LEE KRAMER'S ROOM: With Views

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Like having the bird in hand AND the two in the bush.

Trump Golf Club Settlement Hangs Alina Habba Out to Dry
The former president’s lawyer may still face fallout for her involvement in an ex-employee’s hush money deal over harassment claims at Trump’s Bedminster club.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-new-jersey-golf-club-settlement-hangs-lawyer-alina-habba-out-to-dry
Jose Pagliery
Political Investigations Reporter
Updated Mar. 19, 2024 10:18AM EDT / Published Mar. 19, 2024 4:42AM EDT

Donald Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, paid $82,500 last week to settle a lawsuit alleging that it had silenced a sexually harassed waitress by tricking her into an unfair hush money deal, according to the ex-employee’s lawyer.

But the curiously worded contract left the former president’s own attorney Alina Habba—a rising star in his orbit—wide open to getting sued herself.

Trump and his top advisers are already a magnet for legal trouble. Habba, who already settled a discrimination lawsuit by her former legal secretary, is no exception. But now she faces the wrath of Alice Bianco, who was once a waitress at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, the real estate tycoon’s summertime abode.

Bianco feels betrayed by Habba, who was one of her Bedminster regulars until, her lawsuit says, Habba posed as a concerned friend giving legal advice about how to address alleged sexual harassment by a supervisor—only to abuse that relationship and “fraudulently inducing” her to “quickly agree to unconscionable and illegal terms.”

The alleged ploy, rapidly paced over just two weeks, gave Habba leverage to arrange a hush money deal that would curry favor with the former president and earn her way into his inner circle.

Within a month of working on the August 2021 hush money deal, Habba quickly became Trump’s leading lawyer defending him from a sexual assault defamation case by former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos—replacing Trump’s nationally renowned attorney on the case. That case was later dropped.

The scandal concerning the toxic non-disclosure agreement at Bedminster threatens to expose what appears to be the strange origin story of a little-understood, up-and-coming lawyer who suddenly became a legal adviser to the former and possibly future president—just as he faces four criminal indictments and cases that seek to empty his considerable bank accounts.

Bianco is now preparing to sue the club all over again, this time for sexual harassment. But she’s also targeting Habba with a potential fraud lawsuit too, according to Bianco’s New Jersey lawyer, Nancy Erika Smith................................................

...........................................The news is sure to fuel what’s become a popular online meme, one that claims MAGA stands for Make America Great Again as much as its comical alternative: Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.

Rudy Giuliani has lost his bar license in two jurisdictions for peddling Trump’s fake election fraud claims. M. Evan Corcoran had to bow out from defending Trump for hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago after a judge handed over his notes to federal prosecutors. Political adviser Boris Epshteyn appears to be named as a co-conspirator in the Fulton County District Attorney’s case against Trump for election interference.

Now, Habba faces potential consequences—to her professional credentials and her own bank accounts—for organizing a tiny settlement that’s just been ripped up.....................

......................................Habba has already earned a singular reputation as Trump’s made-for-TV lawyer in court, drawing the ire of colleagues on the former president’s expansive legal team who question her juridical acumen, according to half a dozen people who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity.

In Florida, one federal judge held Habba personally responsible for a “frivolous” Trump revenge lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and sanctioned them $937,989 together. In New York, another federal judge barked at her when she brought the same attack dog antics she displays on Newsmax into his courtroom.

But by aggressively defending her client, Habba has absorbed some of her client’s liability. With only weeks to go before the potential start of Trump’s very first criminal trial—involving, ironically, yet another hush money payment—Habba is now under a microscope for standing by while her other Trumpworld client committed perjury. She faces potential bar complaints in New York for allowing Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s former chief financial officer, to lie in court and in two depositions without correcting the record.

But she now faces a potential bar complaint in New Jersey too, this from a scorned waitress who considered her a friend...................................


There are no friends in MAGA, only lies, pits, and bus tracks. If only Dr. Shannon Klingman could invent something for that.


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