Donald Trump's golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, paid $82,500 last week to settle a lawsuit alleging it silenced a sexually harassed waitress by tricking her into an unfair hush money deal, according to the former employee's lawyer.
But the interestingly worded contract left him open to being sued by the former president's lawyer, Alina Habba, a rising star in his orbit.
Trump and his top advisers are already a magnet for legal trouble. Habba is no exception, having already settled a discrimination case filed by his former legal secretary. But now he faces the wrath of Alice Bianco, a waitress at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, once the real estate mogul's summer residence.
Bianco feels betrayed by Habba, one of Bedminster's regulars; Until, her lawsuit says, Habba pretended to be a concerned friend offering legal advice on how to deal with alleged sexual harassment by a manager, but then abused the relationship and "fraudulently encouraged" her, she says. “Rapidly agreeing to unreasonable and illegal terms.”
The alleged ruse, which moved quickly in just two weeks, gave Habba leverage to arrange a secret money deal that would curry favor with the former president and gain him entry into his inner circle.
Within a month of working on the August 2021 hush agreement, Habba quickly became Trump's lead attorney defending him against a sexual assault defamation lawsuit filed by former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos, in which Trump's nationally known attorney took its place. This case was later dropped.
The scandal over the toxic confidentiality agreement in Bedminster threatens to reveal the strange origin story of how a little-understood, up-and-coming lawyer suddenly became legal counsel to a former and possibly future president. He faces four criminal charges and lawsuits aimed at draining significant bank accounts.
Bianco is now preparing to sue the club again, this time for sexual harassment. But he is also targeting Habba with a possible fraud scam, according to Bianco's New Jersey attorney, Nancy Erika Smith.
The four-page agreement Bianco signed on March 4 appears to be a win-win for the angry former employee. She will keep the $15,000 hush money payment she received in 2021 for keeping quiet about how a supervisor repeatedly intimidated her and pressured her into sleeping with him. His attorney receives $82,500 for handling the case on short notice. Either party can unilaterally break the confidentiality agreement. And the club denies it "committed fraud" to persuade him into a shady deal.
But suddenly this sentence appears: "The parties agree that Alina Habba is not a party to this release." This means Habba was specifically excluded from the deal, allowing Bianco to sue him directly for the same issues.
