Julio Herrera Velutini, a billionaire who pleaded down from a felony bribery charge to a misdemeanor campaign finance violation last year, decided he wanted a pardon. First, his daughter donated $3.5 million to the MAGA Inc. super PAC, but that didn’t produce the desired result. His family’s next move appears to have worked: a mysterious “general counsel” job worth more than $50 million for Alina Habba, Trump’s former personal lawyer, who at the time was a senior official in Trump’s Justice Department.
The New York Times explains:
Then the Herrera family hired Alina Habba, who had been one of Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers and at the time was an adviser at the Justice Department. They offered her $10 million a year for four years along with a range of bonuses. In total, including bonuses, she was guaranteed more than $50 million over four years, according to interviews and documents obtained by The New York Times. Under the agreement, Ms. Habba would become general counsel at Concord Partners, a company that Ms. Herrera set up in late October 2025 in Florida. The company has no public profile and its business remains unclear even to some people associated with the Herrera business empire. Ms. Habba finalized her deal days after the company was registered, while she was still serving as U.S. attorney in New Jersey. She formally began her work for Concord Partners on Jan. 1. Weeks later, Mr. Trump granted Mr. Herrera a full and unconditional pardon.
Both Habba and the Trump administration have denied any wrongdoing, of course, but at this point we all know how the presidential-pardon sausage gets made. Ironically, the case against Herrera centered on a $300,000 campaign contribution to the former governor of Puerto Rico—who, by the way, endorsed Trump in 2020—in exchange for firing a financial regulator who was investigating him.
Trump also pardoned the former governor, making this an ouroboros of corruption. And when Trump learned about Habba’s windfall, he reportedly erupted—and, according to the Times, told aides she should donate part of the money to his presidential library or another Trump-related entity. Selling access to a pardon is apparently fine; selling it without the boss getting his cut is another matter.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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