Former Kennedy Center chief Ric Grenell dangled VIP access to President Trump for a nearly $5.6 million donation that never landed, and Alina Habba says her husband was duped.
Alina Habba went straight to the top. In an Oct. 9 Oval Office meeting, she told President Trump that her husband had been tricked into putting up nearly $5.6 million meant for the Kennedy Center.
The money, she said, never made it there. The New York Post reported that White House counsel’s office has been looking into Ric Grenell over the alleged failure to deliver those funds to the performing arts venue.
Grenell is the embattled former executive director of the Kennedy Center. He is also a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, a former acting intelligence director under Trump, and a onetime Trump envoy who dealt with then-Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro.
Turkish billionaire Turhan Mildon is Habba’s husband. The couple married Sept. 26 after meeting earlier this year at the Kennedy Center itself.
Axios first reported an alleged May 3, 2025, text message. The message, attributed to Grenell and directed at Mildon, linked a donation to elite access.
The text read:
"Once the money comes to the company here, I will arrange the donation to Kennedy Centre [sic], and you’ll be joining the VIP events and get close with the administration, even with POTUS,"
Grenell denied sending it. He pointed to the British spelling of “Centre” as a tell that the wording was not his. He did not respond to a request for comment from the Post.
The sequence described in the reporting is blunt. Money was supposed to move. A Kennedy Center donation was supposed to follow. VIP events and proximity to the administration, “even with POTUS”, were the draw. Habba later told Trump the deal left her husband holding the bag.
Mildon has given the White House financial records for a May 29, 2025, wire transfer. The wire totaled $17.6 million and went to Texas Armament & Technology, a defense software company.
From that larger sum, roughly $5.6 million was supposed to become the Kennedy Center donation. Reporting states that gift was never deposited.
Axios reported the $17.6 million did not come from Mildon personally. It said the funds came from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s “Ministère des Finances.” Neither Axios nor the New York Times spelled out the full nature of the underlying business venture in central Africa.
Mildon said in 2024 that he operated limestone quarries and copper, cobalt, and gold mines in the DRC. That background sits beside the wire, not as a full accounting of who controlled every dollar.
Habba is no outsider to Trump world. She worked as his personal attorney, spent a brief stretch at the White House, and later served as acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey.
On Oct. 9 she used that access. She told the president directly that Grenell had tricked her husband out of nearly $5.6 million intended for the Kennedy Center. Exact wording of her remarks was not published. The thrust was clear: the donation was promised, the access pitch was made, and the Center never got the money.
White House counsel’s office then had a live problem on its hands, an internal look at whether a former Kennedy Center director failed to route pledged millions to the institution he once ran.
Mildon’s footprint is not limited to African mining talk. He has operated state-owned cement plants in Venezuela.
U.S. troops captured Maduro on Jan. 3. In June, interim president Delcy Rodriguez canceled Mildon’s cement-plant contract. The New York Times later reported she paused that termination after learning of his relationship with Habba.
Grenell’s own Venezuela history runs through the same orbit. He served as a Trump envoy to Maduro. The donation dispute now sits against that longer record of contacts, contracts, and political proximity.
Trump has also sought to rebrand the Kennedy Center to include his own name. That effort makes a vanished multimillion-dollar pledge to the same venue more than a private quarrel. It lands inside a presidential priority.
Here is the verified chain. An alleged May 3 text dangled VIP events and access to the administration, including the president, once money reached “the company here.” On May 29, $17.6 million moved by wire to a Texas defense-software firm. Habba says about $5.6 million of that storyline was supposed to be a Kennedy Center donation. The Center, per the reporting, never received the deposit. Mildon turned financial records over to the White House. Habba raised the alarm with Trump on Oct. 9. Counsel’s office opened an inquiry into Grenell.
Grenell calls the text a fake and flags the British spelling. The business purpose behind the Congo-linked wire remains thinly described in the published accounts. No arrests, charges, or courtroom filings are described in the available reporting. The core allegation is simpler: access was pitched, millions moved sideways, and a cultural institution got nothing.
Habba and Mildon built their relationship in the same building the money was supposed to help. They met at the Kennedy Center early this year and wed in September. By October she was in the Oval Office telling the president the donation had been a setup.
Public arts venues run on trust as much as ticket sales. When a former director is accused of steering a huge gift through a private company while offering face time with the president, the burden shifts fast, to records, to counsel, and to anyone who signed off on the pitch.
Donors, taxpayers, and lawful institutions deserve clean books. When millions meant for a national stage vanish into a side channel, accountability is not optional, it is the whole point.
