Alina Habba Quietly Pays to Make a Trump Hush-Money Deal Disappear

Donald Trump’s attorney Alina Habba recently escaped some legal trouble of her own.

On August 27, Habba settled a case brought against her by Alice Bianco, a former waitress at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, who had sued the club alleging that she was tricked into a hush-money deal after a supervisor sexually harassed her. Bianco also sued Habba, accusing her of betraying ethics by offering her legal advice while helping the club secure a $15,000 deal in exchange for her silence. Just a few weeks after the deal, Habba joined Trump’s legal team.

Bianco settled with the club in March, but Habba at the time was curiously left out of the deal—leaving her open to being sued.

According to New Jersey state law, an agreement like the one Habba set up “relating to a claim of discrimination, retaliation, or harassment” is “against public policy and unenforceable.” After attending mediation, Bianco and Habba agreed to an out-of-court settlement, but terms were not disclosed. It’s unclear how much Habba had to pay to make the lawsuit go away.

“I feel very proud. I’m very grateful to have my life back. This was a three-year-long fight that caused many sleepless nights,” Bianco told NOTUS. “I pray that she gets what she deserves.”

In the summer of 2021, Bianco sought legal counsel after getting fed up with her supervisor requiring her to “engage in sex as a quid pro quo for continued employment and protection,” according to her lawsuit. She hired an employment lawyer, and discussed her case with co-workers.

Habba then approached her as a concerned friend, offering to give her legal advice. Bianco didn’t know who Habba was, only having seen her as a member of the club who liked to sing at the club’s party nights, according to court documents. Habba convinced Bianco to drop her lawyer and hire her instead, then advised Bianco to accept the hush-money deal and keep the story out of the news.

When Bianco found out that she would owe taxes on the $15,000, she reached out to Habba via text message, who was unsympathetic.

“I can’t technically give u legal advice,” Habba texted back, according to the lawsuit documents. “That’s the problem.”

This would seem to explain why Habba was left out of the golf club’s settlement, with its lawyers saying that the club “cannot be held liable for Ms. Habba’s purported misrepresentations.” Bianco hired a new lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith, who helped the waitress put together a timeline showing how Habba kept Bianco quiet to impress Trump.

Habba persuaded Bianco to sign the $15,000 deal on August 21, 2021, and three weeks later, the attorney joined Trump’s legal team in his defamation lawsuit against a former Apprentice contestant, Summer Zervos.

“The timing could not be more definitive. She silenced me in order to be in Trump’s good graces,” Bianco said to NOTUS. “She is evil. She does the devil’s work for free. She acted as a caring guide in my life. She acted like she could help me, only to then completely ghost me and use me for her own success.”

Habba’s representation of Trump has brought her legal expertise into question, with her statements at times sounding like admissions of Trump’s guilt. In defending the former president, she seems to misunderstand legal terminology like “due process,” and during Trump’s E. Jean Carroll defamation trial was reprimanded 12 times in one day by the judge. Her case with Bianco is something entirely different, though: It calls into question her ethics and morals.

Even Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Donald Trump went too far by spending time with Laura Loomer this week.

On Sunday, Loomer said that if Kamala Harris wins the presidency, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center,” referring to Harris’s Indian heritage. Days later, Trump visited Philadelphia for the first presidential debate with Loomer right by his side—and he then traveled with her to a September 11 memorial event.

Now MAGA infighting is erupting in public view, with Greene leading the charge against Loomer.

“This is appalling and extremely racist. It does not represent who we are as Republicans or MAGA. This does not represent President Trump,” wrote Greene on X, hours after Trump visited the 9/11 Memorial with Loomer. “This type of behavior should not be tolerated ever.”

But Loomer didn’t roll over, hitting back at Greene with a slew of insults, calling the Georgia representative “extremely jealous and vindictive,” accusing Greene of saying the n-word and being antisemitic, and throwing some jokes about CrossFit into the mix. “She is not representative of the GOP or what it means to be America first.”

More than anything, Loomer slammed Greene for not being loyal enough to Donald. “Guess you gave up on Trump when he gave up on your boyfriend @SpeakerMcCarthy,” she wrote, asking the representative why she wasn’t at the debate.

Loomer’s racist tweet shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. In the past, she has referred to herself as a “proud Islamophobe” and “pro-white nationalism” and even claimed 9/11 was an inside job.

