Alina Habba Says Ric Grenell Blocked $5.6M Of Billionaire Husband’s Donation – But Did He Ever Send It?

Alina Habba told President Trump in the Oval Office that Richard Grenell, the Trump ally who ran the Kennedy Center, never delivered roughly $5.6 million of a $17.6 million payment her husband wired at his direction, and White House counsel Will Scharf has been told to look into it. Grenell denies it all. The dispute has since turned toward Habba’s husband, Turkish businessman Turhan Mildon, his Venezuelan and Congolese business ties, and whose money the wire really was.

According to the NY Times, Habba brought the accusation to the Oval Office on Oct. 9, after the Times sent Mildon questions about his Venezuela business. She said Mildon made the payment in May 2025 at Grenell’s direction, believing about $5.6 million would be set aside for the Kennedy Center, and that the money never reached it. The wire itself went to TX-AT, a Texas security and defense equipment company, not to the Kennedy Center. Trump called in Scharf to hear her out.

Her account has moved. People familiar with the discussion told the Times she described the sum first as a donation of about $17 million, then as roughly $6 million, and eventually said most of the payment was a business transaction whose details remain unclear, with the remainder meant for the Kennedy Center. The Times said it had not verified her accusations.

The Times then reported on Oct. 17 that the $17.6 million came from a bank account linked to the Congolese government, not from Mildon himself. AllAfrica‘s account of that report says the commercial arrangement behind the payment “remains unclear,” and that TX-AT and Congolese officials did not respond to the Times. The first documents sent to the White House on the couple’s behalf blacked out the sender’s name, Rio Times reported.

Mildon, through a spokesman, has acknowledged advising Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi and holding a Congolese diplomatic passport. His company, Milvest, built the Kinshasa Financial Center. None of that establishes that Congolese state money paid for anything in the dispute, and nothing published shows Tshisekedi or his aides knew of the wire. The Justice Department’s foreign-agent registry lists no registration for Mildon, Milvest, TX-AT, Grenell or Habba, according to the Rio Times.

Grenell has told the Times and Axios that he never received any payment from Mildon. “I’ve never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center, and I’ve never received any payment from him at all,” he told Axios. He called the allegations “absurd” and told the Daily Beast, “Make him give proof to what he is saying.” He acknowledged consulting for TX-AT in 2024 but said he had no connection to the company when the wire was sent, and denied soliciting payments for it.

The Kennedy Center’s own records are thin. Mildon pledged $270,000 after a gala concert and paid it only the week the Times asked why he had not. The center says it is examining the relevant pledges and funds and will report to its board. Mildon’s lawyers also gave Scharf a text that allegedly shows Grenell offering to make Mildon the “American face down in V,” a reference to Venezuela. Grenell told the Times he never sent that message or anything like it.

That Venezuela thread is where the scrutiny now falls on Mildon. He has extensive business interests there, and U.S. officials and intelligence officers have examined his relationship with Alex Saab, the Maduro confidant who awarded him a cement contract. Mildon says he is 29, but U.S. documents and British corporate records list him as 25; he declined to explain the difference to the Times. Grenell was at the time Trump’s special envoy for Venezuela.

Scharf is still gathering evidence, Axios reported, and has been slow to receive records from Habba and Mildon’s attorneys. A Trump insider told Axios it is the “ultimate MAGA blood feud.” What would settle it is the wire’s true sender, what the $17.6 million was for, and what Grenell actually said to Mildon. None of those questions has an answer on the public record.