Grenell calls the accusations "lies" and denies sending the text, dated May 3, 2025.
Axios reports that it obtained a text, dated May 3, 2025, in which Ric Grenell allegedly promised Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon access to Trump and VIP events in exchange for a donation to the Kennedy Center (the national performing-arts center in Washington, which Grenell then ran). Mildon is married to former Trump attorney Alina Habba. Grenell says he never sent the text.
“I will arrange the donation to Kennedy Centre [sic], and you'll be joining the VIP events and get close with the administration, even with POTUS.”text attributed to Ric Grenell
The money. Mildon says he wired $17.6 million at Grenell's direction to Texas Armament & Technology, a Houston defense firm. By his account, the money was to be split between a software deal in Congo and the Kennedy Center, which was to get nearly $6 million. Axios's own reporting cuts against part of that story: it says the wire came from Congo's finance ministry, not from Mildon's bank account as Habba first said. The reporting so far does not explain why a defense firm would handle a Kennedy Center gift, or what the Congo deal was. The same text pitched Mildon a role tied to Venezuela: “We need to make you the ‘American face’ down in V.” It does not say what that role would be.
Where it stands. Axios reports the text is now part of a White House counsel investigation that Trump ordered.
What federal bribery law needs beyond an access-for-donation text
- McDonnell v. United States (2016): arranging a meeting or a VIP invitation, alone, is not an "official act" under bribery law.
- Prosecutors would need a deal to act on a specific government matter; a gift steered to a third party like the Kennedy Center can still count.
- No federal decision tied to the Congo software deal has been identified in the reporting so far.