Photo Credit: Alexandr Popadin
The White House is investigating claims that former Kennedy Center head Ric Grenell failed to deposit a multi-million-dollar donation to the center.
Trump’s White House counsel is examining allegations by former Trump attorney Alina Habba that former Kennedy Center leader and ex-intelligence director Ric Grenell failed to deposit a multi-million-dollar donation to the center made by her billionaire husband last year. Four senior administration officials and three insiders briefed on the matter confirmed the news, which dropped on Friday in the Oval Office.
The total value of the donation in question amounts to $5.6 million, according to Habba and White House sources. Grenell has denied the accusations, calling them “absurd” and a “lie.”
The 42-year-old Habba married 29-year-old Turhan Mildon last month in a $10 million wedding attended by top Trump officials and allies. However, Grenell, who was previously friends with both Habba and Mildon, was notably absent from the wedding.
Grenell and Mildon had mutual interests in Venezuela early last year. The former had advocated for “normalizing” U.S. relations with the country’s then-leader, Nicolas Maduro, and the latter—a Turkish national—had extensive business interests in the country that were threatened by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s campaign against Maduro.
Last year, Grenell persuaded Mildon to include a multi-million-dollar Kennedy Center donation in a lump-sum $17.6 million payment for a business deal involving a U.S. company, according to what Habba told the president and White House staffers, per two sources. Habba’s attorneys intend to provide the White House with documentation to support her allegations that Grenell solicited a Kennedy Center donation from Mildon for a private company last spring.
After making his alleged contribution, Mildon never verified that it was deposited, but he believed it had been credited because he was treated like a VIP donor at the Kennedy Center, where he met Habba in late 2025. Habba said she and her new husband discovered the issue after their business relationship with Grenell had deteriorated, following Grenell losing his internal power struggle with Rubio; this culminated in the U.S. seizing Maduro on January 3.
When Mildon told Habba that his donation had not been made directly to the Kennedy Center but was part of a lump-sum payment at Grenell’s behest, she headed to the White House to tell Trump about the matter. Further, Kennedy Center records indicated that Mildon actually owed a $270,000 pledged donation, which he paid on Tuesday. No record of “anything close” to the alleged $5.6 million donation exists, according to Kennedy Center officials.
Meanwhile, a White House official expressed they were “very skeptical it’s true.” Other officials said they viewed Grenell as “crooked,” but that the Kennedy Center lacked evidence to support Habba’s claim. Another source said Grenell was “self-destructive,” but not “that dumb.”
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