New Jersey’s lawyer-ethics office has charged Trump’s former personal lawyer Alina Habba with steering a young golf club waitress into a $15,000 secrecy deal that favored the club, where Habba was a paying member.
Story Highlights
- New Jersey’s Office of Attorney Ethics filed a 23-page disciplinary complaint against Alina Habba Mildon on Tuesday, November 10.
- The complaint says she talked a 21-year-old Bedminster club waitress into dropping her own lawyer and taking $15,000 on terms that favored the club.
- Habba says she was a neutral go-between, and her lawyer calls the claims narrow.
- A hearing comes next, and penalties could range from a warning to losing her law license.
- The complaint says Habba befriended the waitress through texts and one-on-one talks, then talked her into dropping her own lawyer.
Ethics Office Files Formal Charges
On Tuesday, November 10, New Jersey’s Office of Attorney Ethics, the arm of the state Supreme Court that investigates and prosecutes lawyers accused of misconduct, filed a formal complaint against Alina Habba, who goes by Alina Habba Mildon. The office says she had a conflict of interest when she helped settle a harassment claim brought by a waitress at President Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. These are charges, not findings, and Habba has not been disciplined.
Alina Habba is having a very bad week.
She just lost her $50 million contract with the family of a Venezuelan banker Trump pardoned weeks after she was hired. The company cited a “failure to perform duties.” She’ll reportedly keep the $8 million signing bonus and $6.5 million… pic.twitter.com/3H4ABUXV1V
— Dittie (@DittiePE) November 11, 2026
Habba became Trump’s personal lawyer soon after that 2021 settlement and later represented him in several major court fights. In March 2025, Trump named her the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey. She stepped down in December 2025 after a panel of federal judges ruled she had served in that job unlawfully.
What The Complaint Says She Did
The waitress, Alice Bianco, was 21 when she accused a club manager of a pattern of sexual harassment. According to the complaint, Habba befriended her through texts and one-on-one talks. Bianco then dropped her own lawyer and accepted a $15,000 settlement on terms the complaint calls “favorable to the golf club and unfavorable to Bianco.”
The complaint says Habba “convinced her that she should settle the dispute because Bianco’s perceived past indiscretions might be made public.” Bianco also signed a nondisclosure agreement, a contract that bars a person from talking about what happened. The ethics office says that agreement is illegal under New Jersey law, which has banned secrecy clauses in workplace harassment settlements since 2019. The complaint lists several violations, including a conflict of interest and “divided loyalties,” because Habba was a dues-paying member of the club whose manager was accused.
Habba’s Response
Habba denies any conflict. In an October 2024 interview with ethics officials, she said she saw herself as a neutral third party and that her “job was to make everybody happy and make this move along so that everyone could get along with their lives.” In a 2023 statement, she said she always acts ethically. In one message to Bianco, she wrote, “I really cant give legal advice.”
The office’s director, Johanna Barba Jones, rejected that defense, finding that Habba “could not have been a neutral in this matter.” Habba’s lawyer, Kim D. Ringler, called the complaint “the first step in a long process.” Ringler said the claims are narrow and that the defense will work toward a “fair and proportionate result.”
Trump weighed in on Truth Social in the early hours of Wednesday, November 11, after reports on the case. “What they fail to say is that it did not involve President Trump, a rather important omission. FAKE NEWS!!!” he wrote.
What Happens Next
A special ethics adjudicator, a judge-like official who hears lawyer discipline cases, will hold a hearing and then recommend a penalty. Possible penalties range from an admonition, the mildest public warning, to disbarment, which would end her right to practice law. The New Jersey Supreme Court makes the final decision.
The case grew out of Bianco’s own fight. A new lawyer for Bianco sued the club and Habba, saying Habba had tricked her into the secrecy deal. Bianco won a larger settlement from the club, and Habba later settled with her for $400,000, according to reports. That lawyer took her concerns to the ethics office in December 2023, starting the three-year inquiry.
The charges land at a rough time for Habba. Reports on Tuesday, November 10, said she had been fired the week before by Concord Partners, a family company that had given her a $50 million legal contract weeks before Trump pardoned the family’s patriarch, Venezuelan banker Julio Herrera Velutini. Trump had called that deal “totally obnoxious and outrageous.”
Sources:
inquirer.com, nytimes.com, yahoo.com, rawstory.com, nbcnews.com, foley.com