When Greene was asked by CNN if she had contacted Trump about the argument, she confirmed they had spoken but was sparse on the details. “I just felt like it was time to call it out. I think it’s wrong. We’re not a party of identity politics,” Greene said, stating that her party should focus on policy, “not attacking people for their race.”

Fellow Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has also chimed in, echoing Greene’s talking points and condemning Loomer’s comments on 9/11 and Harris. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is right. I don’t say that a lot,” said the South Carolina senator. “I think that the president would serve himself well to make sure this doesn’t become a bigger story.”

Bernie Moreno, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio, has been lying to his constituents not only about his background but about his plans to cash in on his time in office.

Moreno was in the national news this week after he helped to spread racist, right-wing rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating their neighbors’ pets.

Moreno, who was born in Colombia, claimed in a post on X that Haitian immigrants were “sucking up social services” in Springfield. “We need to deport illegals, not invite them to wreak havoc on our communities,” Moreno wrote, even though the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are not undocumented and are under temporary protected status.

Those aren’t the only lies that the MAGA Republican has told on the campaign trail, however. Apparently, Moreno has also been lying about his business dealings, repeatedly claiming that he’s sold all of his companies so he can head to Washington, D.C., with no hidden agenda.

“I’ve sold all my operating businesses,” Moreno said in November, according to the Statehouse News Bureau. “I wanted to go to Washington, D.C., free of any conflicts of interest. No individual stocks, no individual bonds, no corporate holdings. I’ve made that sacrifice to run for the U.S. Senate.”

During a December appearance on the Ola Hawatmeh Show, a conservative YouTube channel, Moreno repeated his claims. “This is what I do full time every single day. I’ve sold all my operating businesses. I believe that people go to D.C., they shouldn’t have conflicts of interest. I don’t own any operating companies, don’t have any individual stocks.” The title of the episode touted Moreno, a former car dealer, as an “Entrepreneur Turned Politician.”

“I’ve sold all my business interests to do this,” Moreno said again during a Ohio Republican Senate debate in March, eliciting some applause from the audience. He added that he was “concerned about the people who made a lot of money while in Washington.”

But in April, just a few weeks after winning the Republican primary, Moreno spent $9.5 million on a plot of land in Sunbury, Ohio, according to NBC News. Around the same time, Mercedes-Benz Financial Services entered into a mortgage agreement with a company called M20 Realty LLC—one of the 20 businesses that Moreno owns, according to a recent financial disclosure statement. Moreno has signed off on $40 million worth of Mercedes-Benz financing to open up a new dealership, according to the Statehouse News Bureau.

Moreno had signed the mortgage as M20 Realty’s manager and also signed a landlord-tenant agreement between M20 Realty and M20 Motors on behalf of both companies, according to the Delaware County, Ohio, recorder. Moreno said the Sunbury project has been in the works for four years, according to NBC News. In 2022, M20 motors registered for the name Mercedes-Benz Sunbury.

Campaign spokeswoman Regan McCarthy hit back at claims that Moreno had presented his financial interests dishonestly. “The Sunbury dealership is not currently an operating company and is going to be run by Bernie’s son,” McCarthy told the Statehouse News Bureau. “This is an investment by Bernie in a business for his son, not a business for himself.”

In addition to his future plans, it seems Moreno has also been lying about his past. When he applied to open an Infiniti car dealership in Coral Gables, Florida, a document submitted claimed that he had received an MBA from the University of Michigan. Moreno had even signed the application. However, the Michigan Office of Public Affairs told the Ohio Capital Journal Monday that Moreno held only a bachelor’s degree in business.

When the campaign tried to dismiss the claim by referring to a different document with the correct information, the Journal found yet another document filed a year later with the wrong credentials. The campaign told the Journal that the third document had been “prepared by a staffer who made a mistake.”

The Journal found that the false credential popped up in several places, in fact. In 2014, it appeared in a bio for Moreno published when he joined the Cleveland Foundation board of directors. Another campaign spokeswoman told the Journal that Moreno “never told the foundation that he held an MBA. I’m not sure why they listed that, you’d have to ask them.”

A 2018 biography of Moreno from when he chaired the Cleveland State University Board of Trustees claimed that he held multiple degrees from Michigan, but he only has one. The claim that he had received an MBA also appeared on the website for a car dealership he owned in North Olmsted, Ohio. Both mentions have since been removed from those websites.

J.D. Vance is attacking immigration as bad for economic prosperity in the United States.

In an interview on CNBC Thursday morning, the Republican vice presidential nominee said that “if the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous city in the world.”

