Alina Habba faces serious potential charges of professional misconduct in a little-known case
In November 2023, Alice Bianco, an ex-employee of Trump’s National Golf Club in Bedminster NJ, filed a lawsuit against the club. In the suit, she alleged that in 2021, club food and beverage manager Pavel Melichar harassed her and forcibly attempted to kiss her; retaliated against her with “unfair job assignments”; and eventually required her “to engage in sex as a quid pro quo for continued employment and ‘protection.’
During her employment, Bianco learned that an unnamed co-worker was writing a letter to Donald Trump’s personal staff about Melichar’s alleged wide-ranging sexual harassment. Bianco told the letter writer of her own assault by Melichar. The co-worker included Bianco’s experience in the letter. After it was delivered, Bianco said she got a call from human resources and decided to hire a lawyer.
In her suit, Bianco said that she was later approached by Alina Habba, a little-known lawyer and club member who, “pretending to be a friend,” told Bianco she had heard about the situation and wanted to help her.
Habba invited Bianco to her car during her shift and discouraged Bianco from going public with her story. Habba said she could “protect her” if Bianco fired her lawyer and signed a “simple” non-disclosure agreement that included a penalty of $1,000 a day if she violated it. In exchange, Bianco received what the lawsuit described as a “paltry sum,” (which turned out to be $15,000).
The ambitious Habba may have presented herself as Bianco’s friend and ally. But her motivation was to catch the eye of the big man. It worked. Habba soon found herself part of Trump’s legal squad. It was no dream team. The world’s crappiest client and some of America’s shittiest attorneys lawyered Trump into civil penalties totaling over $500 million. And in doing so revealed themselves as click-bait, motor-mouthed, look-at-me morons.
Now, the parties have settled the suit. Bianco keeps the $15,000 — no strings attached. The NDA has been shredded. Her lawyer, Nancy Smith, receives $82,500 for her legal services. Most importantly, Bianco can still sue the club for the original sexual harassment. While the settlement does not shield Alina Habba from future suits for professional misconduct or whatever else New Jersey law allows to punish unethical lawyers.
There is no disputing that Habba is still in a world of hurt. The settlement definitively leaves Habba out of the deal. One line reads: “The parties agree that Alina Habba is not a party to this release.” Bianco remains free to sue the fake-smart shrike directly for her sordid part in this odious affair.
Habba is no stranger to charges she is a professional asshole. According to the Daily Beast — in a report published in November 2023:
Donald Trump’s go-to lawyer in New Jersey, Alina Habba, has quietly settled a lawsuit from a former employee who made her out to be a racist, insensitive boss—one who drops the n-word while blasting rap in the office and allegedly referred to New York’s attorney general as “that Black bitch.”
It’s unclear how much Habba paid to settle the matter, if anything at all. The deal is cloaked in secrecy and both sides—including, oddly, the former employee’s lawyer—are bound by a non-disparagement agreement that forbids anyone from dishing dirt on the other, according to a person familiar with the agreement.
It is human nature that we tend to settle into our personality and character. Moral people tend to do good. Immoral people tend to do bad. And unethical lawyers tend to unethical behavior. So, it is likely that another lawsuit against Habba will reveal more about her preening egotism and professional incompetence.
In addition, it is not unreasonable to guess the rot of abuse in Trump’s Bedminster Club comports with the pussy-grabbing example of its owner. And further suits may well reveal that sexual crimes are common in the staff quarters.
We should not be surprised if the out-of-her-depth Habba drowns in future suits. As the new aphorism has it, MAGA actually stands for “making attorneys get attorneys.” If Habba is right (she has not been so far) that she can fake smart, she should hire an attorney better than she. Or she will face more than the penalties she has already accrued — such as the one she earned in Florida.
In that case, a federal Judge ordered Trump and Habba to fork over $938,000 after they brought a “frivolous” lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and others. In assessing the penalty, U.S. District Judge Donald M. Middlebrooks accused Trump, with a compliant Habba, of:
a "pattern of abuse of the courts" for filing frivolous lawsuits for political purposes, which "undermines the rule of law" and "amounts to obstruction of justice."
Adding "Here, we are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose."
Sadly, Habba did not learn from that admonishment. She continues to think that the American Justice system is a lawless jungle where victory goes to the most unpleasant. Why not? Trump has spent decades treating courts as his handmaidens. And too often the courts obliged.
But the tide is turning. The law has finally cottoned on to the fact that Trump is a crook. The edifice he so long relied on to strike fear into the little people is now starting to hold Trump to account. Civilly, his financial house of cards is teetering. While criminally, appeals courts are his last bastion to launch his serial attempts to hold back the deluge.
The outcome may still be in doubt. But Trump’s odds have never been worse. And for that, he can thank his own deficiencies and those of his current legal team.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And I suspect that most people would say Habba is better looking than the younger Trump’s legal hatchet man, Roy Cohn. But at least that miserable human being could fake being intelligent.