Alina Habba, 42, a former personal lawyer to Donald Trump and a fierce MAGA loyalist, and Turhan Mildon, a 29-year-old Turkish businessman, last month got married, The New York Times reported on October 12.
Habba has changed her name to Alina Mildon on X, but remains Alina Habba on Instagram and LinkedIn.
The couple hosted a wedding reception in a Waldorf Astoria ballroom in New York. Among the guests toasting the bride and groom were Attorney General Todd Blanche, FBI director Kash Patel and White House counsel Will Scharf.
The couple are currently a big hit in American media.
“In my grandfather’s time, knowhow was very important,” Mildon recently told Forbes Turkey, adding: “Now, knowwho is important.”
Venezuelan ‘gamble’
Mildon serves as the head of Turkish conglomerate Miller Holding. Long before he caught the eye of Washington’s inner circle, he entered the Congo market in 2021, winning infrastructure contracts via his construction firm Milvest.
In late 2023, he reportedly arrived in Venezuelan capital Caracas. Under the patronage of Nicolas Maduro’s inner circle, particularly Alex Saab, a close confidant of the then Venezuelan leader, who was in January this year captured and extradited to the US, Mildon secured lucrative contracts to operate state-owned cement plants along with a shrimp production and export business previously seized from a private domestic founder.
Mildon’s fortunes shifted dramatically following the US intervention in Venezuela that included the grabbing of Maduro by Americal special forces at a compound. With Washington installing an interim leadership in Caracas under Delcy Rodriguez, the businessman’s past alignment with the ousted regime made him a prime target for scrutiny.
In June, Rodriguez’s government ordered an audit and then moved to revoke Mildon’s cement operating contract, claiming failures in meeting investment targets. It was against this backdrop of commercial vulnerability that Mildon’s personal life intersected with high-stakes diplomacy.
Having crossed paths with Republican insiders, including Richard Grenell, the former special envoy to Venezuela, Mildon began dating Habba earlier this year.
According to cited individuals close to the interim Caracas administration, the burgeoning romance did not go unnoticed. The Venezuelan government abruptly paused its order terminating Mildon’s contracts.
No ‘knowwho’ here
US officials have observed that Habba has never discussed her husband’s commercial operations with the president or senior executive staff.
“I have never, under any circumstances got involved with this White House or administration on behalf of my husband, nor would he ever ask me to,” Habba has said in a statement.
Before meeting his wife-to-be, Mildon got engaged to Maria Eugenia Ceballos, a Venezuelan admiral’s daughter in June 2025, Mildon’s spokesman said. The father, Admiral Remigio Ceballos, was sanctioned by the US.
Thanks to his position, Mildon joined a group of businessmen who carried back-channel messages between the Trump administration and Caracas. He also became involved with Republican circles in the US and met Habba in late 2025.