power. Senate Democrats introduced the No Payoffs For Pardons Act on 3 August 2026, which would require clemency recipients to report covered benefits given to covered recipients.
Tyler Pager's Times investigation, published on 20 October 2026, is the source of the $50 million figure. Within hours one aggregation had reversed the direction of the money, describing the pardon as coming after the billionaire paid Habba $50 million, and commentators on X called the arrangement a bribe.
