Following her appearance at the RNC, Alina Habba, the former president’s attorney, received some encouraging news regarding her own legal issues. According to Jose Pagliery of NOTUS, Habba has reached a settlement with Alice Bianco, a former waiter at Trump’s Bedminster Golf Club, yesterday.
The private agreement resulted from an incredibly unpleasant incident in which the 21-year-old server was forced to have sex with her supervisor on multiple occasions. She claims that the management was aware of this and did nothing about it. Bianco filed a lawsuit against the club in November, claiming that Habba had duped her into firing her attorney before deceiving her into taking a pitiful $15,000 settlement. A non-disclosure condition in the deal, namely a liquidated damages clause that would have punished Bianco $1,000 each time she discussed the underlying events, was unenforceable under New Jersey’s civil rights laws.
Habba was not formally Trump’s attorney when she created and negotiated the agreement. However, she was engaged almost immediately to defend him in a number of civil lawsuits, such as the Florida RICO LOLsuit against Hillary Clinton, James Comey, and half of the Democratic Party in Washington, DC, the E. Jean Carroll defamation charges, and the New York civil fraud trial.
If Trump is upset that Habba led him into judgments worth half a billion dollars and sanctions of a million dollars, for which they are both accountable, he hasn’t said it. However, the club made it clear that the attorney would remain liable when it resolved the issue in March. The settlement just made the initial hush money deal null and void, leaving Bianco with the pitiful sum of $15,000. She was free to take legal action against the club and Habba, as the organization made it clear that it was not accountable for Habba’s actions in this regard.
Although the status of talks with the club is unknown, NOTUS claims that Bianco and Habba have reached a financial agreement. It is unclear and likely to stay that way whether the settlement is coming from Trump’s PAC, which reimburses favored lackeys for legal fees, or her D&O policy. After all, Habba’s firm has already received millions in legal fees from the PAC, and Trump’s campaign frequently conceals expenditures by passing them through Red Curve, a third-party processor.
It’s unclear as well if this will resolve the issue with the Office for Attorney Ethics in New Jersey (OAE). Judge Joseph Rea was asked to report Habba to the OAE in the initial complaint for “fraudulently induc[ing] Ms. Bianco to give up her rights and to enter into a settlement which is illegal and unconscionable.” Judge Rea wrote, “The court will take appropriate action in accordance with R. 3.15(b) of the Code of Judicial Conduct if this court receives reliable information indicating a substantial likelihood that a lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to the lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness as a lawyer in other respects.” in a handwritten note on a show cause order.