“America would be the most prosperous country in the world, because Kamala Harris has flooded the country with 25 million illegal aliens,” Vance continued, citing greatly exaggerated numbers. He went on to blame inflation and lower take-home pay on a “massive influx of illegal labor.”

Vance’s point neatly sums up Republican thinking about immigration, particularly in the MAGA movement. However, Vance’s conclusions are wrong. For example, in Springfield, business owners like Jamie McGregor, the CEO of the town’s McGregor Metal plant, credit Haitian immigrants with helping to fill a labor shortage.

“I mean, the fact of the matter is, without the Haitian associates that we have, we had trouble filling these positions,” McGregor told NPR in August about a need in his factory that Haitian workers helped to fill.

Also, earlier this week, Vance complained that Haitian immigrants were driving housing prices up in Springfield. This is actually an indication that the economy in the town is improving. As NPR reported, in the years prior to Haitian immigrants’ arrival in Springfield, the town’s population and wealth were dropping as the auto industry, once a major local employer, was declining. An increase in housing prices would indicate a reversal in fortunes.

As far as the stature of the United States, it is the most prosperous country in the world, with the highest gross domestic product, even per capita. Economic experts say that immigration as a whole is a check on inflation and helps job growth as well. And immigrants, even the undocumented, tend to contribute more in taxes than they pay—with undocumented immigrants being ineligible for most, if not all, federal welfare programs.

Vance is parroting Republican orthodoxy on immigrants being at the root of economic difficulty for native-born Americans. And his ideas seem to be influenced by the right’s racist ideas of an immigrant invasion taking over the U.S. If Vance really thinks immigration is bad for the country, he should talk to his wife, Usha, daughter of two Indian immigrants.

Donald Trump’s advisers are frustrated about how the former president veered wildly off script during Tuesday night’s presidential debate, according to reports from The Guardian and Axios.

Kamala Harris easily baited Trump with lines attacking the crowd size at his rallies and the fact that people left them early out of boredom. As a result, Trump lost his focus and went on angry rants, going against the carefully crafted plans from his debate prep team.

For example, if the ABC News debate moderators were to dispute the false rumor that Haitian immigrants are killing and eating people’s pets in Ohio, then Trump was supposed to say it was hearsay and attack Harris on how illegal immigration helps crime. But Trump got stuck arguing over the rumor and Harris’s attack on his rallies.

Trump advisers say that the Republican presidential nominee was also prepped on how to deflect Harris’s attacks back onto her, but he couldn’t help himself, launching into his trademark grievances like the 2020 election. They told him not to respond directly, but he did anyway.

The plan was to press the vice president about why she and President Biden weren’t implementing any of her solutions right now, and pin today’s problems on her and the administration, according to Axios. Trump was supposed to dismiss Harris’s plans for the future, point out failures in the present, and pin the blame on her for things like the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. But given the opportunity, Trump whiffed, offering up a word salad.

Trump’s advisers pointed to his closing argument as one of the few times when he appeared to stick to the script, but that wasn’t enough to erase his ranting and raving from earlier in the debate. Republicans have been hoping for years that one day Trump would eventually become presidential, leave behind his petty grievances, and focus on the important things. They thought he would do so after he was first elected president, and then again after the attempt on his life in July, but each time, he quickly dashed their expectations. Tuesday’s debate is only the latest evidence that he refuses to change.

Two days after Donald Trump mentioned Springfield, Ohio, in the presidential debate, falsely accusing Haitian migrants in the town of abducting and eating pets, the city is already rocked by threats of violence.

On Thursday morning, Springfield City Hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat “to multiple facilities throughout Springfield,” according to a city statement. Mayor Rob Rue did not release the exact language of the threat, but said it came from an individual claiming to be from Springfield who expressed frustration related to Haitian immigrants.

Springfield government officials say they were made aware of the threat, which “was sent to multiple agencies and media outlets,” via an email message at 8:24 a.m.

Meanwhile, some Haitian families are reportedly keeping their children home from school over fear they will be attacked. One Haitian woman told The Haitian Times that her cars had been vandalized, and the windows broken in the middle of the night. She fears she will have to leave the town to feel safe again.

Over the past several days, right-wing figures including J.D. Vance, Republican representatives in Congress, Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, and Trump adviser Stephen Miller, among many others, have pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets. They shared memes of AI-generated animals begging not to be eaten—and Vance even said he didn’t particularly care if the racist conspiracy turned out to be false.

Police and city officials in the town said they have received no credible reports of pets being stolen and eaten.

