President Trump on Saturday strongly criticized his former lawyer, Alina Habba Mildon, saying it was “totally obnoxious and outrageous” for her to enter into a $50 million deal for work with a billionaire Venezuelan family seeking a pardon from the president.
Mrs. Mildon, while working as a senior adviser at the Justice Department, signed on last year as an extraordinarily well-compensated general counsel for a company started by the daughter of Julio Herrera Velutini, who was granted the pardon by Mr. Trump weeks later.
At a Halloween party on Saturday at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., 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.”
Mrs. Mildon, who served as a personal lawyer to Mr. Trump and then briefly as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, signed a four-year contract to represent the family. It is unclear if the deal can be terminated early.
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.”
The contract calls for the Herrera family to pay Mrs. Mildon $10 million a year for four years, along with a variety of bonuses. In total, she was guaranteed more than $50 million, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Times.
Mrs. Mildon formally began her work for the family on Jan. 1. Weeks later, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Herrera a full and unconditional pardon for a misdemeanor campaign finance violation. Mr. Herrera had faced felony bribery charges but struck an unusually lenient plea deal in 2025. Mrs. Mildon previously said she played no role in Mr. Herrera’s pardon.
She did not respond to a request for comment about Mr. Trump’s criticism on Saturday.
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