I need to tell you a story tonight that's going to send chills down your spine because it involves one of the most corrupt things that a Trump Justice Department official could possibly do: a pardon, a billionaire who wants his name cleared, and a Trump official offered tens of millions of dollars to do it. Tonight, we're going to talk about Alina Habba, the former US attorney for the District of New Jersey, former Trump lawyer, and the staggering, staggering breaking news that we're about to expose. Make sure to like, comment, share — the more you do, people need to see this — and if you can, subscribe to support my work, because ultimately this could eventually lead to a massive Justice Department investigation under a Democratic president. Possible criminal investigations could ensue, because I'm about to tell you a story that will send chills down your spine. It was broken by the New York Times, and it involves a man by the name of Julio Herrera Velutin.
He really wanted a pardon. He's a billionaire banker who came from a prominent Venezuelan family. He faced felony bribery charges in the United States, striking an unusually lenient plea deal in August of 2025 for a misdemeanor campaign finance violation. He felt that reduced charge was still a stain on his record. So what did he do? He deployed his lawyer, Christopher Kise, the former Florida solicitor general, who also happened to be Donald Trump's personal lawyer, to help with a plea for clemency. His 27-year-old daughter donated $3.5 million to a super PAC tied to Trump, but the pardon still remained elusive. So, what did they do? They hired Alina Habba, who had been Trump's personal lawyer at the time and was an adviser at the Justice Department. They offered her $10 million a year for four years, along with a range of bonuses. She was guaranteed more than $50 million over four years, according to the New York Times.
Under this agreement, she would become general counsel at Concord Partners, a company that Mr. Herrera set up in October of 2025. The company has no public profile, and its business remains unclear, even to some people associated with the Herrera business empire. She finalized her deal shortly after the company was registered. At the time, she served as a senior adviser to Attorney General Pam Bondi, overseeing US attorneys. She had an office in the Justice Department, a protective detail from the US Marshals — a holdover from her time serving as US attorney in New Jersey. She began her work formally for Concord Partners on January 1st. Weeks later, Herrera got a full and unconditional pardon. And the sequence of events raises serious questions about Herrera securing the pardon and who may have helped him.
People familiar with her contracts believe that she was brought in to help him push for a pardon, and express surprise at the scale of the compensation. She denied any role in the pardon in a statement saying, "Any insinuation that my employment, all of which has been vetted and disclosed to the DOJ, had anything to do with securing a pardon, is false." She was a special government employee at the time, which allows individuals to work for the federal government and maintain outside employment with conflict of interest restrictions. She declined to discuss her work for Concord, and the Herreras did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement from the Justice Department, Ms. Habba says she did not speak to anyone involving a pardon.
So, here is how it works. They paid her up to $50 million over the four years with the goal, likely, of securing a pardon. She claims she never worked to secure that pardon, but ultimately she was a Justice Department lawyer at the time. That is massive. That is massive corruption. And when you look at this, you may say WTF, WTF.
I speak with Ben Meiselas from the Midas Touch Network about his new book, WTF America. It's a book that I read. I have it right here on my desk. I think it's actually pretty cool. WTF America: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy, written by Ben, Brett, and Jordy Meiselas, hosts of the number one podcast, Midas Touch. It's a conversation I think you should hear because they write about how to get out of this mess. How to get out of this mess. So, as always, make sure to like, comment, share, and here's my conversation with Ben. Excited to have Ben Meiselas here, author of the new book WTF America: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy. This is out today. How are you feeling, published author?
Look, I feel great. But what I'm most proud of is laying out the framework for this network in the book, and you're really a major part of that, Aaron, and truly one of the big delights in building this network I talk about is seeing the future. And people like you inspire me about what we can build. And you know, if I've been in any way helpful — you know, you and I, people don't realize you and I have worked together for a very long time. Like I knew you when you were in undergrad, like when you were right getting into law school. And you know, the idea that you're helping the next generation of journalists, and they'll help the next generation, and what we could be doing generationally — that's what gets me really excited.
