Habba says she was a part-time government employee who disclosed the job to the Justice Department, and denies any role in the pardon.
A Florida company set up by the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan billionaire banker, hired Alina Habba as general counsel, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, Oct. 20. The Times says she finalized the deal days after the company was registered in late October 2025 and calls her a senior adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi at the time; but she took that job only on Dec. 8, 2025 (Reuters, AP), so in late October she was still the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey. She started at the company on Jan. 1, 2026; Trump pardoned Herrera on Jan. 15 and amended the pardon on Jan. 20, per Justice Department records.
The real number. $10 million a year for four years plus bonuses, guaranteeing more than $50 million, per documents the Times obtained: the contract's value, not money shown to have been paid.
What was pardoned. Herrera was charged in 2022 in a scheme to bribe Puerto Rico's governor at the time, Wanda Vázquez, to drop a regulator's investigation of his bank. In August 2025 he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor campaign-finance charge, a deal the Times calls unusually lenient; the pardon came shortly before sentencing.
Others who pushed. His lawyer Christopher Kise, once on Trump's personal legal team, lobbied for clemency, and his daughter Isabela Herrera gave $3.5 million to a super PAC tied to Trump, per the Times.
The other side. Habba says the Justice Department approved the job and she had no role in the pardon. The department says she spoke to no one about a pardon, and a White House official told the Times she had nothing to do with it. People familiar with her contract told the Times they believed she was brought in to help win the pardon.
What federal bribery law would need to make this a crime
- A corrupt exchange: something of value tied to a specific official act (18 U.S.C. §201)
- Arranging a meeting is not an official act; using a DOJ post to shape a decision can be (McDonnell, 2016)
- Against a president: in Trump v. United States (2024, footnote 3) the Supreme Court said prosecutors may cite the public record of an official act and evidence of what was demanded or accepted for it, but not testimony or private records probing the act itself