When former fashion exec Alina Habba celebrated her 39th birthday last month, Donald Trump made sure the statuesque brunette and key member of his legal team celebrated in style — in an opulent dining room with his closest advisors and a big cake adorned with red and yellow flowers.
In addition to her work on numerous cases for the former president, Habba is also an ardent Trump admirer and a regular at both his Palm Beach resort and Bedminster, NJ, golf club, according to her social media posts.
“Starting this year off with amazing patriots at the rally in Texas and the greatest President of all time #45 soon to be #47,” Habba wrote on her Instagram account next to a photo that shows her sitting beside Trump for her birthday.
“The man golfed, went to Texas, crushed his speech and still made time to make sure I had birthday cake.”
“And just because I’m pretty,” she told The Post, “doesn’t mean I’m not a brilliant lawyer.”
This week, Habba — a mother of three who runs her own boutique law firm with a partner in New Jersey and Florida — scored an important victory when she revealed that a major Democratic donor was bankrolling a civil case against the former commander-in-chief.
In a Thursday letter to New York federal judge Lewis Kaplan, Habba said that LinkedIn founder and billionaire Reid Hoffman has paid some of the legal bills in E. Jean Carroll’s civil lawsuit against Trump through American Future Republic, a Chicago-based non-profit that he controls.
Carroll, a former New York and Elle magazine writer, is suing Trump for rape and defamation that allegedly occurred in the 1990s.
“The eleventh-hour disclosure that Plaintiff’s legal fees are being subsidized by American Future Republic and Reid Hoffman is troubling and raises significant questions that require further investigation,” said Habba in her letter to Judge Kaplan.
Hoffman also “contributed more than $600,000 to the legal defense fund of Bean LLC — otherwise known as Fusion GPS, the company responsible for the creation of the Steele Dossier, “wrote Habba in her letter to the judge.
The dossier was a controversial opposition research document that linked Trump to Russia during his 2016 campaign for president.
“I just felt something was wrong,” Habba told The Post Friday.
“In my first deposition, I knew I had to ask about the funding because I’ve seen this kind of corruption before.”
Judge Kaplan seemed to agree.
He took only three hours to demand more information about who was paying the bills for Carroll’s attorneys including Roberta Kaplan.
A prominent women’s rights lawyer, Roberta Kaplan resigned in 2021 from the Time’s Up non-profit she helped to found after allegations that she helped to discredit women who had accused disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment.
In addition to the Carroll case, Habba is at the forefront of Trump defense in the New York Attorney General’s case against the former president and three of his children, she said.
Letitia James has accused the Trumps of “staggering” financial fraud in the $250 million case.
Trump, 76, was grilled for more than seven hours in the case in his second deposition Thursday.
“He remains resolute in his stance that he has nothing to conceal, and he looks forward to educating the attorney general about the immense success of his multibillion-dollar company,” Habba said.
She has also filed a $100 million lawsuit on behalf of Trump against his niece Mary Trump and “The New York Times” after the paper published his tax returns and finances in 2018.
Earlier this year, Habba lost a racketeering case — accusing Hillary Clinton and others of trying to rig the 2016 presidential election in her favor — for the former commander-in-chief in US District Court in Florida.
Trump was ordered to pay nearly $1 million in sanctions toward Clinton’s legal costs as well as those of several Department of Justice officials.
“This case should never have been brought. Its inadequacy as a legal claim was evident from the start,” US District Judge Donald Middlebrooks wrote in his scathing 46-page order.
“No reasonable lawyer would have filed it,” he continued.
“Intended for a political purpose, none of the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim.”
Habba said she was disappointed but undaunted.
A tough-talking legal professional who peppers her speech with expletives, Habba plans to keep on fighting, she said.
“It’s not political for me,” she told The Post of her work for Trump, whom she met in 2019 after joining the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminister.
“I’m not political. What I am is a good American, who just can’t believe what I am seeing in terms of the corruption that has taken over this country.”
Habba, whose family immigrated from Iraq in the 1980s to escape persecution of Christians in that country, grew up in New Jersey and shares a mansion in Bedminister with her lawyer husband, Matthew Eyet.
The couple has a nine-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter as well as a 15-year-old son from Eyet’s first marriage, Habba told The Post.
She works from a small office near Trump’s Bedminster golf course where her legal practice — Habba Madaio & Associates LLP — also specializes in matrimonial law and “complex” litigation.
Before her work in the Trump universe, she was the lead counsel in a federal class action lawsuit against a New Jersey nursing home accused of negligence during the early days of the COVID pandemic, and a civil lawsuit against a Connecticut municipality for the rape of numerous children by a town employee over several decades, according to her bio on her firm’s website.
Habba attended Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and obtained her law degree from that state’s Widener University Commonwealth Law School in 2010.
She was a law clerk for Eugene Codey Jr., presiding judge of the Civil Superior Court in Essex County, NJ.
But before that, from 2005 to 2007, she worked as a merchandiser for the Marc Jacobs fashion house, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Fond of tailored suits and designer handbags, Habba was made a senior advisor for MAGA Inc, a Trump political action committee.
She is said to be close to the former president’s son Eric Trump.
“I chose to do it despite some of the disgusting things that I have heard people say,” she told The Post.
“It’s the single most fulfilling and challenging job I’ve ever had in my life. I feel blessed.