So I got to ask you, how do we get out of this hell and how do we get back to democracy?
We have to think about things not in terms of election cycles, not in terms of like what do we do for the kind of immediate, you know, short-term — like it's all important, but we need to think in terms of systems and generational change and like what are we building and why are we building. You know, so much of politics I think gets treated and filtered through a gamified lens: who's up, who's down, who's winning, who's losing, who had a good day, who had a bad day. Now, obviously, all of that is important, but the broader point is what are we actually trying to build here? And for example, with your platform, Aaron, what you've built on TikTok and on YouTube and across media is people come to you as the news source of the day. And people get reliable, accurate, swift, quick news from you over other types of news. And so that's a big deal because now you having a certain value set and being there with the people in the trenches, that's different than kind of a corporate news oligarchy who views things a certain way. And so my view is that if there are lots of Aaron Parnases out there, if there are lots of Katie Fangs and Scott McFarlands, and there are these kind of decentralized network — not of citizen journalists, but of journalists who really hone in on their craft and make sure that listening to people is at the forefront of what they're doing and reporting — I think that's a major part of it.
And sometimes people say, "Well, Aaron or Ben, like why, you guys are just reporting? Like what else are you doing?" And so it's fascinating to me when I hear that because no one looks at like Fox and goes, "You know what? They're just reporting. Like what are you doing?" Like Fox, you're just an echo chamber. Like who cares? Like are you just preaching to the Fox choir? It's like, no, you have to build a big choir. You have to speak loudly. You have to build a big audience. And then the lens that we have, we can bring on incredible activists. We can bring on politicians who we feel are fighting for the people. We could then use the platform to elevate other institutions and systems that are consistent with our values and principles. So that's, I think, an important thing that doesn't get talked about, but that's what we talk about in this book.
What do you say to someone who says, "Ugh, Ben, another book. It's election season. Why should I go buy your book?"
Because it's not an election book. And the debate I actually had with the publishers: does it go out before the election or does it go out after the election? And we went back and forth. But I think it is important with all the election books that focus on the election to have a book that asks the broader question of why. Why? Okay, so winning — what's the goal of the win? Is it to return to a status quo that gave us a Trump, or is it to build something bigger? And so in a world where there's a lot of election books, what I hope makes this one stand out is that it's not an election book. I mean, I have to acknowledge that elections happen. I have to acknowledge that elections are important. And ensuring that candidates who have a certain value and principles win is important when our democracy is being threatened. But what I want to make a book of, what I want to do a book about, is a higher calling, a greater purpose. Getting out of this hell is a generational project. And while we're in an election season, I want us to reflect on: we can't just go back to the status quo and have this seesaw where arsonists destroy everything and then someone tries to fix it and then they're blamed, then the arsonists are back in power — it's an unsustainable model.
And so the things that we talk about here is like, okay, well, how do you get out of it? In addition to fortifying our collective minds and consciousness with independent media and calling out the fire hose of lies with the fire hose of truth, is also then connecting this to an international community as well and building an international component and dynamic. Because you know, the right-wing and MAGA, they like to talk about the globalist this, that — the biggest kind of globalist plot right now is by these authoritarians globally to swamp democracies here in the Western Hemisphere, here in South America, in Europe, and across the world. And authoritarians want to have their moment because the post-Enlightenment era was moments where you had the thinking about people power, democracy, republics — you know, these systems that were anathema to the authoritarians. They're now capitalizing on an information disparity paradoxically caused by massive amounts of information. The quantum of information is so vast with the internet and AI, but it's such a polluted, poisoned information environment that it creates a feudal lord versus serf dynamic. And so it creates the same elements that led and is fertile for authoritarianism. And that's what we need to fight back and push back against.
Did you ever think, years ago when you were starting Midas Touch, that — oh,