But then, during Tuesday’s debate, Trump pushed the unfounded claim before a national audience. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” Trump said. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

In response, Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine tried to push back against the rumors, after a half-hearted attempt earlier this week, and said he would send more resources to Springfield to deal with the influx of immigrants.

The Clarks, one family at the center of tension of the community, whose son was killed by a Haitian driver in December, are begging “morally bankrupt politicians – Bernie Moreno, Chip Roy, J.D. Vance and Donald Trump” to stop using their son’s “death for political gain.”

“Please stop the hate,” Nathan Clark, the boy’s father, said.

Springfield City Hall is closed for the remainder of the day. It may be that Trump is more of a threat to the town than any Haitian refugee.

This story has been updated.

J.D. Vance crashed and burned during an interview on CNBC Thursday where he couldn’t back up Donald Trump’s plans for tariffs on foreign goods, or his own conservative economic populist ideas.

CNBC’s Becky Quick gave Vance the opportunity to refute a misconception about Trump’s economic policies, and Vance quickly spouted off some noneconomics—only to get brutally fact-checked.

“Well, I think one of the things I think they say is for example about Donald Trump’s economic policies is that somehow they’re going to jack up inflation,” Vance said. “Which is rich coming from Kamala Harris whose economic policies have directly led to inflation.”

“But tariffs are inflationary,” Quick replied.

Economists across the board have said Trump’s plan to impose 10–20 percent tariffs on all U.S. imports, and a 60 percent on imports from China, will raise prices for consumers. During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Harris dubbed Trump’s tariffs effectively a “sales tax” that could cost households up to $4,000 per year. Trump seemingly hadn’t understood what she meant and cried that he had no “sales tax.”

Vance tried to save his answer, “Well, not always—”

“They’re either inflationary, or people aren’t buying the products anymore,” Quick said simply.

Vance explained that tariffs would increase prices in the short term, but over the course of multiple years, the prices would go back down as U.S. manufacturers were induced to make investments in a particular industry.

CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin cut in to point out that Trump’s proposed tariffs did not target any industry in particular and would likely raise prices across the board, leaving U.S. manufacturing scrambling to pick up the slack in every sector.

“There are certain industries that unfortunately we don’t have. Now wouldn’t it be great if our country were to invest in some of these industries that we’re missing on the manufacturing side? But the amount of time it may very well take to ‘induce’ every, every industry to invest here to manufacture, that’s the complication with the plan,” Sorkin said.

Sorkin asked whether Trump planned to use his broad tariffs as a “negotiating cudgel” with China for other things, or if Americans could expect them to go into effect.

“I do think that it’s a negotiation,” Vance acquiesced, but then went right back to claiming that tariffs would not increase prices in the long term. He also claimed that because Trump had imposed tariffs narrowly during his first presidential term, they could also be imposed broadly without negative effects.

Vance later turned to his favorite subject, immigration, and seemed particularly excited (maybe a little too excited) to get in a point about his favorite city to complain about: Springfield, Ohio.

“If the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous country—most prosperous city in the world; America would be the most prosperous country in the world,” Vance said.

Here, Vance completely ignores the fact that the United States … is one of, if not the most prosperous country in the world. The U.S. has the highest global gross domestic product, at $25.43 trillion. More to the point, there is plenty of evidence that immigrants drive economic growth by filling more jobs and spending more money—this is true in Springfield. It’s also worth noting that here, Vance is speaking about immigrants generally, not undocumented workers.

It appears that Vance’s anti-immigrant politics and doom and gloom perspective about the country he hopes to run have caused him to elide some plain economic facts—and this became increasingly clear as Vance’s interview went on.

When asked what the first regulatory actions of the Trump administration would be, Vance was quick to answer: “Drill, baby, drill!”

Vance launched into a lengthy explanation of the importance of increasing natural gas drilling, and dismissed the claim that the country was already in a “renaissance” of American energy production as “preposterous.”

“It’s been a total disaster under the Biden-Harris administration,” Vance said. “And again, you just look at the energy costs. You look at how much Americans are paying for energy compared to three years ago. If it was so successful, then why are Americans payin’ 40 percent higher? When we’re sitting in Pennsylvania—we’re sitting on the Saudi Arabia of natural gas!”

“We’re producing more crude oil than any country. Ever,” Quick said, sounding slightly exhausted.

“We’re producing a lot less crude oil than we could be,” Vance replied, explaining that the U.S. is producing far fewer barrels under Harris than it would be under Trump.

