Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s lawyer, has made headlines again, this time for an eyebrow-raising anecdote about her childhood. During the 2024 Young Women’s Leadership Summit, she claimed that her family lived off Coca-Cola and peanuts from McDonald’s because it was all they could afford. However, this story quickly drew skepticism online, especially considering her affluent background.
Alina’s father, Saad Habba, is a renowned gastroenterologist and the president of the GastroSurgi Center of New Jersey. He has been practicing medicine for over four decades, having trained at the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. The Habbas, Chaldean Catholics from Iraq, moved to the U.S. in the early ’80s to escape religious persecution. Despite the challenges of relocating, they seemed to have established themselves quickly. In the late ’90s, Alina attended the Kent Place School, a private all-girls prep school with a current tuition of nearly $54,000 a year. Given her father’s successful medical career and her elite education, Alina’s claims of financial hardship seem questionable.
On June 8, 2024, at a Turning Point USA event, Alina recounted her tale of humble beginnings: “My first home was across the street from a McDonald’s, and my father used to buy a Coke and a pack of peanuts every day so we could survive,” she said in a clip shared on X (formerly Twitter). This sparked confusion and disbelief. As one X user noted, McDonald’s isn’t known for its peanuts: “Must be a regional thing. Or a fib.” Others questioned how her family could transition from such dire straits to affording elite education in just a few years. Despite the backlash, Alina stood by her story, attributing the criticism to Trump derangement syndrome. “I really can’t be fact-checked on my life,” she stated on “The Charlie Kirk Show” on June 10, 2024.
Legal Blunders and Mockery
Alina’s narrative of being a self-made success story is contested by many who believe she benefited from privilege rather than sheer effort. One X user highlighted the contrast: “Her dad’s a gastroenterologist. The tuition at her fancy private high school is over $50K per student. And she still ended up in one of the lowest-ranked law schools in the country.” Indeed, Alina studied law at Widener University Commonwealth, ranked 195 out of 196 on U.S. News’ list of best law schools.
Her legal career hasn’t been without its missteps. In January 2024, during Trump’s E. Jean Carroll defamation case, an attorney dismissed one of her claims due to a formatting error—bolding and italicizing passages that undermined her argument. Other blunders included a judge calling a recess because Alina tried to cite a document not yet in evidence, prompting him to say, “We are going to take a break here and you’re going to refresh your memory about how you get a document into evidence.”
Alina’s performance has even drawn criticism from within Trump’s legal team. As one of his lawyers told The Daily Beast in 2022, “‘What the f*** is she doing?’ is probably the most common question we asked about her.” Trump, however, denied these reports, stating via the Trump Organization, “This story is totally untrue.”
