A disputed $17.6 million payment has pushed a bitter fight inside President Donald Trump’s circle into a new stage, with lawyers now sending wire-transfer records and disputed messages to White House counsel Will Scharf. The materials were delivered Wednesday night in support of allegations against former Kennedy Center director Ric Grenell.
The fight now turns on what, exactly, happened to the money. Alina Habba told the White House that her husband, Turhan Mildon, made the payment at Grenell’s direction in May 2025, and that she believed $5.6 million would be set aside for the performing arts center. She also said the money never reached the institution. reported that it had not verified those accusations, but the dispute has already become a public proxy war over who authorized what and for what purpose.
One of the items sent to White House counsel was a wire-transfer receipt, along with text messages said to support the claims. Among them was a message that purportedly shows Grenell offering to make Mildon the American face down in V, a reference to Venezuela. That message, if genuine, would be central to the case being made against him. But authenticity is still the missing piece. The submission to White House counsel is evidence that someone is pressing the allegation; it is not, by itself, proof that the message is authentic or that the exchange means what the accusers say it means.
Grenell has rejected the entire account. He told he never sent that message or anything like it and denied that any financial transaction had taken place between him and Mildon or entities connected to Mildon. He also said, “I’ve never asked for one cent to be sent somewhere else pretending it was for the Kennedy Center, and I’ve never received any payment from him.” In an email to The Daily Beast, he called the allegations absurd and demanded that Mildon provide proof.
The sharpest contradiction is also the simplest: Habba says the transfer happened at Grenell’s direction, while Grenell says no such transaction occurred at all. He acknowledged consulting for TX-AT in 2024, but said he had no connection to TX-AT when Mildon says he made the transfer and denied ever soliciting payments on behalf of TX-AT. That leaves the central question unresolved even after the latest round of document-sharing: if the transfer was real, where did the disputed share go, and if the text was real, who sent it? Until those answers are pinned down, the feud inside Trump’s circle is likely to keep widening rather than fading away.