When Stephen Miller claims that Venezuela is safer than the United States, he doesn’t want to be questioned about his sources.

While lingering in the spin room after the presidential debate Tuesday, the senior Trump adviser took questions from the press. Speaking about “criminal migrants that have been flooded [sic] in the country,” Miller claimed Venezuelan crime rates are down because all the criminals are coming to the United States.

“The crime rate in Venezuela is down, I believe, over 60 percent,” said Miller, echoing a point parroted by Trump himself. “Let’s put it this way, if you’re a dictator of a poor country with a high crime rate, wouldn’t you send your criminals to our open border?”

“Are you trusting the official figures from the Venezuelan dictatorship?” asked NTN24 reporter  José María Del Pino. “Those are Maduro numbers.”

Miller repeatedly refused to answer the question—by the end yelling loudly about how the criminals are coming here.

Venezuelan security officials have reported a 25 percent drop in the country’s violent crime and homicide rate, but the absence of official reports makes it hard to verify the data. Equally important, there’s no indication that any such drop is because of an “open border” or because  Maduro “let his criminals out of their jails” and into U.S. cities.

Miller is best known for his cruel immigration policies (which include eliminating DACA, enacting the Muslim ban, and implementing family separation) and his bad temper, which eventually got him demoted. Clearly, both of these impulses were on full display during his latest altercation with the press.

By the end, a shouting Miller tries to badger the reporter with questions, rather than the other way around. “Are Venezuelan gangs in this country, yes or no? Yes or no?” he repeats over and over again.

“Sir, you said that in Venezuela the crime rate is lower than the USA; what are your numbers? That is the question,” said an annoyed Del Pino.

As Del Pino notes, the Venezuelan homicide rate is still four times higher than that of the U.S. At the same time, violent crime and homicides have also dropped in the U.S., a point you won’t see Miller or Trump bringing up.

While Donald Trump’s team is publicly pushing a postdebate victory lap, many in his camp were privately disappointed in the Republican candidate’s performance on Tuesday.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins reported Wednesday night that several Trump insiders were “stunned” by his poor performance and by just how easily he fell for all of Kamala Harris’s attempts to provoke him.

“I’m told that as soon as Donald Trump exited that debate stage, he immediately began quizzing those waiting in his viewing room about how the last 90 minutes had gone,” said Collins. “While several people praised him to his face, telling him they did a great job, that’s not what a lot of them are saying privately today.

“Instead, those around Trump have described what happened as a draw at best and a loss at worst,” Collins said. “Several of them told CNN they were stunned that the former president failed to do a better job executing on the talking points that he had been preparing with his team for weeks against Vice President Harris, her record, her policy reversals.”

Apparently, all that practice with members of his team, such as former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, had ultimately amounted to very little when it came time to debate.

“Trump had actually done more debate prep ahead of his first meeting with Harris than he did for his debate with President Biden earlier this summer. Yet they didn’t believe that he made some of the central arguments against her,” Collins explained. She said that Trump had failed to utilize one of his main criticisms against her: that Harris hadn’t enacted many of her campaign promises during her time in office.

“He didn’t go there until his closing argument, which surprised a lot of people in his inner circle,” Collins said. “Instead, they believe that Trump took the bait every single time Harris offered it up.”

“While multiple Trump allies described what happened last night as a missed opportunity for the former president, they have since started downplaying the debate’s significance overall,” Collins said.

Emerging details behind the first presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump suggest that by the second commercial break, Harris was totally in control—and Trump knew he was blowing it.

As soon as the stagehands announced that the duo were clear for the four-minute commercial break, Trump lunged off the stage and away from the former prosecutor, letting a heavy sigh escape his pursed lips, according to CBS News’s Sara Cook.

While he was gone, Harris reportedly spent half of the break writing nonstop on her sheet of paper, only pausing to fix her hair.

“She then reviewed what she wrote for the next minute, making a few tweaks, before putting the pen down and looking out around the room with her hands folded in front of her. She took a sip of water from a glass placed under the lectern,” reported Cook.

Trump reemerged behind the podium with 30 seconds to air. The candidates did not look at each other, but stared straight ahead until the program resumed.

In the aftermath of the debate, Trump has baselessly attempted to claim that every postdebate poll has indicated he won the face-off. A CNN flash poll after the debate indicated that 63 percent of Americans felt that Harris outperformed Trump.

Meanwhile, conservatives have spent the better part of the day lamenting Trump’s performance, with South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham decrying the MAGA leader’s performance as a “disaster.”